Beer gardens galore: the Daveknows.org Calendar

I used to make mental note of the dates and times of upcoming Timbers matches, eating contests, festivals, fairs, and events in and around town, and pester my friends with the information via email weekly as the events beckoned. If it had a beer garden, I was on it!

During the summer, there are worthy events every weekend, sometimes overlapping (e.g. the Mississippi Street Fair and Bastille Day festival are both on July 12th this year). I would plan itineraries for my friends, so that we could make it to everything, even if that meant a couple hours downtown in the morning, then the afternoon in SE Portland, and then to PGE Park in the evening for a Timbers game. I’m carfree, so I would plan out the transit routes and timing as well, and pass that along to my friends (though they almost always drove anyway). It was quite the undertaking, and my friends were thoroughly irritated pleased by my persistence in reminding them of my plan for their weekend.

At the beginning of last summer, a few friends and I were discussing the Polish Festival. Someone asked when it was held, and another friend said “Dave Knows.” That was the eureka moment. Daveknows.org was launched soon after.

And one of the features of that nascent blog was the DaveKnows Calendar. As the festival season faded last fall, I stopped updating it, but as the summer event schedule picks up, I’ve begun populating the calendar once again. All the events mentioned above are on it, as are all the Timbers game.

NB: My calendar is not an exhaustive list of Portland events. It’s the list of events my friends and I might want to go to. Some other great resources for local events:

• Around the Sun Ideas for saving money in Portland, Oregon, and beyond
• Idaho’s Portugal News, events & irreverence from OregonLive.com
• Oregon Festivals and Events Association