City Bridge & Tunnel Bar to Open Downtown in the Spring

Photo credit: City Bridge & Tunnel

A new bar opening in downtown Portland? Maybe the pandemic really is slowing down. In any case, it’s a good thing—City Bridge & Tunnel, a cocktail bar in the old Shift Drinks space is looking to open this spring, hopefully in March.

Their website describes the business as “A modern industrial neighborhood bar.” On LinkedIn it’s described as a “Modern Bar with Classic Cocktails.” However they identify, their presence will bring some life to that corner since Shift Drinks closed, a casualty from the COVID-19 pandemic. Shift Drinks was known for their “all day happy hour.” Maybe City Bridge & Tunnel will resurrect it?

The owners, Brandon Glasser and Riley Lambert, are having fun with the marketing for the bar over on their Instagram page. You can see a snap in time of the renovation over on Brandon’s Instagram. Sounds like he’s been working towards something like this bar for a while now.

The space will accommodate a total of 111 guests, so it’s not a modest venture. They’ll have 88 seats downstairs and the rest upstairs. You’ll be able to enjoy a drink (and food, presumably) from 3pm to 2am seven days a week.

As for the name including the phrase “Bridge & Tunnel”—sure, it has certain associations, but it is kind of accurate for Portland as a city of bridges (AKA Bridgetown). The tunnel part is less obvious. It’s easy to bristle at the whole B&T thing, but I’ve lived “east of the water” in three major metros (SF Bay Area, NYC, and now Portland) over the years and any animus towards folks east of the Willamette doesn’t seem like a thing here in Portland (it was in Queens, though). Wikipedia has an entry on the history of the phrase”Bridge & Tunnel,” its origin from the 12/14/77 edition of the NYTimes:

“On the weekends, we get all the bridge and tunnel people who try to get in,” he said.

Elizabeth Fondaras, a pillar of the city’s conservative social scene, who has just told Steve Rubell she had never tried to get into Studio 54 for fear of being rejected, asked who the bridge and tunnel people were.

“The people from Queens and Staten Island and those places,” he said.

I also like the incorporation of the PDX carpet imagery into their logo.