a Slow farewell

Some places are hard to say goodbye to. We're down to 3 weeks and counting before we ship off, so the due farewells are piling up. Jenny and I are (sometimes overly) nostalgic when it comes to the places we eat and drink. Portland is pretty spoiled in the bar/restaurant department, and since we've lived here we've tried to experience as much of it as we could afford. Like anything, there are hits and misses. One place we've been dreading leaving is Slow Bar.

You know how you have those conversations with your friends that go "man, if I owned a bar it would be all like bla bla bla bla bla?" I've had lots of those, and this place is as close as it gets to my ideal bar. It's small, has bare brick walls, high-backed leather booths, stiff drinks, dim lighting, and probably the best jukebox ever. Lots of 70s and 80s punk wierdness. To top it off, the food is awesome. All fresh, delicious, cheap. It's the kind of place you could see Hemingway hunched into a booth with a tumbler of whiskey, scribbling stuff into a notebook. If Hemingway were alive in Portland on the eastside. Anyway. Point is, Jenny and I frequent this place. So we decide to go in last night for one last meal and a pint.

Jenny is a creature of habit. She finds things she likes and sticks to them. At Slow Bar, she likes a particular sandwich they have, orders it nearly every time. So we sit down, order some drinks and check out the menu. The sandwich is gone. She freaks. When the stoned/drunk/bored waiter guy meanders over she asks about it. "yep, discontinued, but hang on" he manages to get out. He wanders back to the kitchen. Comes back a couple of minutes later, "yeaaah we're not doing that anymore, but the guys have enough stuff to make just one more."

I'm not into too much mystical stuff, but to me this was wierd. To Mrs. Tracy, it was sublime. Sandwich in hand, smile on face, drink nearby, she was in a blissful state. As we walked out we agreed that Slow Bar was saying goodbye in its own way.

As long as PBR or coffee doesn't get discontinued in the next couple weeks, I'll be safe.

DT