Two Dollar Breakfast, The Olympics and Karaoke.
Moving to Portland has been a great transition in my life. My best friend Thomas lives here and we’ve spent nearly every day together since I’ve moved. Literally one to two nights a week are the only gaps. We hang out, play games, watch movies, smoke hookah and some times we get Two Dollar Breakfast.
There’s a bar here in Portland called Cheerful Tortoise. This place is kind of a dive but also kind of not. It has a weird lay out, crappy bathrooms, but it also has 47 big screen TVs and last night Thomas and I wanted to get out of the house and talk about some things. It was nice just to be able to discuss our lives and hang out, outside the house. We get to this bar which I’ve never been to before say… midnight. Now we’re here on a Friday night while the Olympic opening ceremonies are playing on NBC and in the next room over is some of the worst karaoke I’ve ever heard in my entire life.
It was fascinating how on TV I’m watching The Arctic Monkeys cover The Beatles while weird flying bicycle people are floating about and in the next room over some woman is caterwauling in the next room to a song she does not know. I love how sometimes you know of a place and you have a perception of what that place is and then you visit it during different hours on a totally different day and it ruins your perception of it.
I always saw Cheerful Tortoise as kind of a weird hybrid dive/sports bar with almost nobody there ever. Now I see it as a place where weird republican gay kids can cheer when Mitt Romney is on screen at the Olympic games and when Sweden shows up, and also hear some of the WORST singing of all time.
I should say that none of this is bad. It’s just surreal. We were also sitting at a table that had a ridiculous bud light neon light with a log for every football team and right next to it was a plaque with half a football helmet mounted to it that was apparently awarded to a team for scoring the least amount of points in a season or something.
I’ll have to snap a photo next time I’m in this place.
Oh I should also state that the 2 dollar breakfast is actually pretty great and the also have decent onion rings.
