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This time of year in Portlands is always magical. The Mayor turns up the thermostat, we all argue over whether or not we even bother with daylight savings (the FBI says yes, so that’s a vote against it from me), and the greatest minds in our city begin preparations for theescalation of hostilities in our ongoing war with ICSUT. Students across the city love this time for the one day of the year in which it’s no longer simply socially acceptable for them to be intoxicated in public - it’s nearly required. I’m talking about Ostara of course, the ancient and hallowed Celtic festival celebrating the Equinox and the birth of Spring. And what better way to celebrate this holiday than with a pub crawl through the best (or at least, best affordable) pagan and Sidhe pubs, bars, and watering holes in Three Portlands? That was the question the shadowy cabal of ex-student council officials, Sidhe nobles, and sentient mollusks that really run the show at the Odyssey asked me, and this article is my answer.

WATER OF LIFE: WHISKEY, WHISKEY, AND MORE WHISKEY

My first stop was Water of Life. For those among you who didn’t go out freshman year, the Water of Life is the whiskey (note the “e”) bar on Humbolt street. The bartender, Leitrim, is a six-foot-tall slab of corned beef. If rumors are to be believed, he used to be a combat epistemologist for the IRA, and he keeps a shrine to Sucellus behind the bar. The only drinks he’ll serve other than whiskey are Guinness and Car Bombs — though I’ve never heard of anyone brave enough to ask him for the latter.

Water of Life serves every whiskey ever made in Ireland, going back to at least the 13th century, and some of them are fantastic. Inside, it’s all dark wood and Irish flags, with a big TV rigged up to watch Gaelic Football (which is like Rugby, Soccer, and Basketball got together and had an illiterate child — it’s the greatest sport ever invented). It tends to get flooded with freshmen on weekends — their love for cheap whiskey cannot be explained by science or magic — but it’s actually a decent spot for a drink if you can stand the taste of whiskey. Personally, I cannot, and so I decided to go here first mainly to get it over with. I had a shot of Glen Distillery 1923, magicked straight out of a barrel in the Portland Bureau of Prohibition office evidence lockup. It burned like gasoline and smelled like a peat bog. My friend Ezra, who actually likes whiskey, said it was phenomenal though, with “charcoal and amber notes”, so I guess maybe I’m the issue.

Drinks: 2/5 (Literally only whiskey)
Price: 4/5 (Affordable, but drinking whiskey is a price to pay on its own)
Atmosphere: 3/5 (Would be a lot nicer with less freshmen)

THE HOODED CROW: THE BEST PUB IN THREE PORTLANDS

The next stop on my tour was the Hooded Crow, a pub in Little Avalon. I’m not entirely certain that anyone who owns it is pagan, but the aforementioned shadow government will only bribe me if I promote some Sidhe businesses, so here goes.

The Hooded Crow is a wonderful example of the fusion of Sidhe and Portlands culture, with great drinks, tasty food, and reasonable prices. The decor uses traditional Sidhe architectural techniques reminiscent of the floating columns of lost Avalon, but with the more mundane materials of the Emerald Isle, creating a comfortable yet enchanting atmosphere that’s perfect for welcoming in new patrons, like us Deeries. Since it opened last year, it’s also been a favorite haunt of Sidhe royalty, and it’s fast becoming a go-to place for anyone looking to break into the politics of the Fey courts in the city. I tried their Avalon Paradise cocktail, and have to say, it’s better than an orgasm.

Drinks: 5/5 (Creative and unique)
Price: 5/5 (A great value!)
Atmosphere: 5/5 (Unlike anywhere else)

Okay, I may have been paid extra to let the pub’s manager write that review, but my commitment to you, dear readers, is greater than my commitment to up to double the amount of fey gold they paid me. In all honesty, the Hooded Crow sucks. Good pubs don’t need advertising, but the Hooded Crow absolutely does. The decor just doesn’t work, it comes across a lot more as vaguely-Sidhe neighborhood chain than fusion of Irish and Avalonian, and the drinks are overpriced and watered down. Their signature Avalon Paradise, which is just grenadine, pineapple juice, ultramarine curaçao, and rum, was heavy on the ice and pineapple, and light on the booze. Much like the rest of the Hooded Crow, it left me wanting more — from another, better pub. I will admit, though, that the bit about it being politically important to the Fey of our city is true — I’m pretty sure the place is owned by the Thistlebranches. Sadly, that likely means that the place will be around for years to come.

HAIR OF THE WOLF: THE ACTUAL BEST PUB IN THREE PORTLANDS

After the harrowing trial of doing a shot of whiskey, and the sorry experience that was the Hooded Crow, I decided to head on down to the Hair of the Wolf. This place is what the Hooded Crow wishes it was — a real center of community for the people of Portlands, with deep connections to Portlands’ Sidhe and Lycanthropic inhabitants. Hair of the Wolf is run by a pack of Faoladh, a type of werewolf which maintains full control when they transform. This particular pack has been in Portlands since the nineties, and they’ve turned their pub into a community center for the Lycanthropic population of our city. Most of their employees do double-duty in the Portlands EMS, which makes this a great place to go for your first experience with alcohol poisoning.

