Bar of the Week: The B-Side Tavern Trendy East Burnside has a flip side, too

By Joseph Gallivan

The Portland Tribune, Apr 28, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

B-Side, Burnside, flip side, get it? No, it doesn’t make sense, but what does until you’ve had a skinful of Pabst?

The knockabout dŽcor of this storefront bar is designed as antidote to those extreme makeover jobs in other parts of town (think of the white gothick of Apotheke, or the aspirational velvet of anything by Andrew Sugar). The place looks like it was outfitted from the bins. With its hard chairs and Formica tables, sagging white curtains, flaking ceiling paint and horrible art on the walls, you won’t be going here to marinate in beauty.

Owners Joel Denton and Tanya Podolske have dangled baffles from the ceiling to cut down the echo. Apparently it was once a bar called the Boondocks and, more recently, an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting room. Now this is an irony you can really get behind.

They’ve crafted a cooler from an old hallway. Homemade light boxes hang above the bar, displaying salvaged chiropractic X-rays. (The one with a spine like a U-bend should give you pause, or laughs.) There are drums and cymbals made into lamps, to make the black T-shirt and tattooed-elbow brigade feel at home.

Podolske, recognizable for her shock of pink hair and semipresent cigarette, says she and Denton branched out from bartending into business ownership because there were no longer any bars where you could just hang out.

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