By Marshall Hammond
For five years, Peter Mahr dreamed of owning the 4-4-2, a bar on lower SE Hawthorne Blvd. he frequented to watch soccer and enjoy a beer. He told himself and those around him that he would try to buy it after he retired.
When the bar suddenly came up for sale in 2019 Dr. Mahr, as he is known to his patients at Multnomah County’s Southeast Health Center, was not sure if he could handle the workload of running a bar and being a physician.
“People told me there’s no way I could buy and run a bar and still have another job,” says Mahr. His wife Linda talked him into it. “She said, ‘you’ve been talking about this for five years, you better buy it, this is your chance. You’re not going to talk about how you should have bought the bar for 10 years after this.”
Mahr bought the 4-4-2 and renamed it Gol. The official opening took place February 27, 2020. The next day, health officials announced that the first case of COVID-19 had been detected in Portland.
“It was a difficult first year,” said Mahr. Having a full-time job along with owning the bar turned out to be a blessing. “With the pandemic, there was no way I would have been able to stay open if I hadn’t had another job.”
Now Gol is open and thriving, serving as a hub for soccer enthusiasts and neighborhood hangout for anyone in search of beer, food or the regular trivia nights and comedy shows the bar hosts.
Sitting in the spacious patio outside Gol on an early Friday afternoon, Mahr says he knows eight out of 10 of the people at the bar that day. He greets many of his customers by their first names as they walk up to the entrance, and they greet him back.
“It’s kind of cliche, but it does have that Cheers vibe to it at times, where you walk in and you come here enough, everybody that is sitting at this bar knows each other. That’s my favorite thing about the kind of the non-soccer side of it is, that we have created that neighborhood bar feeling. Everyone’s welcome here and we want to keep it that way.”
Then there’s the soccer side. “I have a lot of passion for soccer. My dad was German and I grew up playing soccer, I played all through high school and college. I played abroad in Czechoslovakia and many of the friends I’ve made through the years are because of soccer. I feel soccer has a theme of bringing people together.”
Mahr played for International Portland Select FC for seven or eight years when he first moved to Portland in the early 2000s. This year he “reluctantly” moved from playing in an over 40’s league to playing in the over 50’s league, which he does once a week.
Gol opens at 7 am on weekends to cater to fans of European soccer who come in for live matches. The bar also showcases Champions League games on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. This year Gol became an official pub partner of the Portland Timbers and Thorns and will be hosting watch parties for those teams. But during the month of August, the main focus will be on the Women’s World Cup, with the bar hosting watch parties for every match the USA team competes in until the end of the tournament.
Mahr loves the way soccer draws diverse groups of people to his bar. “You get people who are coming in that are from all over the world just to watch their team. That’s what we like about the place, it creates that mixing of people coming together.”
Gol serves up a variety of local and imported beers on tap and also has an impressive three-door beer fridge that is home to even more canned and bottled beers, ciders and seltzers. A pint of local craft beer can cost $7; a Rainier costs $3. The bar also offers a weekly lunch special for $10 and a dinner special for $15. On weekends, 7 am-2 pm, Gol serves a brunch that includes as a breakfast burrito, eggs benedict, chicken and waffles and a bottomless mimosa.
Gol
1739 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
golpdx.com
Photo of owner Peter Mahr behind the bar at Gol by Marshall Hammond.
