No Fun Is a Bar-Themed Bar

You can go there to get drinks and chat with whatever local musicians may be serving them or enjoying them alongside you.

(Henry Cromett)
By Penelope Bass

1711 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-236-8067, devilsdill.com. 5 pm-2:30 am daily. Happy hour 5-7 pm daily: $3 wells, food specials.

Established: 2015

No Fun Bar is not an elevated sports pub or a pre-Prohibition-style cocktail den. It's a bar-themed bar, in that you can go there to get drinks, chat with whatever local musicians may be serving them or enjoying them alongside you and, more often than not, witness a karaoke session made all the more memorable by said musicians powering through '80s and '90s radio trash with more earnestness and conviction than the actual one-hit wonders who wrote them. Some nights there will be an open-mic night or a Mario Kart tournament, other nights not. Video games or a pinball machine may materialize, then vanish just as abruptly. It's a dark and sparse space in which to drink tallboys and enjoy the uncommonly good sandwiches from Devil's Dill, the attached sandwich shop that opened No Fun mostly to appease Portland health code requirements for restrooms and on-premises seating. The sandwiches, like the No. 1 (house-smoked five-spice pulled pork, sesame slaw and chili-garlic barbecue sauce; $10.25), are served until 3 am, so if there's any theme at all, it might as well be "booze and sandwiches." In other words, perfection.

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