The Off Beat all ages venue in Kenton is open and off to a rocking start. Friends Of Noise, a Portland non-profit which focuses on supporting and uplifting youth within the realm of the music scene, had their opening night at The Off Beat on November 14th 2025 with headlining bands being, Rat Bath, New Here, Privateer, and They Shoot Horses; a mix of local and out of state bands. Get your cameras ready because this isn’t the only exciting news. Thanks to the dedication of our awesome photography teacher Mr. Flye, Roosevelt student photographers from Mr.Flye’s Advanced Digital Photography CTE class are working in collaboration with The Off Beat!
The opening of The Off Beat venue in Kenton, in the place of where The Dancing Bare used to be, was first announced on Instagram in December of 2024 but it has long been a goal for Friends Of Noise to create a safe concert space for younger people to come together within the local community. Friends Of Noise has always valued getting young local artists on the scene and involved in the community with workshops and professional development programs. In an interview with André Middleton, the Executive Director of Friends Of Noise he describes his hopes for this project, “I hope that it is a safe space for young people to be able to come, it’s a third space for them and also by them because we really do hope that a lot of the tasks and roles that will help The Off Beat function are filled by the young people, that are filled by the community themselves – my goal is that in a year or two all those rolls are filled by young people and it serves as a launch pad for their creativity.” And this has extended to the Roosevelt community as not only are students working to take photos for the venue but Roosevelt is hosting a round of the City wide Battle of the Bands on March 19th 2026. The Off Beat is hosting this battle at 5 different high schools with the final battle being hosted at the Off Beat venue itself on June 13th.
Roosevelt students worked their first concert in partnership with Friends of Noise on September 11, 2025 and have continued since opening night in November 2025. “Its gone really great – I have a background in photography myself so its been really great to see depth of field and ISOs and also, this is not something that existed when I was their age so its been really great to create a space where they can just experiment and fool around and find successes, the students from Roosevelt have all been super polite, super kind, and super appreciative of the opportunity,” said André when asked about how working with students has been. While Friends Of Noise has many programs such as the Sound Squad Supreme, that encourage youth to get into the music scene they have never before worked with single high schools at this scale. This partnership opportunity that Mr.Flye has worked to put together for his class has been a great experience for students and has allowed them to get out of their comfort zones and try new things within the realms of their photography and real world work experience.
The opening of this venue in our neighborhood will hopefully bring younger people within the music scene closer together. Friends of Noise hopes that this venue will become a “community creative hub.” They have many goals for the future of this upcoming venue, one of which being that they are in search of youth board members and have hopes to create a Youth Advisory Committee. Currently at Friends of Noise all of the board members are adults, so they are hoping to connect more with the hopes and ideals of younger people and would like to get more young people to be involved in the decision making process for this venue and future projects. This would allow for constant input and insight on what plans will come to The Off Beat to come directly from local youth.
Events and concerts are hosted at The Off Beat weekly and you can find photos taken by Roosevelt students on The Off Beat instagram page, @theoffbeatpdx as well as find out what shows are coming up or contact Friends Of Noise on their website, FriendsOfNoise.org/the-off-beat/.
