Friday Fun - McMenamins Mashup

December 15th, 2006

For weeks now, I have been toying with the idea of creating some real estate mash-ups–you know, where someone geocodes various locations and places them on a Google or Yahoo map. I’m still working on the real estate application (stay tuned), but my experimenting has yielded some useful results.

In honor of the McMenamin brothers opening yet another quirky pub location, I have released a McMenamin’s Mashup, showing all the Portland-area McMenamins locations on a Google map.

For the uninitiated, the McMenamins empire includes pubs, restaurants, theaters, hotels, breweries, and wineries. These establishments are family-friendly and feature their own brewery and winery selections as well as basic pub fare. Some locations feature more full-service restaurants, movie theaters, hotel rooms, live music and even golf and other unique attractions.

Many locations are in reclaimed and renovated hotels, farms, schools, theaters, taverns–buildings that no one else would touch. In many cases, they’ve been redone in a style that combines the original architecture with Grateful Dead styling, plus European antiques and local northwest art. In a word, funky (but comfortable).

A visit to a McMenamins is a quintessential Northwest experience.

Their latest venture: renovating a mortuary–The Chapel Pub. After reviving a derelict poor farm, a train station, a few dilapidated hotels, and a Masonic Lodge, I think they’ve got it figured out.

My McMenamins map includes locations within 45 minutes of downtown, but they have spread locations south to Eugene, Salem, Roseburg, east to Bend, and as far north as Seattle.

Technorati Tags: McMenamins, Google, maps, mashup, beer, pub, Portland, Oregon

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Entry Filed under: Diversions, Lifestyle