Yorgo’s Tavern

[June 4th, 2008]

ROADIES: An evening in the orange-painted pool room of Yorgo’s Tavern (5421 N Greeley Ave., 283-0676) is a feast for the senses, including those of the absurd: At 10:30 pm on a recent weeknight, the bartender watched The Colbert Report while his patrons sipped Jägermeister and sang along to Live’s “Lightning Crashes.” The house special here—besides Ultimate Fighting Championships on pay-per-view—is Fat Tire on tap for $2.50 a pint. (It’s the perfect aperitif before a stroll one block west to one of Portland’s best overlooks—a tree-lined bluff perched above a basin of Willamette River shipyards.) The most popular beverage here, however, is a PBR tall boy, and the regulars do not seem overly fond of bicycles: “And they wanna know why they’re getting killed and shit,” a burly man in a Tony Soprano undershirt complained over Sunday afternoon beers. “Stay in the fucking bike lane!” You can learn a lot from eavesdropping at Yorgo’s, including the wisdom behind calling a cab home: “That’s when we found out her DUI hadn’t been dropped,” the wifebeater-clad man concluded another monologue. “These things don’t just go away like they used to.”