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…