Bar Guide 2015: Charlie Horse Saloon

By MATTHEW KORFHAGE

627 SE Morrison St. 4 pm-close daily.

Charlie Horse Saloon is a wood-paneled facsimile of an old cowboy haunt done up in '70s bachelor-pad wood paneling, with more taxidermy than the Bates Motel. The women wear brimmed hats and tats, the men stocking caps, in true Portland frontier style. Also in Portland frontier style, the food menu is casual Vietnamese, mostly $6 banh mi. Really, the location's previous resident, Sway Bar, was more cowboy than Charlie Horse—if only because of its goofball, improvised liquor selection and vape-penned basement speakeasy. But between Star Bar's aggressive black-on-black punk squall and Dig a Pony's bass-heavy, bridge-and-tunnel weekends, Charlie is destined to be the neighborhood's service-industry station, not to mention a watering hole for travelers who got rode hard. That said, avoid the needless $9 cocktails (a margarita made with Jameson ain't so fancy as that) in favor of the $6 beers and shots, whether Buffalo Trace and Montucky or Hornitos and Tecate. Then, settle in for a soundtrack by the Cramps.

Happy hour: 4-7 pm daily. $1 off everything.

Entertainment: Big Buck Hunter, jukebox.

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WWeek 2015

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