May 07 2008
Gay Night Clubs in Portland
Portland Oregon has some hot gay night clubs. Read more to find out about them!
Portland has gay night clubs in two downtown locations, with a few sprinkled elsewhere. Drop by and dance the night away!
For our purposes, a gay night club in Portland must feature dancing or entertainment on stage. Everything else would be a bar.
THE STARK STREET AREA
Gay Night Club: Boxxes boasts that it is a video bar, but the Go-Go Boys, the pulsing music and the strong drinks add up to night club heaven in this cozy club. Boxxes features loads of dancing on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday Nights. Tuesdays are particularly hot when the ever-enthralling Cory Spelling hosts Flirt and you can get 5 vodka drinks for $5. [Click here to get the scoop on Boxxes]
Gay Night Club: Red Cap Garage is the smoking-hot “other side” of Boxxes. It features dancing on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights and a killer Drag Show on Wednesday nights. [Click here for the skinny on Red Cap]
Gay Friendly Night Clubs in the Area: Aura and The Fez Ballroom are co-owned and managed by the Boxxes/Red Cap team. Both feature live acts and good dancing most nights of the week.
OLD TOWN CHINA TOWN
Wander a few blocks down to Old Town to experience some more Portland gay night club gems.
Gay Night Club: CC Slaughters can be the most happening place on any given night. It can also be the most un-happening. If you are there on a good night, get ready for wall to wall hotties and some thumpin’s music. [Click here for the 411 on CC Slaughters]
Gay Night Club: Although slightly out of Old Town, the new Silverado is hopping with nude male dancers and all around good entertainment. Silverado is busy most nights of the week, but especially so on Sundays starting at 3:00, when beer prices drop to a dollar. [Reveal what you need to know about Silverado by clicking here]
Gay Night Club: Fairly new on the scene is Casey’s, which just barely qualified for mention as a Portland Gay Night Club by featuring a procession of underwear-clad hot men dancing. Since there is no stage at Casey’s, the hotties just dance on the bar, natch.
Gay Night Club: Embers Avenue is a longtime favorite for the gay, lesbian and transgender communities in Portland. Dancing every night of the week and curious drag shows in the separate stage bar on other nights. [More about Embers available if ya click here]
ELSEWHERE
Gay Night Club: The hottest lesbian night spot in Portland is the Egyptian Club. Lovingly dubbed “The E Room,” the club features a cool dance area and karaoke every night of the week. [Find out about the E Room by clicking here]
Gay Friendly Night Club: Usually a sleepy little club, Crush opens up the smallish dance floor on weekend evenings and the eastside gays hit the floor. [More about Crush]
What do you think? Leave a comment about your favorite spot in Portland. Tell the author he sucks (he can handle it.) Tell him which ones he missed. We love comments!
One Response to “Gay Night Clubs in Portland”
Leave a Reply
Portland gay nightlife is centered in 2 distinct areas - on SW Stark Street just south of Burnside Avenue, near Broadway, right in the heart of downtown. The second area is long established in the NW metro area, near NW 2nd and 3rd Avenues. You can safely walk to all locations, but stay alert and be careful on and near Burnside Avenue where it crosses NW 2nd Avenue up to about NW Broadway (7th Ave). If you have never been to a city, I would suggest using a car to move from one area to another, or use common “city-sense”. I walked most of the city almost every night of my visit and did not encounter any problems.
My biggest complaint for almost every bar (Boxxes, CC Slaughters, Silverado) was the hard core porn playing on monitors and TV’s throughout the bars. Portland gay nightlife is friendly, and low-key. But my visit was not enough time to explore more of the culture and community. Portland has a large gay population, an annual Gay Pride Event, and the city is very open-minded. With a wide variety of restaurants and coffee shops catering to the GLBT community throughout the city and outlying areas, there was no gay Mecca, such as one might find in San Francisco (the Castro), Ft. Lauderdale (Wilton Manors) or Chicago. In some ways this was very nice.
CC Slaughters: This club claims to be the best and gayest of them all. My Friday night visit confirmed it does appear to be one of the most popular. An ample dance floor was busy, and the DJ featured popular dance music, and a good light show. My biggest turn off was several video screens featuring hard core porn, so much for bringing friends who may or may not be gay. This may be intentionally for that very reason. Like Boxxes/Red Cap, a hallway leads to a quiet bar and restaurant. I didn’t venture in, but it looked very classy. Drink prices were most reasonable. The club was featuring AMBER a week after my visit for their annual block party. Definitely worth a visit.
Silverado: Oddly enough, this is apparently the place where everybody goes - and I found myself there on 2 or 3 occasions myself. From young male dancers, dressed in very little, and often exposing what is covered, to a small dance floor, even a bar menu, and of course, porn on the video monitors, the Silverado does seem to have it all. It’s not classy, and I wouldn’t bring a first date or mixed crowd here. But it’s not a dump either, by no means. It just is. The bartenders are very friendly, smile a lot, and can engage in decent conversation (the norm at most places actually). You too will have to check it during a visit, before or after you stop into Scandal’s across the street and down a block.