Shabby Chic

[January 2nd, 2008]

You may recall a window-clad bar surrounded by wooden picnic tables that once sat catty-corner from the Blue Moon on Northwest 21st Avenue. It was called Silver Dollar Saloon&Pizza (501 NW 21st Ave., 227-1103 ) and still is—though you may not recognize it. OK, the transformation from divey sports bar to somewhat swankier pool hall isn’t that astonishing, but it does make this home of the “Death Valley Special” (pepperoni + mushroom + pepperoncini + Italian sausage = yum!) a much more welcoming place to catch a Blazers game—and now that our boys are actually winning, you don’t even have to ask ’em to turn the game on! Yes, the gray-and-pastel, geometric shape-covered dorm-room/dude-apartment couches and fuzzy, burnt-out TVs of yore are gone, replaced with eggplant-hued leather booths and flat-screens with nice, clear resolution. It’s still populated by the kind of bargoers who carry their cues in custom cases, and the ’tenders still seem kinda meatheaded and unfriendly (even though they’re not), but the whole thing just has a cleaner feel. Take this, for example: The sign on the door reading, “We now serve breakfast on the weekends” is scrawled in highlighter on 11-by-14 printer paper, but, hey, they now serve breakfast on the weekends!