Acme = New Punk Club
So I read on Blogtown yesterday that Acme was changing hands. I was interested – but not too sad, because while I love Acme’s patio in the nice weather months – I never went there during the rainy season because the music was always incredibly irritating and just didn’t have any sort of appeal.
Well tonight over some fine local microbrew – my friends and I had a chat with one of their employees who told us that it is staying a bar and a music venue – but is transforming into what could potentially be a great new addition to the Portland music scene – a true punk club.
Sure – we have a few places in town that cover that already – kind of….but two of the best venues in town – Sabala’s and the Tonic – can’t bring in any sort of decent acts because they refuse to do any promotion for the shows. And Dante’s is way too full of themselves to be a place that an audience wants to be at. So that pretty much just leaves Ash Street – which is great – but it’s just one venue.
So pre-praise to the new Acme and the new life they can breathe into Portland’s music scene!
This place deserves a decent punk crowd. They have basically sucked since opening. IE, they have done the least possible to get people to come in and drink their beer since they opened. Why? I have no idea. They have a fantastic place and they are running with a decent media presence. It took me 12 minutes to get a pitcher of cheap-ass beer (yeah, High Life) and either they are perpetually understaffed, or they just have no idea on how to run a decent bar. F-em. I hope the place gets a makeover in to something of a dive bar, ALA LowBrow of the Eastside. Oh, dear gawd, please turn in to the LowBrow of the Eastside. Please.
blah…trendy.
i respect the punk movement…but i’m a bit tired of the mega punk drive in this town right now.
as if… there has to be a fucking punk club on every fucking corner. Providing an outlet for social/political expression is essential. But requiring that so many venues are necessary to do so is fucking retarded.
The idea is to provide an outlet for that movement to congregate, share ideas, and make a statement (in whatever form). The idea that there “needs to be a ‘true’ punk club” in this town insults the artists and community that support them. Punk communities are grown, not ‘built’. That community should thrive around the artists and other people that passionately rally around it…not around the businesses and money that provide the infrastructure. All that results in is trendy bullshit…and the last thing this town needs are more trend setters…heh.
Btw, I like the new idea of Acme’s musical content…I’ll still drink there. :)
“mega punk drive”? What the HELL are you talking about? A “punk club on every corner”? Let’s see…there’s Ash Street Saloon (but even that is not a “punk club” – they do all kinds of music), maybe the Satyricon, and, um, that’s it. Sure, there’s the Hawthorne Theater, but that place caters to the Hot Topic crowd.
I challenge you to list a half-dozen full-time punk clubs in this town, let alone a punk club on “every corner”. If anything, this town is drowning in pretentious gentrifying, bike-commuting, pseudo-hippie hipster bullshit, and a punk club is EXACTLY what we need.
Kudos to the new owners.
gentrifying bike commuters!??! w00t!
Great…punk…as if I’m not tired enough of hippies, here comes the OTHER tired played out way for people to commercially sell out and thumb their nose at THE MAN.
I’d prefer at least a decent hip hop venue that didn’t get rousted by cops every weekend.
Trendy, hipster, shoe-gazin’ indie-schlock exploded in this town in the early to mid-90s like a bad case of the crabs and its only gotten worse. But hey, some people are into that sort of thing and they have a ton of bars/clubs to go to.
There really is a dearth of punk hangouts/venues in this town. The new Acme would certainly earn bonus points if one could walk in and hear such anthemic local releases as the “Drinking is Great” EP blasting away.
Old Man Minor, WTF!! There hasn’t been a decent punk club in Portland since the X-Ray and Satyricon went under years back. Maybe you don’t understand the concept of “punk.” I’ll admit I’m old enough to remember when the whole movement started in the late 70’s, and I don’t think you get that it was basically a flip-off to mainstream music and culture at the time. Punk has and always will be “built.” It stems from a meeting of like-minded individuals who are basically pissed off and fed up with government, and the stratification of the haves and have-nots. Not to get on a soap box, but with our government in shambles and the average home in Portland going for roughly $300,000 I think the timing is perfect. As to disrespecting the artists in Portland there are a lot of us around who miss venues like the old vomit stained, sweat and urine smelling Satyricon and EJ’s. As to the commercialization I guess you forgot the marketing guru Malcom McLaren who turned the Sex Pistols and the whole punk look into what they are now selling at Hot Topic.
I agree with Dieslboi, the service and music at Acme suck. We went there for our meet-up and it took me almost half an hour with two bartenders to get a pint. I’m looking forward to seeing what the new owners are going to do with the place.
Thanks, Kai.
My heart and mind miss EJ’s quite a bit. My liver sure doesn’t, it took the brunt back then.
Many fond memories of X-Ray and Satyricon as well.
Ah, EJs. Ah, original Satyricon.
Meanwhile, I have never had a problem with the service at Acme. Not even one of the times I’ve been there.
Maybe they just don’t like you for some reason.
I was actually getting mine faster than some of the other people waiting in line. I think they were just understaffed for the large groups that were there that evening. Plus the system of taking food orders and disappearing into the back to deliver them kind of messes up the flow of things.
Service there has been wildly erratic – either they’re jam-packed yet have plenty of staff on hand, or get a crowd and have no one to wait on tables, forcing everyone in the patio to head up to the one bartender on duty (that’s what happened at our last meetup there.)
Of course, our last gathering there was the night after the big Mercury election debate – so maybe they’d fully staffed for that and understaffed for the next night, who knows?
Alright kids here is the skinny. I am one half of ACME’s new ownership. We are NOT going to be a “punk” venue, in fact are striving to not be a venue at all. We will however be a bar owned by two people with strong roots in the punk scene, and beyond. We are moving toward filling the void that has existed in portland for years. Creating an environment free from the confines of the status quo. We have no intention of being “gimicky”, or “mega”, just real. Stop by and watch it change. And to answer your questions, yes there will still be shows. No, we will not continue doing the current format, and yes it will be the best bar ever! In closing, ACME is going to become the “PLAN B BAR”. See you there.
Thanks,
Jeff Truhn
Thanks for the clarification Jeff – looking forward to seeing what you’re doing!