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Kickstarter users have backed some weird things. Though it's several steps closer to normal than, say, a $50,000 potato salad or a Zach Braff movie, Pips & Bounce (833 SE Belmont St., 928-4664) is certainly singular. It's a pingpong bar—this looks precisely what it sounds like it would. Since March 2013, Michael and Eugene Jung have been throwing pingpong parties around Portland under the Pips name, and they've now made a home in the Grand Central Building between Southeast Belmont and Morrison streets. Pips is all-ages until 9 pm and very bright, its white bar and wood-paneled back wall lit by pingpong-ball-shaped lights that hang from the ceiling over the seven tables in the main room. On a rainy recent Sunday, it was packed until its 6 pm closing time with a mix of families and couples on dates. The menu boasts three rotating beers—on tap last weekend was an excellent Hazelbock from Seven Brides—as well as a variety of pingpong-themed cocktails. The Pips Pimms—gin, lemon, Pimms, ginger beer and cucumber slices—made for a refreshing courtside sip. For food, the bar offers a variety of sandwiches, mostly in the $8-to-$15 range. At $8 for a half-hour of play time, it's a pretty steep outing—you could pay for your own table in about a dozen games, and put it somewhere where they don't play remixes of "The Magnificent Seven" by the Clash at a dull roar. But there's also a longer wait for getting food and drink delivered to a table set up in your garage. Such are the prices we pay for leisure.
WWeek 2015