One of the best things about the Portland Mercury’s Bike Issue is seeing all the bikey advertisements.
One of them that caught my eye was a special offer just for cyclists from Pizza A Go Go (3420 N. Williams). Through the end of July, they’re giving a free slice of cheese pizza if you show up on your bike!
Here’s the ad (I love how they point out that they’re “on the bike route!”):
Awesome. Now get on over there and show them how much we appreciate the offer.
Pizza-a-go-go is the best pizza in no-po, hands down. Now it\’s free- I love it!
PBR\’s too…what more can a PDX cyclist ask for?
I stop frequently for slices to take home because it\’s right on my commute. Some of the best za in Portland.
\”PBR\’s too…what more can a PDX cyclist ask for?\”
Black Butte Porter, Full Sail, Bridgeport IPA, Terminator Stout, the list goes on and on….
Being a Michigan transplant and not knowing any better, what is the deal with Portland and PBR? I don\’t know if I\’d drink that stuff if you paid me to. (not trying to pass judgement, PBR is just not my personal taste)
Free pizza is a great thing, and Pizza a go go makes a good pie. I\’m definitely going to swing on by before the end of July. (Wow, way too many rhymes)
I don\’t see why, with the whole locally produced, DIY attitude that prevails in cycling culture, that when it comes to beer , a mass-produced, trucked from halfway across the United States, watery, low alcohol content beer is prefered over all the locally brewed nectars of the gods.
The mind boggles…
\”What is the deal with Portland and PBR?\”
(1) It\’s cheap
(2) A brilliant marketing campaign by the makers has convinced the fine young people of Portland that PBR is hip, cool, and rebellious rather than the corporate swill drunk by my midwestern redneck cousins that it really is (similar to the brilliant marketing that has convince those same youth that Stella Artois (aka the Coors of Europe) is worth paying a premium price for.
But I digress – what I really want to say is \”Free Pizza? Hooray!!!\”
I never understood the PBR thing either. We live in a town that has many great micro brews. It\’d probably take you a year to sample them all. Some of them are really good. PBR is just factory beer, like Coors, Bud, Heineken, and Fosters.
The joke is Australia re Fosters is there nobody there will drink it, so they send it to the US where they\’ll drink anything.
Bridgeport Porter is my favorite!
Matt – they also serve Terminal Gravity IPA, one of the best IPAs in existence.
Off topic, but I drink PBR because its usually the cheapest beer that places have to offer and considering what it is, it doesn\’t really taste that bad. As much as I would love to be able to afford the tasty micro brews that are produced locally (and we have some mighty fine ones), I don\’t have the necessary funds most of the time. Dollar pints it is.
Back on topic, do you think if I swing by Pizza A Go Go on my ride home they might oblige to offer a vegan slice instead?
I drink PBR *only* and *only* when it is hot and I am riding to/from a bar. It has a near perfect alcohol : water ratio to keep me from getting (too) dehydrated.
PBR farts however, are the worst.
Also: FREE PIZZA!
They found the secret. I will wear a helmet for free pizza.
Two forties of CAMO malt liquor cost the same as a six-pack of PBR and will get you way more screwed up.
Marketing of PBR is virtually non-existent, so that gives it it\’s underground edge that only those \”in the know\” really know. But take a look to the SW crossing the Hawthorne bridge…there it is baby! a PBR billboard. Excellent placement. It\’s cheap, watery, a bike riding thirst quencher, and doesn\’t stay with you after 5 a.m…one way or another.
I second the vote and hope for a vegan slice option. Otherwise the deal\’s no good for me and a number of us, it seems!
But if not, hooray for the rest of ya\’ll. Go and get it while the offer stands, and have my cheesy slice, too, while you\’re at it.
With PBR you can go ALL NIGHT LONG
(and not break the bank, and if you\’re smart maybe not fall over)
I hope they don\’t go out of business with all the free pizza give outs…
as for PBR (I buy hamms – it\’s cheaper than pbr at fred meyer) it has working class appeal… I can\’t talk with my neighbor who has cars on blocks in the yard, about the benefits of cycling with some bourgeoisie micro-brew in hand… I might as well be wearing cycling spandex and a silk scarf…
Session is as close as it gets to local pbr – with all our community development minded folks and business owners – I am surprised we don\’t have a more comparably priced beer. Instead of PBR, lets make PDXX (portland\’s dos equis!)…
\”Marketing of PBR is virtually non-existent\”
I assume you mean marketing in mainstream media, like TV and radio ads, as opposed to the incessant and ubiquitous marketing in the \”alternative\” press through \”spotlight on indie rack\” ads and product placement . . .
um, that should have been \”indie rock\” – not \”rack\”. Although the alternative connotations of my typo could be amusing . . .
jonathan: i (like dot) am also wondering if they\’ll offer one of their vegan slices instead of a cheese one to the vegan cyclists out there.
