Yamhill Pub is the Lowest Down, Diviest Dive in Portland

It’s too lackadaisical about its own squalor to actively engage in the city’s ongoing culture war.

(Yamhill Pub Facebook)
By Matthew Singer

223 SW Yamhill St., 503-295-6613. 10 am-2 am Monday-Friday, noon-2 am Saturday-Sunday. Happy hour 4-6 pm daily: $1 off pitchers, $2.50 well drinks.

Established: 1939

Appreciating downtown's Yamhill Pub for what it is requires an understanding of what it's not. It is not clean. It is not pretty. It's not a "gastropub" or "mixology lab," and even calling it a "dive" seems generous. Announcing itself with only a stained green awning above the doorway, it's a hole-in-the-wall in the sense that it appears to have been gnawed into the side of a building by angry rodents. Graffiti covers practically every square inch like the walls of a punk club restroom, with a scent to match, so you can imagine what the actual restrooms are like. Food options are limited to chips, beef jerky and microwavables best left in the freezer. More PBR flows from its taps than anywhere else in Oregon, and they've got the official plaques on display to prove it. While it's tempting to classify the Yamhill as one of the last holdouts of Dirty Old Portland left in shiny-plastic downtown, the truth is that it's too lackadaisical about its own squalor to actively engage in the city's ongoing culture war. Whether you just got off the bus in town or scrawled your name on the wall years ago, if you're here, you must really want to be here. So here's a Pabst and a Sharpie. Welcome home.

Bar story: At its peak, the bar went through 26 kegs of PBR per week, good enough to rank fifth in the nation in volume sold.

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