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Near the still somewhat gritty Bermuda Triangle where Southeast Foster Road splits from Powell Boulevard lies The Trap. The dive bar was set more than 40 years ago in a building that last year celebrated its 90th birthday.
The menu’s pub classics are refreshingly affordable, but karaoke is The Trap’s most enticing bait. Portland has no shortage of karaoke hubs—The Alibi, Baby Ketten, Hallway PDX and Suki’s Bar and Grill among them—but few are as comfortably casual yet naturally weird as The Trap. The bar’s karaoke lures not only Foster-Powell neighbors but the kind of Old Portland oddballs Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein could only have prayed to encounter in the wild.
Bobby Hooper, co-owner of the Hawthorne neighborhood cocktail bar Afterlife, says he once watched a furry—someone who dresses recreationally as a fur-covered animal—howl their heart out on the mic. Another time, he thought he had missed the evening’s characters until he tripped over a set of witch hats, which he and his friends wore for the rest of their visit. “If you don’t see the weirdos, you probably are the weirdo,” he says.