That photo, and the one at the top of the post come from a little exercise I started six years ago called the Portland Tavern Project. It started while I was writing the Beer Bible and needed to take lengthy constitutionals to clear my mind. I've always loved old bars, which are as crusty and full of character as the people you find inside. As I was trotting around the neighborhood, I'd snap a photo whenever I came across one. It didn't take long before I realized that some of the photos in my collection were taken shortly before a pub closed down. Smokey's, out on Foster Road, and Lucky's, which was just down the street from me, are both gone now.

Bars like this have always been vulnerable, and churn is high. They're low-margin businesses that depend on volume sales and low rent. In cities across America, both trends are working against the neighborhood tavern. With more and more places to drink, dive bars don't get the traffic they did twenty years ago. More significantly, as the middle class leaves the suburbs to return to the city, rents are on the rise in the urban core. Portland has always had a far higher proportion of these old pubs than most cities, but rent in the inner neighborhoods has been skyrocketing for five years. Smokey's is now a cannabis dispensary, and Lucky's is a vacant lot--almost certainly a future apartment building.

A few more ghosts from my collection: