Portland’s Bacon Ball Moves To a New Space With “No Pun Nintendo”

Unsurprisingly, our most recent conversation with the Savory Events crew was marked with a strong sense of motivation and dedication. Dedication to making the scene more inclusive, to celebrating art in all its forms, and to the challenge of taking on something new. We certainly enjoyed speaking with them just before Bacon Ball X and this time with Jake, Ethan, Peter, and Kaspian (Kas) was no different. Sadly, Treya and Laurel were not able to join us, but maybe you saw their jaw-dropping aerial performance alongside Ethan’s stage lighting at Down the Rabbit Hole?

On April 29th, Savory Events is dropping the latest incarnation of Bacon Ball on Portland, Bacon Ball XII: No Pun Nintendo. The name keeps in line with a long lineage of puns and themes, but is certainly not meant to be exclusive to one console maker. They assure us, “It’s not just Nintendo, it’s a video game theme party.”

This Bacon Ball is a turning point for the event. For most of its life, the pork-filled ball has been held at AudioCinema in the industrial SE of Portland. The group, and its patrons, loved the inherently creative shared-studio environment AudioCinema brought to the table but Bacon Ball was simply getting too big for the space. People who really wanted to go to the show were unable to attend, which created a problem because Savory wants “…everyone who wants to go, to go.”

And so, the party moves to The North Warehouse, a 7,000 square-foot warehouse in North Portland that caters to events just like this. Some things to look forward to that weren’t previously available: A fire pit, more nooks, a new bar just for beer, a better hall for production, and the Killa Dilla food truck, regularly seen at What the Festival and its home in North Portland. Jake tells us Killa Dilla is “…well-versed in 3AM festival hunger, and they’re a perfect fit for a food vendor for Bacon Ball. We love their vibe and we love their dillas!”

Beyond increasing capacity and production opportunities, the move lets the show be a new experience to Savory. Transitioning to a new space forced the crew to re-evaluate why they kept putting on this event. Just because more people wanted it, didn’t necessarily mean they wanted to grow and continue. The more you do something, the less novel it becomes, a very interesting dichotomy in event production.

By building a brand, you give people the assurance of getting a similar, awesome experience every time. The risk is becoming stale. So, it seems that this change has reinvigorated everyone in the group and reminded them of the chance to build something more inclusive and thus even more true to itself. Jake recounts that as it grows and changes, “the more widely appealing it [becomes] and less ways I have to succinctly describe it to people.” This, he says, “is the next step.”