Ring in the new year at one of Portland Monthly's favorite watering holes of 2010.

Best Bars Best Bets for New Year’s Eve

By Geoff Earl December 30, 2010

Is procrastinating on your list of New Year’s resolutions (again)? Since you still haven’t made plans, here are a few destinations that will save you from a lonely night spent the couch with Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest.

Again, you waited until all the cheap flights to Vegas were gone. You can still pretend you’re in Vegas at Grand Central Bowl’s Vegas Style New Year’s Eve Party. Craps tables and Elvis and Joan Jett impersonators, along with Grand Central’s usual Best Bars-worthy sensory overload of dance videos on the joint’s gigantic TVs, should recreate at least some of that Vegas vibe. And when the balloons drop at midnight, you’ll swear you’re in Sin City.

If eating grapes seems like a more dignified NYE ritual than being pelted with balloons, ring in the new year at Andina, one of Portland Monthly’s Best Bars of 2010. New Year’s Eve at Andina offers early and late seatings for live Latin jazz over fine wine and champagne worthy of a pairing with three courses of Peruvian cuisine. At midnight you can duck under the table to partake in the age-old Peruvian tradition of eating twelve grapes at midnight. Reservations are required.

While we deemed Beauty Bar one of the best bars to hide out in, the downtown Portland newcomer’s free New Year’s Eve Blowout will draw a crowd with DJ Nathaniel Knows playing hip-hop, dance, indie, disco and electro. Also document that New Year’s Eve kiss in Beauty Bar’s "live" photo booth.

To hip to hoist champagne with the masses? Of course not. But if your New Year’s Eve is better spent sans fanfare and ritual, the segue into oh-eleven is still worthy of good music and food. Chomp on one of Bunk Bar’s infamous (and Best Bar-worthy) sandwiches as the Americana-tinged indie folk of Arcers of Loaf/Crooked Fingers leader Eric Bachmann sets the tone for the new year.

Filed under
Share
Show Comments