new location - first impressions

There are over 100 reviews of Mary’s here already. I’m submitting a new one anyway because they just moved to a new location nearby, at 503 W. Burnside, so I stopped in on opening night to see what it was like. So let me describe the new club first. If you have a long memory and that address sounds familiar, the new location was home to the old Cabaret I club back in 2004-2011, followed by a series of short-lived bars and restaurants over the last decade. If you don't remember Cabaret I, the place is basically one long, narrow room, taking up half a block (100') along Burnside (backing up to the Roseland Theater building), and it's only around thirty feet wide along the 5th Ave. direction. The entrance is on the corner of 5th and Burnside, and that plus a mid-block door are the two exits. As you walk in there’s a stage and some tables to your left, and the bar’s on your right. It looks like the exact same bar that was there in the Cabaret I days (and maybe a long time before that), and the general layout of the club is really really similar to how it looked back then. Except with a bunch of decor carried over from the old Mary’s, like the famous South Pacific cargo ship murals (even more fluorescent than before) and part of the weathered sign out from front (though sadly not the neon part).

Past the bar there’s a slightly raised section with a second stage (!) and a few more tables. Both stages are normal-sized, at a normal height off the ground, with a ceiling that's high enough to allow normal pole tricks. Nothing too unusual by Portland club standards, but it fixes one of the more annoying things about the old location, where if you sit at the rack too long looking up at the stage you’ll get a crick in your neck and be sore the next morning.

Behind the 2nd stage is a small area with 3 private dance booths. They’re curtained but I couldn’t tell whether the curtains close completely. This looks like an improvement over the old place, which had a couple of tiny closet-sized spaces straight across from the bar & the main entrance. The center booth looks a bit larger and is partly behind the one on the right, so (in theory) that would be the one to aim for if you have a choice. My gut feeling is that dances are still going to be tame and by-the-book in the new location, so don’t get your hopes up too much. I didn’t partake this time around and can't speak to pricing, though I think I overheard someone quoting the standard 3 for 100 deal. I was about to ask one of the dancers about a 3/100, but a reporter for a local weekly paper was there for opening night & wanted to interview her. Can't say I've ever been blocked in that specific way before, but there's a first time for everything I guess.