On April 10 of this year, the Wonder Ballroom opened its doors for an evening of live music from Nashville folksters, TopHouse. The show was typical of the diverse booking by Wonder’s team, endearing itself to the equally diverse group of concertgoers in attendance—a unique Portland music-going community comprised of a wide swath of ages and genre interests. A constant that separates larger Portland venues, and larger Oregon music venues as a whole, are the pesky 21-and-over barricades bifurcating minors from those drinking alcohol, as found at the Wonder, as well as the Crystal Ballroom, among others.
But on this past April night, so conditioned by the omnipresence of the Wonder’s longstanding barricade—perhaps better known by its colloquial designation as “The Moat”—the Wonder’s general manager Kat Lovesky reports that slightly confused show patrons ascended the steps to a main floor missing its usual barrier.
“When we let the guests in, they thought we forgot to put it up and kindly asked if we wanted them to wait until we did so,” she says.
In something of an anniversary miracle, the Wonder’s team were able to celebrate their 20th year as a staple venue this year while seeing through a series of critical and painstaking negotiations with Oregon’s Liquor and Cannabis Commission (OLCC) to eradicate The Moat. The Wonder team’s efforts, while not a direct impetus for other Portland venue OLCC changes, have set the tone for a much-needed and welcomed shift from the idea that the experience of live music must be fundamentally altered to account for 21-and-over drinking in the presence of minors.
Lovesky has risen through the ranks of the Wonder since her arrival in Portland during the venue’s inaugural year in 2005. She’d previously worked at the longtime mid-sized music venue the Metro in Chicago and was well-versed in the dynamics of all-ages live music production upon joining the Wonder team.
“When I got to Portland, I thought someone was playing a prank on me when I saw them separating the room with pipe and drape,” says Lovesky. “I quickly realized that it was real and I was introduced to the OLCC.”
Bryant Haley, a spokesperson for the OLCC, explains that OLCC staff work directly with venues to develop what are called “minor control plans,” designed to keep minors out of portions of a business where the main activity is determined to be for drinking alcohol. Within those minor control plans are other measures that can be followed to prevent minors from being in predominantly alcohol-drinking environments, one of which has been the unsightly barricades. Haley confirmed that both the Wonder Ballroom and the Crystal Ballroom have been in process with OLCC investigators to negate the need for the barricades on their floors, but that the status of those barricade removals is, crucially, context-based.
Most control plans have alternate control measures based on the drinking environment, says Haley.
“You’re gonna get Yo Gabba Gabba, and then you’re gonna get a completely different act like Gwar or something—major opposites of each other, right? But that does matter, because you’re going to get totally different crowds.”
Red Turner, property manager for the Crystal Ballroom, says he and owner Conner McMenamin have been aiming for ways to alter their property’s minor control plan compliance, which meant working with OLCC to come up with different scenarios as to where and how they would be able to negotiate an open floor plan. The Crystal, a notoriously odd-shaped venue, has reckoned with a large barricade—what Turner calls the “demilitarized zone”—right down its center from the front of the stage to the back of the venue.
“When you have to split a room, you’re losing a major amount of real estate,” says Turner. “It makes it dense, it’s harder to manage, and when artists come in and see this split down the room, it changes the feel for them and for the people attending the shows. It changes the feel of the room.”
At the Crystal, criteria for deciding whether or not to have the barricade is dependent upon a few logistical factors, namely whether or not a booked artist requests additional security that the barricades may help with, or there are necessities stemming from the venue’s dimensions that require a multi-band load-in/load-out through the narrow area a barricaded area can provide. Otherwise, the Crystal remains compliant with their minor control plan without the barricades at all, utilizing a double identification method: a stamp and a wristband for those over 21 who want to drink, as well as multiple alcohol monitors, and other standard security personnel.
At the Wonder, Lovesky and her team would try to mitigate the artist’s and audience’s grievances with the barricades by creating modular solutions to specific shows, a measure she says was a great annoyance to the staff and a hindrance to the communal feel that live music venues ought to have.
“We started to ask the age group of ticket buyers so we would know how to build the moat to accommodate the majority of the customers coming,” says Lovesky. “Artists would hate seeing a big hole in the middle of the room, so we started moving it from one side to the other, and if the whole room was going to be all ages, we utilized the balcony and our lower lounge for adult drinkers. It was like a dance. We wound up finding a rhythm to deal with it.”
For the Wonder Ballroom, a new era of live music experience goes hand-in-hand with a thrifty 20th Anniversary ticket deal as a thanks to Portland’s music community and Wonder patrons over the last two decades. $20 will get you two tickets to a number of Wonder’s remaining 2025 shows (last one on December 10). Along with the venue’s new barricade-less innards, non-alcoholic beverages are available at all bars; minors and non-alcohol drinkers can access NA options at the coat check area. The balcony remains accessible to those 21 and over, but the Gallery space downstairs, through the main floor stairwell is now open to all ages.
“This is a win for Portland,” says Turner. “We need this back as a city. We need everyone to know they can come into the city and enjoy the entertainment and be safe and enjoy the spaces we have, and not feel like they’re in a security nightmare.”
“It is important to allow all of us, of all backgrounds, all ages, all differences to be together experiencing things that are one-time only events, and bond together through those experiences,” says Lovesky. “Having the next generations standing next to you feeling the power of a performance could be life changing. Whatever it is, it is better together.”