Portland Brew Blues

A year and a half, maybe two years ago, I sat in Portland Brew late on a Saturday afternoon and enjoyed a coffee.  The shop was empty for the most part because it was near closing time.  I smiled as I listened to the baristas talk about their plans for the night.

Outside, 12South was bustling.  New 12South, that is, not the neighborhood we moved adjacent to 20 years ago.  As I sat there lost in my thoughts, I thought about how few "neighborhood" places there were anymore.  Mafiozza's had recently closed.  All that was left, really, was Burger Up, Frothy Monkey and, of course, Portland Brew.  Everything else was a high end chain restaurant (The Henry) or an expensive women's clothing boutique. 

The neighborhood I fell in love with was almost completely gone.  In the place of neighbors and regulars were tourists and bridesmaids, all staying at one of the many cursed AirBnB's that had sprung up to the east and west of 12th Avenue.  12South was, and is, unrecognizable in comparison to what it was like just a decade ago.

As I drank my coffee, alone, I thought about how much I appreciated the fact that Portland Brew was soldiering on, like the Little Engine That Could, in the face of all of the nearby development and construction projects.  A neighborhood coffee shop to be sure.  Good coffee.  Reasonable prices.  Sparse, yet comfortable furnishings.  A couch and a chair on top of a small raised stage at the front of the left side of the shop (a stage I never saw used).  Friendly baristas.  Families with strollers.  Lots of regulars.   

I love that word, because in many ways, it's what makes a coffee shop a coffee shop.  Regulars.  

Probably, that's what made it so special.  The regulars.  Any morning I stopped in for coffee on the way to work, I said hello or had a quiet moment with Dennis, Stuart, or one of the many other familiar faces that I didn't necessary know by name.  Of all the coffee shops I have frequented over the years, it felt the most like home.  Portland Brew was to me, in my 50's, what Bongo Java had been for me in my 40's.  

A safe haven.  A port point in the storm of a busy, sometimes stressful, wonderful life full of family, friends, attorneys, and clients.  All of it.  In many ways, Portland Brew centered me as I lived my life.  There, coffee in hand, I wrote in this blog, I read, I worked.  I also mediated and I breathed.  I relaxed and unwound.

As I've written before, Portland Brew was the only coffee shop that stayed open through the uncertainty that surrounded the early, horrible days of the pandemic.  Take out only at first but still, I was able to maintain a sense of normalcy by getting a cup of coffee from Portland Brew in the mornings and sipping it as I sat in a chair outside the strip of stores next to Burger Up, reading the New Yorker.  In fact, that was when I started taking my own coffee cup to get coffee, a habit I've continued at the other coffee shops I go to, although the crazy days of the pandemic are nothing more than distant memories now.  

Staying open during the pandemic was the most neighborly thing imaginable for a neighborhood coffee shop to do.  I'll never forget that.

Many, many weekend afternoons, I finished a neighborhood run with a cup of coffee at Portland Brew, then walked home.

Predictably, within a month or two of my late Saturday afternoon of reverie at Portland Brew, one of the baristas told me they were closing in August.  The owner had agreed to lease the building to, wait for it, Luke Bryan and Jockey, so they could open up what we call "the underwear store."  And, just like that, Portland Brew was gone.  All that was left were memories.  

The regulars scattered, too, of course.  Initially, some of them gathered in the mornings at Lady Bird Taco, or so I am told.  I saw one or two of them, occasionally, at Dose or Bongo Java, even 8th & Roast (my new morning hang).  Even now, 18 months later, it's hard for me to drive or run by where Portland Brew was without getting a bit nostalgic.   

I am thinking about Portland Brew this morning, as I sit in Haraz, sipping an excellent latte, because severe winter weather (allegedly) is on the way mid-morning.  The forecast from earlier in the week for well 12" - 18" of snow has been revised.  It looks like Nashville may get some ice and a few inches of snow but even that is not a certainty, much to the boys' disappointment.  

Every time it snowed or when winter weather was coming, Portland Brew opened up.  Maybe a little late, but it always opened up.  At some point, I learned that the owner picked up the baristas himself, so they wouldn't have to drive and took them home, as well.  In the late mornings and early afternoons on snow days, Portland Brew often was packed with families walking to and from Sevier Park, dragging their sleds, who had stopped in for coffee or hot chocolate.  

So, I guess this is the long overdue requiem for Portland Brew.  It's one I've put off writing.  

The last day Portland Brew was open was a Saturday.  In the end, the entire day was a party.  A sendoff for an old friend.

In what is probably the most Portland Brew thing I could imagine, people jotted down their memories on sticky notes and stuck them on the wall.  Beautiful.