In the former home of LGBTQ+ institution Embers, Badlands is helping to rebuild Old Town’s once thriving queer scene. The all-inclusive club streams music videos on its dozens of screens, and the programming goes beyond late-night dance parties to include karaoke, trivia, open-call drag shows, and RuPaul's Drag Race viewing parties. The clientele is as diverse as Portland gets, varied ages and bodies mingling under the spinning disco ball or squeezed into booths.

Though technically on the outskirts of Old Town’s Entertainment District, CC’s is very much at the center of the queer downtown Portland scene. Part cocktail bar and part dance club, it’s an approachable introduction to LGBTQ+ nightlife. The drinks are cheap, and the greatest gay pop hits and deep cuts are on repeat. Regular events include drag queen bingo on Mondays, shows by trans performers on Thursdays, live band karaoke on Sundays, and a monthly BIPOC drag show.

Surreal queer paintings, starry sky projections, space-themed drinks, and a conservatory’s worth of plants make you feel like you’re in an alien jungle at this newer queer bar. The place is something of a passion project for Eagle owner Dan Henderson, returning a queer bar presence to the King neighborhood building that had housed Local Lounge for the past decade. Back 2 Earth hosts a calendar of drag shows, game nights, and dance parties to unite the LGBTQ+ community’s full spectrum, like the Nu-Glitter queer comedy open mic and monthly tarot evenings. 

In its late namesake’s absence, Darcelle’s family runs the historic Old Town club Darcelle XV Showplace, and resident castmate-turned-city-treasure Poison Waters reigns as the club’s emcee and grande dame. Long before Darcelle set a Guinness record as the world’s oldest drag queen, long before former Portland Monthly editors Fiona McCann and Eden Dawn joined the team that shattered another Guinness record (for longest continuous drag show), audiences relied on Darcelle’s for stiff drinks and drag revues that defied Portland’s homophobic legal code more than 50 years ago. They still do today, entertained by a house cast of some of Portland’s best drag artists. 

Eagle Portland isn’t related to the other gay leather bars called Eagle found across the country, but it might as well be. If a Portland movie night could give Carla Rossi a run for her box office, it would be the Eagle’s round-the-clock double feature of hardcore gay porn and TV movies routinely screened behind the bar. If you don’t meet the city’s coolest leather daddies, gaymers, leather-clad lesbians, or at least one person in a pup hood, go back and try again. Hungry? Hit up the Slutty Patio Cookout each Sunday, with its free burgers and wieners, or order from Casa Zoraya, the Peruvian restaurant next door.

Once upon a time, the street now known as SW Harvey Milk was the city's Vaseline Alley, and Scandals was one of its anchors. Even after forever-famous queer diner the Roxy shuttered in 2022, Scandals held on—until September 2025, after 46 years in business. But in March of this year, Portland's "gay Cheers" reemerged in a mustard-colored building on NE Alberta. The business, still under longtime owner David Fones, shares space with Carioca Bowls, which means açai bowls till 3pm and what's now known as Scandals East starting at 4 (with a New Mexico–inspired menu starting at 5). As at the old Scandals, expect karaoke, art shows, and live music—but over here, all ages are welcome till 8. (As for the original Scandals location, it's set to become a new gay bar called Camp.)

Portland’s longest-running male strip club started life amid a string of ’60s gay clubs, one of them in the building that now houses McMenamins’ Crystal Hotel. This one directly traces its lineage to the ’80s club Flossie’s, which had multiple addresses but moved to Old Town in 2018 and set up shop as a street-level bar with a basement strip club. Today, the upstairs lounge hosts karaoke and plays music softly enough to comfortably hold a conversation, but it’s tough to drown out the bass from down below. The basement club’s ceiling is low, and the rack seating—the stage’s front row—is intimate. 

Stag’s interior—dark leather and bordello velvet, antler trophies and graffitied antique paintings—feels like a gay après-ski chalet strip club. After a change in management a few years back, the newest in Portland’s modest collection of mostly male queer strip clubs feels infused with fresh energy. Themed nights include stripper-oke on Mondays and amateur night on Tuesdays, while Sunday's popular drag brunch brings an all-you-can-eat buffet and generous pours.

In 2022, a local producer and DJ known as Veruca threw a would-be centennial birthday party for the late Betty White. Today, the quarterly late-night dance party brings strong DJ lineups and impressive drag performances to venues including White Owl Social Club, Union/Pine, and Produce Row. 

Christopher Sky founded this “trashy-chic” queer dance party weeks before the pandemic hit Oregon, but the revenue goes on. At venues like Statera Cellars’s event space, drag queens and DJs keep the party moving while revelers drink magnums of champagne and slurp caviar.

Queer women and nonbinary DJs bring impeccable musical taste to this sapphic staple, which dates to 2014 and hosts both daytime and late-night parties—as well as occasional all-nighters at Southeast Portland club Process.

Launched by DJs Aspen and Deadpan in spring 2025, Let Her Cook is designed around hip-hop—and around an absence of requests. Parties have been held at Holocene, Process, and Jackie's.

This monthly disco is a daytime affair in the summer, usually roosting at the World Famous Kenton Club. (Over the winter, nighttime parties take place at the Star Theater.) Twirl feels like a West Coast take on the classic East Coast tea dance, with DJs, local drag performers, and a costume theme to keep guests looking and acting their best.