Habesha Lounge Is Closing

And down goes another one. Music venue Habesha Lounge is closing, along with the restaurant beneath it. The small Northeast Broadway bar above an Ethiopian restaurant had, over the past two years, developed into a hub for Portland music's psychedelic fringe.

According to Habesha restaurant's manager, the building has not fallen prey to developers. Owner Enuysh Kabede has simply decided not to renew the lease. The restaurant's final day is June 30, and the lounge closes on June 27, according to a Facebook post from the venue's booker and sole bartender, Brandon Nikola.

It's the second music venue that will no longer exist come next month: The Alhambra Theatre on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard is also shutting its doors at the end of June. 

In April, Willamette Week named Habesha a 2015 Bar of the Year runner-up, praising it for keeping the spirit of Portland's basement-show scene alive.  

“I feel like it’s a dying breed,” Nikola said at the time. “A lot of places—Sandy Hut, Langano—have been closing down.”

The closure comes a little over a year after the closing of Langano Lounge, another bar connected to an Ethiopian restaurant that also became an epicenter for the more outre strands of the Portland music scene. Habesha's previous incarnation above an Ethiopian restaurant, Mudai Lounge, ended in 2011.

The Sandy Hut, however, is open again and we liked it. It does not, however, feature live music.

WWeek 2015