Adventures in Portland: Comedy Festival

Two weekends ago my husband happened upon an annual event in a district just outside of downtown Portland: the Bridgetown Comedy Festival. Mr M had been craving stand-up comedy for some time so he was super excited this just perchance was happening in the first few weekends since we moved here.

The Bridgetown Comedy Festival is in an enclave in Portland called the Hawthorn District, which is a very cool, lively area centred around Hawthorn Street. Tons of great bars, restaurants and shops are found here surrounded by family friendly neighbourhoods; in fact there are many little neighbourhoods like this all close by downtown, especially on the east side of the river. Lots of people bike around the flat streets from their cute houses with veggie gardens to go to a great family owned restaurant, shop or go to one of the many yoga studios or co-op/organic markets. Love it!


We walked all around the Hawthorn neighbourhood and had a bite to eat at "Que Pasa" (a fun and popular mexican restaurant) as we waited for the evening events to start.

We saw 2 shows: one was a very small venue in the back of a bar called "The Bar of the Gods" which serves $1.50 PBR beer during happy hour ($0.75 on Tuesdays), the kinda bar my friend Will would love. The venue might have been small (inner patio) but the line up was long. About 10 young comedians took the stage for 10min each. The second show was in a larger venue with Canadian comedians only. We had even seen one of the performers before :)

We left the shows with cheeks hurting from smiling and laughing. Fun times and a great reason to check out a great new neighborhood. Hawthorn District - CHECK.

-L