If you’re searching for a Portland tunnel bar, start with Shanghai Tunnel Bar: a dark, mostly underground Old Town dive built around the atmosphere Portland’s tunnel legend practically demands. Then keep going — because the surrounding blocks are packed with historic basements, haunted stories, live music, bars, and the only currently accessible public section of the Shanghai Tunnels.
This is a nightlife crawl, not a claim that every stop is connected by tunnels.
Start underground with the dive-bar atmosphere, games and live-music.
Keep the spooky thread going with theatrical haunted-house cocktails.
Shift into a historic pub for whiskey, beer and Old Town atmosphere.
Finish with what Portland does best: music, games, dancing, or karaoke.
The obvious nightlife anchor for this entire topic — and the strongest exact-match entity on the board.
Shanghai Tunnel Bar is a mostly below-street-level dive bar and small live-music venue at 211 SW Ankeny Street in Old Town Chinatown. The current venue promotes live music on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, karaoke on Wednesday, plus pool, pinball, food and drinks.
Older Portland discussions remembered it much the same way: a dark downstairs bar, casual and dive-y, with pinball, noodle bowls, inexpensive drinks and enough character to make it a natural stop during an Old Town bar crawl.
It is absolutely a subterranean bar named for Portland’s tunnel legend, and some nightlife guides describe it as sitting within a section of the Portland Underground. But if your goal is to take the current public Shanghai Tunnels tour, the official accessible tour section is beneath Old Town Pizza & Brewing on NW Davis Street. Think of Shanghai Tunnel Bar as the nightlife experience; Old Town Pizza is the current guided tunnel-access experience.
This is where the semantic cluster gets useful: current access, former access, and the historic drinking places that built the legend.
The current public Haunted Shanghai Tunnel Tour starts here, inside the historic Merchant Hotel building. The tour operator advertises more than 14,000 square feet of underground space, along with the building’s famous ghost story about “Nina.”
Hobo’s was a long-running Old Town restaurant, gay bar and piano bar with rare direct access to the Shanghai Tunnels. It served as a tour entrance to the Shanghai Tunnels before it closed in 2020. Leaving behind nothing more than memories of what used to be.
One of the legendary North End saloons tied to Portland’s Shanghaiing folklore. Erickson’s once occupied much of the block around Second and Burnside and became famous for a bar hundreds of feet long. The saloon is gone, but the building survives in another use.
Shanghai Tunnel Bar is the clearest answer: a mostly underground Old Town dive bar named after Portland’s Shanghai Tunnels.
The current public tour enters the underground beneath Old Town Pizza & Brewing in the historic Merchant Hotel building. Hobo’s was another well-known tunnel-access location before it closed.
No. Shanghai Tunnel Bar is a nightlife venue on SW Ankeny. The current guided tunnel tour operates beneath Old Town Pizza & Brewing on NW Davis.
Old Town Chinatown has a dense nightlife cluster, including spooky cocktail bars, Irish pubs, live-music venues and arcade bars within a walkable area.
Portland’s underground consisted of basements and passages beneath many old hotels and taverns. The exact scope and the more dramatic Shanghaiing stories remain debated, but the physical underground spaces are real.
Current tunnel access and neighborhood context: Travel Portland — Portland’s Shanghai Tunnels
Current Shanghai Tunnel Bar details: Shanghai Tunnel Bar
Current tour details: Shanghai Tunnels Underground Tour
Historic Erickson’s Saloon background: The Oregon Encyclopedia