THE GREAT LOST BEAR THE GREAT LOST BEAR Drink Like A Local 80 Beers On Tap Full Bar Comfort Food 540 Forest Avenue, Portland, Maine www.greatlostbear.com onda of the inds ACIlyn SPenCer f e B r u A r y / m A r C h 2 0 1 9 3 1 There’s no stage at Minds. We stand in the “pit” with the artists, the bar and tables be- hind us. I’m sipping a gin and ginger as Viva of Viva and the Reinforcements beckons us in. “Closer, closer,” she says. The boldest squeeze to the front. I’m eye-to-eye with open-mic per- formers, who signed up only hours before. They rap about their lives—the losses, the wins, economic oppression, drug abuse, mental illness. The pur- suit of their dreams. A fter the open mic, Christina Rich- ardson, local community organiz- er, leads us in a universal clap. She counts, “one, two, three,” and the bar claps in unison. It thuds somewhere deep in your chest—that place where bass reverberates, where feeling happens. “First with power,” she says. “One, two, three, power.” “Now with equity. “One, two, three, equity.” The DJ puts on a “throwback beat” I don’t recognize, but the whole bar starts moving. PBeat Over a beer, I talk with a fashionable wom- an in blue eyeshadow with a pierced cu- pid’s bow. She’s here to support her “may- be boyfriend.” Ah, the maybe. Dating lim- bo. I don’t miss it. “Tonight’s awkward,” she tells me. “I can’t dance as well as him.” He happens to be one of the rappers and kicks off a freestyle cypher, on-the-spot rhymes that come straight “from the top of the dome,” as Mullin says. “The good old days are long gone, they say,” starts the rap. He’s critical of our culture’s tendency to retreat into nostal- gia, but I’m struck by the clar- ity of his optimism. “He seems nice,” I tell his date before heading out. It’s nearly midnight, and the beat is still strong. I carry it with me up Spring Street, brimming with energy. Portland’s beat is one fueled by the people that can hear it and feel it, the people keeping the collective tempo while adding notes of their own. Different looks, tastes, scenes, and cultures merge each day into the city’s cypher. ■