The Central Eastside's Día de Muertos Altars Keep Shop Hours, and That Sets Your Route

Milagro's free altar exhibition runs on nine host schedules. Its altars stand in nine Central Eastside locations, among them a coffee shop, a credit union branch, a dance studio, a distillery bottle shop and Milagro's own community gathering space. You can see each one only when its host is open.

That makes the time of day the main planning decision. The altars went up Saturday, October 24, and come down Friday, November 6.

Who's Hosting, and Why It Matters

The Altares y Muertos Public Art Exhibition is part of Milagro's 31st annual Central Eastside Muertos Celebration, which runs through November 10. Milagro pairs each host with one or more artists from IDEAL PDX. The artists work with the host's employees on a theme that fits the host, usually honoring lost loved ones, ancestors and cultural traditions. There are no tickets and no reservations.

Here are this year's hosts:

• Bar Botellón, a Spanish-inspired tapas bar, bottle shop and market at 606 NE Davis St.
• Cargo, a gift and home goods shop at 81 SE Yamhill St.
• Cumbia Corazón, a cumbia dance school at 222 SE 8th Ave.
• El Zócalo at El Centro Milagro, 537 SE Stark St, Milagro's community gathering space. The theater's address is 525 SE Stark.
• Hey Doc Clinic, a multidisciplinary clinic at 1221 SE Madison St.
• New Deal Distillery, a craft distillery with a bottle shop at 900 SE Salmon St.
• Nossa Familia Coffee, a café at 1633 SE 3rd Ave.
• Point West Credit Union, its Lloyd Center branch at 1107 NE 9th Ave.
• River City, an e-bike sales and service shop at 534 SE Belmont St. Milagro lists it as River City E-Bikes on one page and River City Bicycles on another.

A café opens before most people leave for work. A bank branch closes for the weekend. A dance studio may only open its doors for evening classes. Each altar follows its host's hours, and that's what shapes the route.

Sorting the Altars by Time of Day

Here's how the hosts' listed hours break down. Treat them as a guide and check each business's site before you go. Some come from unofficial profiles, and a few sources disagree.

Early. Nossa Familia opens at 7 a.m. and closes at 4 p.m. Its online hours grid shows that every day, but a July 2026 update from the owners mentioned only weekdays, so weekend hours are worth confirming. Hey Doc Clinic opens at 8 a.m. Monday through Thursday and at 8:30 on Friday. Its weekend hours are shorter, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, and its website directs visitors to schedule appointments.

Midday and afternoon. This is where most of the hosts overlap.

• Cargo is open daily from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
• New Deal's bottle shop welcomes walk-ins daily from noon to 6 p.m., according to its bottle shop FAQ. An older notice on the distillery's own site lists Wednesday through Sunday, so it's worth a quick check.
• River City on Belmont is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays, 10 to 5 on Saturday and noon to 5 on Sunday.
• Bar Botellón is open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and noon to 8 on Saturday. It's closed Sunday and Monday.

Weekdays only. Point West's branch keeps banking hours. It's open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, 10 to 5 on Thursday and 9 to 6 on Friday, and closed on weekends.

Evenings. Cumbia Corazón lists regular hours only on Monday and Tuesday, 6 to 9 p.m.

Event-driven. El Zócalo doesn't post regular public hours. It's open for Milagro's scheduled gatherings, which are covered below.

Put those together and the best ordinary window is Tuesday through Friday, from about noon to 4 p.m. That's when Nossa Familia, Hey Doc, