2022 Per https://pdx.eater.com/2022/4/19/23030959/rebel-rebel-opening-old-town-portland-lgbtq-queer-bar-drag

New Portland LGBTQ Bar Stands Proud on Old Town’s Bro-iest Block

Rebel Rebel, the David Bowie-inspired bar, serves vegan sandwiches, approachable cocktails, and unapologetically queer vibes

by Andrew Jankowski  Apr 19, 2022, 9:59am PDT

On the outside, Rebel Rebel — a compact Old Town bar boxed between Tube and Dixie’s Tavern — could be just a hole in the wall, a doorway one might miss if not for the drag artists in fetish gear outside. Within the bar, men sport ornate Easter-inspired floral headdresses, club kids arrive dripping in luxury fashion accessories, tech gays chat with stylish lesbians. The interior amounts to a sometimes claustrophobic hall bathed in neon hues and shadow, with a corner stage and booths further inside for watching drag shows or setting up base camp before dancing to local queer DJs.

Rebel Rebel has only been open for a few months, but owner J Buck says his David Bowie-inspired bar has hit full capacity constantly since its opening. This neighborhood was once home to queer holdouts, places like Embers and Fox & Hounds; even nearby LGBTQ club CC Slaughters almost closed for good over the course of the pandemic. Still, Rebel Rebel has rapidly become a thriving third space for Portland’s LGBTQ nightlife community, in a neighborhood — and city — that has lost so many of its inherently queer spaces.

“I want Rebel Rebel to be a space where every single person who identifies with any single thing they identify as, even allyship, to come in and have a good time, as long as we’re all really showing the amount of love we all deserve for each other,” Buck says. “It’s a celebration of the hodgepodge mix of what being queer actually is, and seeing it and accepting it and living it and loving it and celebrating each other.”

Before opening Rebel Rebel, Buck handled the marketing and events for the Lightning Bar Collective. Inspired by Bowie’s artistic legacy, Buck wanted to disrupt Old Town’s reputation as the capitol of Portland’s club scene. “Old Town has this reputation for specifically nightlife and club scenes and hardcore bass and all the things, but I wanted to shake it up a little bit,” Buck says. “People still live down here, and there’s no need to go across the river when you can go to the friendly neighborhood queer bar.”

When the DJ-centered club Maxwell closed, Buck nabbed the space, planting LED gay and trans pride flags in the windows. He kept Maxwell’s gold-trimmed art deco wall carvings and painted black wooden panels and long murals of jewel-tone vines. His goal is to create a true third space for Portland’s queer community, within the heart of Old Town.

“You’re not at home, you’re not at work, but you’re also existing somewhere so different where none of that matters,” Buck says. “You’re just here, and it’s an environment on the inside that takes you outside of being in Old Town.”

Rebel Rebel’s patrons can order cocktails Buck and the bar staff designed to be upscale while accessible in terms of price and turnaround on a busy night. Rebel Rebel’s cocktail menu trends sweet and herbal: fig, cinnamon, and tequila mingle within the New Age Sage Rage; the soft pink house namesake mixes watermelon liqueur with grapefruit bitters and triple sec; the ginger beer and lemon-tinged WAP (Whiskey and Peach) shares bar menu real estate with its Hennessey-based cousin, Oh Hey Henny. When it comes to food, Portland pre-made label Snackrilege provides vegan paninis to hungry patrons.

Staying flexible to the LGBTQ+ community’s desires for drag and dance nights, Buck’s ultimate goal with Rebel Rebel is to imbibe downtown with the eclectic-but-laidback energy of East Portland’s storied bar scenes, especially during a time he sees as a crucial moment in Portland’s comeback story. The loss of the Roxy was a significant blow to Portland’s queer community, and owner Suzanne Hale partially attributed the closure to the state of downtown Portland and its nightlife scene: “Graveyard is not coming back,” she told Eater in March. “Downtown is broken.” But Buck sees things improving: The Queen’s Head, a new drag bar on SW 2nd, opened at the end of 2021, and crowds seem to be returning to places like Silverado and Santé. Plus, more queer spaces, like lesbian bar Doc Marie’s and Sissy Bar on SE Morrison, are in the works, to open this year.

“I see Old Town changing,” Buck says. “I see the level of foot traffic coming back, I see people walking from Queens Head to here to CC’s or Scandals or Stag. You see drag queens walking up and down the street, and it feels like it’s part of this major queer renaissance I’m very much enjoying.”

Rebel Rebel is now open at 20 NW 3rd Avenue.

