I grew up in Springfield, Oregon, born in 1981, and when I was a kid in the early 90s, I remember hearing about a wild little place up in Portland called the X-Ray Café. As a kid of course with no car yet, Portland a bit out of reach as it was 2 hours away. I never went, but the stories that filtered down through friends and older kids made it sound like something out of a movie. Over time I learned those stories were true. For a few short years, the X-Ray wasn’t just a café — it was the beating heart of Portland’s underground.

The café opened in 1990 at 214 W. Burnside Street in downtown Portland. It was founded by Benjamin Arthur Ellis and Tres Shannon, two dreamers who took over a failing pizza shop and turned it into one of the most influential cultural spaces of the era. According to the Oregon Encyclopedia, Ellis and Shannon started on a shoestring budget. They borrowed money from their grandmothers, worked extra hours at Kinko’s, and decorated the café with dumpster finds, thrift-store paintings, and salvaged furniture. The result was a chaotic, colorful space that felt part coffeehouse, part art installation, and part circus.

From the beginning, the X-Ray was different. It wasn’t just a club — it was a home for artists, punks, poets, musicians, and anyone who didn’t fit in anywhere else. It was all-ages, inexpensive, and welcoming to people who had no other outlet for their creativity.

The Pulse of Portland’s Underground

Between 1990 and 1994, the X-Ray became one of the city’s most vital underground spaces. The Wikipedia article on the X-Ray Café calls it a “heavyweight in shaping Portland’s underground culture.” It was a hub for experimentation where bands, artists, and performance weirdos could try anything once — and sometimes twice.

A typical week might include punk bands like Dead Moon, Hazel, or Quasi, followed by sewing circles, poetry readings, or experimental theater. Touring acts like Green Day stopped in before they hit it big, and a young Elliott Smith performed there with his early band Heatmiser.

In a review by Broken Pencil Magazine, the X-Ray was later described as “a public living room for creativity.” That phrase captures its essence. It was a gathering place for people who wanted to make art, not for fame, but for the joy of doing it.

One Portland musician who played there shared on Reddit that the X-Ray was “a tiny, shoebox-shaped room with bare brick walls and the worst acoustics imaginable. Saw Quasi’s first show there. Saw Hazel’s first show. Heck, played my first show there.” That kind of raw, unpolished authenticity was part of the charm. The X-Ray wasn’t about perfection — it was about energy.

The Feel of the Place

The X-Ray’s home on Burnside put it right in the center of Portland’s urban chaos. The area was gritty, unpredictable, and full of life. Inside, the café was an explosion of color and clutter — velvet paintings, blinking lights, and hand-painted signs filled every inch of space. The stage was small and intimate, barely higher than the floor, with the audience standing shoulder to shoulder just a few feet away.

There was no backstage, no separation between performer and audience. Artists mingled with the crowd before and after sets, and the air buzzed with creativity. Coffee cups clinked, amps buzzed, and the scent of incense mixed with the city air coming through the front door. It wasn’t fancy, but it was alive.

For Portland, the X-Ray represented something new. It showed that a city didn’t need corporate sponsorship or major venues to build a thriving creative scene. All it needed was a room, a stage, and people willing to take chances.

The Riot and the End

By 1994, the same freewheeling spirit that made the X-Ray special also made it vulnerable. That summer, an anarchist protest downtown turned into a riot that ended outside the café. Police flooded the area, and the X-Ray was caught in the middle. According to the Oregon Encyclopedia, five protesters were charged under Oregon’s anti-rioting law. The charges were later dropped, but the scrutiny and police pressure that followed made it hard for the venue to survive.

On August 16, 1994, the X-Ray Café held its final show with Dead Moon headlining. The performance was recorded and later released by Voodoo Doughnut Recordings. During that last set, bassist Toody Cole looked out over the crowd and said, “What a way to see the old girl go.” The line has since become part of Portland music history.

When the lights went dark that night, it wasn’t just another club closing. It was the end of an era.

What Came After

After the X-Ray’s closure, Benjamin Ellis refused to let its legacy fade. In 1999, he released the documentary X-Ray Visions, which preserved footage, interviews, and memories of the café’s short but impactful life. Watching it now feels like stepping into another time. The film shows grainy footage of sweaty crowds, bizarre art installations, and raw performances that make you realize how much Portland has changed.

Tres Shannon, meanwhile, went on to co-found Voodoo Doughnut, which became one of Portland’s most recognizable businesses. The irreverent humor, eccentric aesthetic, and sense of fun that defines Voodoo can all be traced back to the X-Ray. It’s no coincidence that both drew people who appreciated the strange and the creative.

Why the X-Ray Still Matters

For those of us who never got to experience it firsthand, the X-Ray represents the best of what Portland can be — open, creative, and inclusive. It was a space where young people could see and perform live music without needing a fake ID. It gave a platform to artists who might never have been noticed anywhere else.

The Willamette Week article “Portland’s Most Missed All-Ages Venues” called the X-Ray one of the city’s great cultural losses. It wasn’t about money or fame. It was about people coming together to create something real.

In interviews since, artists who played there have described it as transformative. Pete Krebs of Hazel once said that “you could do whatever you wanted. If you wanted to play a two-minute set or put on a puppet show, no one stopped you.” Janet Weiss, later of Sleater-Kinney, remembered it as “a place where everyone was equal — the audience, the band, the barista. We were all in it together.”

Even performance artist John Brennan once called it “Portland’s beating heart of the absurd,” crediting the café for allowing acts that no other venue would book. “You could light things on fire, scream poetry, play jazz through a vacuum cleaner — whatever. If it made a sound or a scene, it belonged there.”

The Legacy

The X-Ray Café burned out fast, but its influence is still visible in Portland today. Its DIY spirit helped inspire a generation of musicians, artists, and entrepreneurs who carried its values into new projects. Independent venues, art collectives, and even quirky small businesses owe something to that little café on Burnside.

There’s no plaque marking where it stood. The neighborhood has changed, and most people walking by today have no idea what once happened there. But if you listen closely, you can still feel it — that hum of possibility, that mix of chaos and community that defined a city before it was ever called “weird.”

The X-Ray Café wasn’t meant to last forever, and maybe that’s what made it so special. It existed just long enough to prove that creativity doesn’t need permission. All it needs is a room, a heartbeat, and people willing to make some noise. If you'd like you can check out this video below here, which shows where the cafe once lived and what it looks like today.