The Black Bike Cafe Credit: Clare Gordon

This is what it looks like when an Alberta staple tries on Southeast Portland: The owners of Northeast’s Black Cat Cafe, an offbeat coffee shop that also offers a surprisingly well-rounded bottled beer selection, cigarettes, and only an occasional fear of getting mugged mid-cappuccino, have just opened a new cafe just South of East Burnside called the Black Bike Cafe. Also featuring coffee from Batdorf and Bronson’s fair-trade operation and pastries from Delphina’s Bakery, the Black Bike Cafe opened quietly this weekend with drink specials and a cozy space from which to watch SE 28th stroll by. With a brighter and better organized vibe than its Northern predecessors (the second Black Cat Cafe has been open on N Interstate for over a year), this new caffeine-dispensary also offers beers on tap, sandwiches, and anything else you’d want from a casual coffeehouse that plans to be open til 12 am in the near future. I know I have genuinely appreciated having a local non-bar in which to kill time waiting for friends after other cafes have closed – it’s a drag when sipping a shitty beer in a dive bar and avoiding eye contact with too-friendly men older than my father is the only alternative to wandering outside in the rain. The Black Bike Cafe will not please your Stumptown Coffee snobs or cocktail bar addicts, but it’s a mellow locale for a quiet drink, reading your favorite alt weekly while people watching, or chowing down on a breakfast biscuit on the way to work.

The Black Bike Cafe

The Black Bike Cafe is located at 22 SE 28th Ave.

7 replies on “Black Bike Cafe Now Open on SE 28th”

  1. “sipping a shitty beer in a dive bar and avoiding eye contact with too-friendly men older than my father”

    Must be agony for you…

    Isn’t it great to live in a City populated by young attractive bigots who are only nice to other young attractive people? It really makes life extra special.

  3. This place fails as a cafe, they aren’t open early enough to sell coffee to morning commuters. Guess what? Not everyone rolls out of bed at 10am in order to barely make it on time to your shitty design firm internship.

  4. I went this weekend and was disappointed. We waited about 20 minutes for greasy bagel sandwiches and so so coffee. The guy behind the counter was nice, but very disorganized. About 4 people walked in and then walked back out in the time we were waiting to pay for and eat our brunch. I can kinda see the vibe they are going for, but if our experience was any indication of how they run their business, they won’t make it in the neighborhood. Especially with Crema and City State down the street.

  5. Black Cat Cafe…. I appreciate their cheap beer, but they made an essentially brand new building feel grungy (Interstate). What is with the very low standards of cleanliness? If the new shop resembles the other two, I am not in a rush to go visit.

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