Stag: Bar Review

Portland's newest gay bar looks like your grandpa's den. More to the point, Stag (317 NW Broadway, 971-407-3132, stagpdx.com), designed by tastefully haute Christopher David, looks like the private rooms where today's grandpas once held stag parties, with brown leather couches, Victorian wallpapered sitting rooms, Edison bulbs hanging from nautical rope, and dark, aqua walls covered in snowshoes and ancient oars and framed kitsch—plus a taxidermal white buck behind the bar. But unlike your grandpa, who hid his true self in the dirty-movie drawer under his desk, this grandpa proudly displays his treasure: the adorable, young, shirtless bartender in suspenders and a bow tie who, while I was there, served delicious cocktails from the menu in his head and told me about his other life as a professional player of Magic: The Gathering. Everything about Stag is a happy surprise. The location is just out of reach of Old Town, where parking exists and the Broadway Bridge is readily available should you need a west-side-of-the-river exit strategy. But the best surprise comes at 9:30 pm, when the pop hits morph into something with deeper bass, the sky gets darker, and the men get naked for a pole dance. A happy-hour haunt by day, by night it becomes one of only two all-nude gay strip clubs on the West Coast, after downtown's Silverado. But while the patrons are 90 percent male, not a single one side-eyed me, a woman, as I sat alone at the bar. By the time I left, someone had bought me a no-strings-attached drink and I had at least two new best friends. All in all, Stag might be my new favorite place in Portland.

WWeek 2015