I admit it. Oregon Hill scares me. I used to have a friend who lived on S. Pine Street, known as “the spine” among the ancient, formerly cool people. I liked going to see him in his dollhouse apartment. Over the years, I met other people who lived in the Hill in various states of bohemian poverty. Then I met people who were buying houses in Oregon Hill and getting these massive, funky spaces for hardly any money.
Still, it scares me. Especially at night. I think it has something to do with the necessity of knowing how to parallel park and the claustrophobic, narrow streets.
So it took much bundling up of my courage to go to the Hollywood Grill, former site of the notorious Chuck Wagon where you never knew what was going to happen and you had a 50/50 chance of ending the night at MCV. But that was the old days, before the demographics of Oregon Hill began to shift.
Hollywood Grill is not named after Hollywood, Calif. It is named after Hollywood Cemetery, which predates Tinsel Town. I was immediately surprised. Oregon Hill is on the cusp of a massive gentrification, with rehabs and new townhouses that look architecturally like the old townhouses, popping up everywhere. No parking skills were required. China Street had plenty of open spaces on this particular Tuesday night. To further acclimate you, the Grill is about two blocks south of Mamma Zu’s.
This is a small place with a wall of booths, a six-seater bar, and one overpowering pool table. The blackboard special on Tuesdays is 50 cent tacos, (also a great name for a band.) Monday night is free pool, Wednesday is someone called Uncle Bob on his guitar, Thursday is karaoke, and Friday and Saturday is live music. On this particular night, an experiment was in progress: do 50 cent tacos need a band to bring people in? That is the question.
The band serving as the lab rats in this experiment was the Harrison Deane Band, in which my husband plays bass, explaining why I made this trip in the first place.
The spotlights on the pool table kept the band well-lit, although it must be very distracting for them when people are lining up shots literally right under their noses. And if someone’s playing pool, you can’t really dance without bumping into them.
Hollywood’s menu is strictly school cafeteria style, serviceable and inexpensive. Sodas are served in the can with a plastic cup of ice, all the better for taste and fizz since Coke shot out of a bar spray nozzle is just nasty. There are no desserts on the menu, but at a workingman’s bar, dessert is a Marlboro Red anyway. Sunday brunch starts at the late hour of noon and there’s a choice of four things! Woo woo!
I thought I was in for a slow night at 8 p.m., with only six others in the place, but as the evening progressed, the crowd grew like an amoeba, doubling in size every hour. By 10 p.m., we had a shouting woman holding her cell phone up to the band and noodle dancers fueled by PBR moving the chairs back so they could undulate to anything that sounded remotely like a Grateful Dead song.
My bill for two tacos and a can of Dr. Pepper came to $3.75 (the soda was $1.75?!). I left a $2 tip because I am just that fabulous, and so is the band. With two guitars, bass, drums and keyboards, their layered, polished sound is worthy of a crowd of 200. But that would have required 400 tacos.