The Hair of the Wolf’s drinks are a bit on the pricier side, though not unreasonable, and I actually had two to make up for the watered-down “signature cocktail” of the lesser pub in Little Avalon. I started with a classic Guinness, which is black as coal tar, as bitter as pine tar, and as historically significant as the LaBrea tar pits. Like most necromancers, I drink a lot of Guinness — the curse laid upon the brewery’s namesake family line adds a delightful heady note perceptible to thaumaturges. My dark beer sunk, I then tried to look sophisticated and mysterious in front of Fiona, the bartender, by ordering a Negroni. It was fantastic - the sweet and herbal notes of the gin and vermouth taking center stage, followed by a bitter spike that paired well with my realization that she was well outside of my league.

Oh, also, they let people bring in their dogs.

Drinks: 4/5 (Didn’t get her number)
Price: 3/5 (A little expensive, but worth it)
Atmosphere: 5/5 (Full of dogs)

Liath’s

By this point, I was actually starting to get the level of buzz which I need to approach women in bars, so I made my next stop at Liath’s, the queer Sidhe bar on Connaught Street. For the two straight students at Deer, I’m sorry, this place just isn’t for you. Liath’s main audience is a bit older than the average Deer student, being made up of thirty-to-fifty-year-old humans, fifty-to-one-hundred-year-old Sidhe, and onetwenty-something-year-old ex-sports-correspondent (unofficial). Named for one of the foster mothers of the builder of the Giant’s Causeway, Liath’s got its start after several players from various derby teams were banned from every other bar in Portlands. To hear the regulars tell it, this came following the celebrations of the LDD’s most recent victory (back in 2005), which involved an oil drum full of hotdog water, the platonic concept of apples, and at least two other Portlands (specifically, the ones in Kansas and Victoria, Australia). No one would give me exact details, and when I tried to get them I was greeted with thousand-yard stares and the faint scent of cider.

Despite its chaotic origins, Liath’s is surprisingly sedate inside. There are booths lining two of the walls perfect for conversation, and they play music quiet enough that you can talk over it, but loud enough to make eavesdropping difficult. It’s the kind of place you could go to have a drink and unwind, and quite honestly I only went in because it was the closest gay bar to the Hair of the Wolf.

The bartender, Leanna, has been working at the place for the last ten years. She used to be a pivot on the Titania’s Terrors derby team, and to this day the team comes by every night that they have a match, either to celebrate a victory or nurse a defeat. She mixed me two really stiff gin martinis - salty and floral and intoxicating, like the Terrors jammer she introduced me to (they’d beaten the X-Files that night).

Drinks: 5/5 (Got her number)
Price: 4/5 (Not bad)
Atmosphere: 2/5 (Frustratingly mature)

Banshee’s Howl

By this point, I was well beyond buzzed. Just to recap, I’d had one shot of whiskey, one watered-down signature cocktail, one Guinness, one negroni, and two stiff gin martinis. I suppose, then, that it’s no wonder I next wound up at Banshee’s Howl - a Little Avalon dive bar that only appears to those on the verge of alcohol-induced blackout. I have flickers of having been there in the past, though to be honest they could also be hallucinations. The Howl is literally and metaphorically underground — I don’t think it has a liquor license, because any code enforcement trying to find the place would have to be too drunk to notice it — inside of what appears to be a barrow mound in the middle of a park.

The decor inside is, again, a barrow mound. Earthen walls with mouldering wooden beams, a bar made out of an old standing stone, and nowhere to sit. At the Howl, you sit on the floor, and you regret. The bartender is some kind of un-screaming banshee, and the only drink they serve is poitín - basically Irish moonshine, but with fungal and earthy notes barely perceptible as the fumes kill your scent receptors. The shot I had couldn’t have been less than 85% ABV, and that’s where my memory of the night ends.
Drinks: 1/5 (Paint thinner)
Price: 5/5 (Don’t remember paying anything)
Atmosphere: 1/5 (Would’ve been better with the screaming)

???

As a proud college student (read: high-functioning alcoholic), I am ashamed to admit this, but after the poitín I blacked out. When I woke up, the sun was out, my shoes were missing, I had the worst hangover of my life, and I was in the middle of a circle of mushrooms in the Canyon. The only suggestion of what had happened after the Howl was a note in my own handwriting scrawled on a bar napkin, which read “Atmosphere: 0/5, wouldn’t stop playing Dropkick Murphy’s”.

Drinks: ???/5 (Wish I could remember)
Price: 5/5 (Still had my wallet, and all the cash was inside)
Atmosphere: 0/5 (Wouldn’t stop playing Dropkick Murphy’s)