And this article in https://www.pdxmonthly.com/eat-and-drink/2022/06/new-queer-lgbtq-bars-old-town-portland

The Queen’s Head and Rebel Rebel Are Keeping Old Town Queer

The new bars are ready to restore Old Town to its former queer glory.

By Thom Hilton  Photography by Thom Hilton  June 8, 2022  Published in the June 2022 issue of Portland Monthly

THE PAST FEW years have brought a lot of news of Portland’s queer spaces closing—legendary spots Embers, Hobo’s, the Roxy, and Local Lounge have all shut their doors since 2017—but heading into Pride 2022, there are signs of life. And perhaps surprisingly (but perhaps not), they’re concentrated in the historically queer hub of Old Town.

The Queen’s Head, a queer twist on classic English pubs inspired by owner Daniel Bund’s time in London, opened in November 2021 right behind Voodoo Doughnut and features a stacked weekly lineup including trivia, karaoke, slam poetry, storytelling, and drag queen piano nights. Bund wants to make it clear that the Queen’s Head is a queer bar—meaning a space for everyone under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella—not just a gay or lesbian spot with an occasional night swinging the other way. “I still think there is a place for specifically gay male or lesbian spaces as well. It’s just not what we’re doing or who our customers are,” Bund says.

His new neighbors are on the same page. “It’s up to a lot of us as queer business owners to really focus on building community,” says J Buck, owner of Rebel Rebel, another new queer bar that opened just two blocks away from the Queen’s Head in February. An intimate alleyway-style space, Rebel Rebel is bathed in red neon and decorated with tropical plants, wood paneling, and money cats: personal touches that pay homage to Buck’s Hawaiian upbringing. The space is hypercolorful, with a disco ball and a DJ platform in the back, but it also has a casual, neighborhood charm that allows Rebel Rebel to shift from a drag hot spot some nights to a chill post-show spot for queens on others. Buck hopes that fluidity comes to characterize the space.

“This is not just my bar, my idea, ‘This is how it’s gonna be.’ It’s a free-form, changing space. With the programming, the drag queens, the DJs, and everything, I want to let the community take the wheel and decide what we really want,” he says. “We’re not gonna put ourselves in a box.”

Both the Queen’s Head and Rebel Rebel’s inclusive intentions informed where they chose to open, with nearby businesses like CC Slaughters and Darcelle’s helping foster a sort of gayborhood vibe that recalls downtown’s so-called “Vaseline Alley” of the ’80s and ’90s. Bund says that despite the current stigma around the area, its queer nightlife is starting to find footing.

“If you live in the suburbs or you don’t live anywhere near downtown, there’s this mistaken idea that the area is on fire, and that is absolutely not the case,” he notes. “There are a lot of people living on the street, and at times we have to be a resource for them, but they alone do not make downtown unsafe. The best thing we can do is encourage critical mass: the more people there are, the more that it will feel safe. If it remains a ghost town, it’s gonna feel a little challenging.”

While Pride events weren’t locked in at press time, the venues were looking forward to block parties with their neighbors in June. “We’re the closest space to the Pride festival in Waterfront Park, and we’re already on a pedestrian alley, so we’re ready,” says Bund. Through the ups and downs of opening a queer space in an unpredictable time, he says the moments when he can revel in what he has built make it all worthwhile. “A few nights ago, somebody who was nonbinary proposed to their trans girlfriend, and they were like, ‘This is the first place we’ve ever felt safe.’ I’m running a business, and it’s stressful working seven days a week, 10 hours a day, but when I get the opportunity to enjoy it and see people having a good time, it’s so rewarding and so affirming.”

Cited Portland’s Wildest LGBTQ Bars That Are Ready for Pride (eater.com) https://pdx.eater.com/maps/portlands-best-queer-bars-lgbtq

Rebel Rebel by Conner Reed and Thom Hilton  Updated Jun 1, 2022, 10:33am PDT

The newest addition to Portland’s legendary gayborhood in Old Town, Rebel Rebel is a Hawaiian-inspired alleyway that, during its quieter hours, evokes a breezy tropical patio at night — all decked out with leafy plants, wood paneling, and money cats. But when the party starts and the disco ball spins, it suddenly transforms into one of Portland’s most exciting neon-bathed dance floors. Events include drag shows, dance parties, and club kid fashion shows.

Travel Portland posted this: Travel Gay PortlandTravel Gay Portland It's sad to see another one of our community spaces is closing. Thanks for the @rebelrebelpdx we will miss you!