McMenamins Backstage Bar at the Bagdad Theater

The room carries its past openly, rooted in a 20-by-20-foot mural that chronicles theater lore since 1927, alongside former lives as 1930s vaudeville backstage wings and a 1970s arthouse hangout. Its centerpiece counter traveled an even longer road: crafted in Chicago by the Brunswick Company in the 1880s, it sailed around Cape Horn to reach the West Coast and spent decades at downtown Portland's Lotus Cardroom. Today, between baskets of tots and games of shuffleboard, the soaring space doubles as a viewing den with sports projected on a big screen.