Something seems wrong & unstable about Portland. Rents are too high in relation to job opportunities. Music venues close- but new bars pop up everywhere. Unless Portlanders become even bigger booze hounds- there are just too many bars and restaurants.

The things that should really concern some landlords is this: we are currently enjoying some funny money from well paid software developers. But that industry is cyclical- and those Portland satellite offices are easy to close when the downturn hits. When tech goes down- they really lay people off big time.

What will happen to demand for expensive apartments with no air conditioning? Where will the disposable income be for all the restaurants? Portland could be in for a very rude awakening when the business cycle comes around. Right now, I sense an oversupply of bars.

There remains unbounded appetite in these parts for skanky...err atmospheric dive bars. The commenter\letter writers who properly commended Dirk for digging up the back-story to the Matador's closing back on the 9-11-14 MERC blog could have, however, greedily asked for why some beloved other joints have gone broke. I agree though, that with the Timbers masochistic fans filling the soccer stadium across the street and bringing much needed money into that speculation-gone-bust 'hood at the NW end of Burnside, one wondered how a skanky errrr rustic bar across the street could not be rolling in dough.

The comment above is economically savvy in ways news consumers and the body politic are not by noting that stagnant wages and inflated rent & food costs for the overworked employed and massive unemployed will affect the bottom lines of all those new entrepreneurial establishments that are often cleaner and in compliance with hygiene, safety and access codes. This is why Jude Wanniski (wiki him, the networks and corp tax-cutters who create our wealth dontcha know by taking their tax sheltered dough and creating jobs, they don't mention Wanniski much anymore).

The Laffer-able Supply Siders cum Voo Doo Reaganomics trickle-downers are now being rehabbed in the media with reform President Obama's & Wall Street's help at every curve. However they will have to get more creative as the global lack of demand has done caught up with automated oversupply while lots of lots may have to be turned toward hosting the new Hooverville tent camps. From the western world to China even the economists turned conflict-of-interest policy-makers have to concede We da People done be oversupplied, over-entertained while being unsustainably employed, under-housed and under-fed.

My personal choice for Dirk's next installment of Whatever Happened To This Neighborhood Dive is The Blue Monk that used to present decent affordable eats and drinks upstairs with some of the most risk-taking jazz, hip-hop (including the newsworthy incident just prior to its closing) new and world music with lively spoken word stuff down their rickety, skanky errr redolent cellar stairs. I've been asking around the musical community that supported and was supported by The Blue Monk and I came up with no plausible sounding answers though much conspiratorial speculation.

Yours in waiting,
Mitchito