I buy local microbrews and pizza for the same reason I use Bike Gallery: it supports local business. Sure, the cost may be higher, but do we really want inferior product?
Two forties of CAMO malt liquor cost the same as a six-pack of PBR and will get you way more screwed up.
And if it\’s CAMO Silver Ice, you\’ve gone as low as you can go w/ the alcoholic beverages…any need to go lower and you\’d be switching to inhalants.
If anybody finds out about whether the free cheese slice can be swapped out for a cheese-free slice, please let us interested parties know so we can divert our normal routes accordingly. 🙂
Drinking & Riding
Nobody here drank PBR before Henry Weinhard\’s and Rainier were bought out by Miller and stopped producing Blitz and Rainier pounders…
According to an article in the NYT Magazine (\”The Marketing of No Marketing,\” Rob Walker, 6/22/2003), Portland\’s bikey set (and others) started drinking PBR in large quantities before they promoted the brand around here at all.
I\’m pretty sure the people picked pabst mostly because it was as cheap as the departed local brands and had a nice old-fashioned label design and wasn\’t advertised at all(as opposed to other cheap brands like Busch and Milwaukee\’s best).
The only real question: Why not Hamm\’s or Olympia?
My guess – it\’s because we\’re Oregonians, not Washingtonians. And there was definitely some ill will over Miller\’s takeovers of those brands too.
Of course, Miller owns Pabst as well – but since it was never a traditional brand here, nobody had a horse in that race.
I was downtown today and swung over to pizza a go go and bought a whole pie. I told them I found out about them on bikeportland.org because of their Mercury ad. I wasn\’t on bike so I couldn\’t go for the free piece, but I\’m always willing to support businesses that are cool to us cyclists. It\’s great pizza!
Yeah cecil, exact-o-mundo. And once Gus VanSant puts our PBR in the hands of one of his boys on-screen, we in P-town are gonna lose another symbol of our edge and personality to the wannabe masses. But it takes awhile to acquire the taste, so it won\’t happen soon. So what\’s this about pizza?
As a Pizza-A-Gogo regular, IPA drinker and local bicycle building personality, I heartily endorse this promotion. Not only is the pizza there some of the best in town, the folks that work there are tops, the prices are reasonable and they have Terminal Gravity IPA to boot. Now I can have a free slice of cheese pie while I wait for my sausage and roasted red pepper pizza to be made…mmmm…yummy…haven\’t been there since riding home from Seattle on Saturday…time to go back!
Cheers to Pizza-a-go-go for the bike-friendly offer.
But if you\’re looking for the best cheese pizza in NoPo, you need travel a little farther north on MLK and try Sparky\’s.
No beer, PBR or otherwise. Just the diggiest slice in town.
i will generally drink whatevers cheapest, as i barely make enough money to pay the bills. even cheapo beers are a luxury item for me. the cheapest beer by the ounce is usually hamms tallboys (atleast at places like winco, fred meyers, safeway, etc) so thats what i drink more often than not.
im tempted to bike over and get some free pizza, but im rarely in that area, and thats quite a bike ride when i could go to stark naked instead and get a great slice for a couple bucks. mmmmm.
Tony:
What a great idea! I didn\’t want to settle for just a cheese slice, but it does make a great appetizer for the main course of a fully loaded slice. Mmmmmm, tasty! How late are they open until? I might do some drunk riding for that. Or, is PoPo listening in? In which case, I\’ll spend the evening loading up on happy hour ginger ale.
i drink pbr because it\’s cheap and very common in the Portland area. I prefer the taste of it over hamms and olympia, probably because I\’ve been drinking it a lot longer. Sure other beer tastes better, but i\’m all about price, i\’d rather put that money toward new bike parts than overpriced beer.
i wouldnt say that other beers are overpriced, they are quality beverages that people put a ton of care and work into, and the prices are fair. im just poor and i appreciate the underpricing of beers like pabst, hamms, rainier, etc.
ive been trying to find old milwaukee for a while now. almost bought some in montana but didnt. should have.
Is there a correlation between cycling and veganism?
despite the ad on p. 14 of the mercury\’s bike issue, they refused to honor the promotion today, claiming it was only available to those who got a coupon via a private email list, and then complaining that someone posted the info on a blog. c\’est la vie.
after a full day on the bikes, the family and I just stopped for a free slice on the way home tonight!
thanks Pizza a Go Go
go brucey go! go-go…..that is.
I too was also denied a slice, the girl told me it was a \”hoax\” and that I should talk to the people \”online\”.
DO NOT joke about free pizza.
I enjoyed a free slice last night, but bought a beer with it. Perhaps folks have just been asking for a free slice, and not buying anything? While that seems to meet the letter of the offer, it don\’t seem to be the spirit of it.
When I thanked the server for supporting bicycling, he said \”we may just be supporting people who like free stuff by now.\”
Anyway, it was a good slice of pizza, and I went there for the first time, and now they\’ll get my return business. Thanks, Pizza a Go Go!