bars

UPDATE (8/19/2018)- Likewise has since closed its doors. I wait to see what Adam and Nancy intend to do next. In the meantime, I’m keeping this up as a memoriam to a great concept and bar.

Full disclosure: While I am a “member” of this establishment, I have no stake in it, financial or otherwise. Similarly, this review is entirely unsolicited by the establishment, and all opinions are inviolably my own. The nature of my membership will be expanded upon further in the review. – BHB

Where: LIKEWISE, 3564 SE Hawthorne Blvd., SE Portland.

When you’re mostly-unemployed, you find yourself pounding pavement a lot.
Sidewalks meld together, the curbs all start to look alike, and your eyes only really respond to flashes of neon, streetlights, and window displays of things you’d love to be able to afford one day.

The only things that stir you up are potential places to look for work- or places to make you feel a little better about not having it.
In short, it’s a wonderful excuse to go exploring- and I was in exactly such a state clomping down Hawthorne Boulevard a year or so ago.

Hawthorne Boulevard is a local strip comprised of bars, restaurants dedicated to various cuisines and budgets, and intriguing shops varying from the mundane stationery to exotica. The street is rife with nightlife venues- a barcade (Quarterworld), a kitschy sci-fi bar from the 50s (the Space Room), and a number of restaurants, food carts and stands ready to offer delicious boozemops for when you just need SOMETHING to get you home.

This considered, the presence of LIKEWISE is not remarkable.

It’s really the ONLY thing about LIKEWISE that is not remarkable.

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Good evening, friends and neighbors!I tend to do my best thinking when I’m outside. I’ve heard that it’s something to do with endorphins, or the activity of the body matching the activity of the mind. It might also be the mirepoix of light, fresh air, and action that stirs the imagination to open doors it might have sullenly slogged by- even if the body itself seems to be slogging it’s way through the rainy, suddenly sleet-in-May-filled streets of Portland.

I tend to do my best THINKING when I’m moving around outside.

My best WRITING, however, tends to happen in pubs and restaurants.