New Downtown Bar an Anti-American Scourge

I was just on my way back from picking up a sandwich for lunch (I eat late a lot of the time at work), and I saw something that stopped me dead in my tracks. A little background: ever since Bar 71 closed at the corner of SW 2nd and Ash, I've been eagerly anticipating the arrival of something to replace it. It's a great location, and the space is amenable to a number of uses.

Turns out the bar is being replaced by another bar to be called The Thirsty Lion, opening this Friday. From the description and appearances, it seems it will be a pub representing the cuisine of the British Isles. That made me happy; I certainly enjoy a good foreign beer now and again (duly distributed by a middle man who takes his cut and increases the price I pay, of course! Can't have foreign beers compete on a level playing field with our nativist brews!) The food I can take or leave beyond fish and chips, but that's OK.

I was pleased with the idea of another immigrant family making the effort to assimilate and contribute to our economy. I was also very glad to see all signs and graphics printed in English rather than their home language, whatever that is--kudos! But then I saw a sight that made my blood chill. Workmen (who may or may not be illegals, I didn't get a close look at them--and you can tell right away, y'know) were hoisting flags around the perimeter of the building.

Here's what pissed me off: those flags were FOREIGN flags. Britain, Scotland, Ireland...even WALES, for crissakes. Sure, there was an American flag up there, and an Oregon one, but that still means TWO-THIRDS of the flags flying were from some socialist country the owners of the bar were trying to leave so they could actually be successful.

I mean, have these people learned NOTHING? After all those immigrant rallies with people flying Mexican flags--didn't these restauranteurs get the memo that we're offended by their refusal to totally sublimate every sense of who they were before they crossed the border? Once you clear customs, those OTHER flags should get folded up and put in a drawer with the pictures of grandma baking a kidney pie. And yet here they are, flaunting their Islesishness right in our faces! It took every ounce of strength I had just to keep walking and not rip those suckers right down and begin burning them. Well, that and my sandwich was getting cold.

I did a little checking into things, and it turns out these Dehydrated Leo people aren't just humble immigrants--they're trying to build a little foreigner empire, likely so they can send money home and eventually bring over more people with bad teeth and superior taste in television. They are actually a conglomerate called Concept Entertainment Group, and they own at least two other bars in our fair city: Dixie (are we from the South? I think not) and Barracuda (a Spanish fish to be sure, and anyway we're on land).

I know most of our loyal LO readership will join me in an immediate boycott of these potentially subversive establishments, designed to denude our Americanness until we're all just amorphous blobs as likely to drink Harp and watch Ricky Gervais, as to settle down with Portland Wrestling and a PBR. Which reminds me--I didn't even see a PBR tap in that place!! Are they TRYING to get a molotov thrown through their plate glass?

Fight the (disem)power(ed),
TJ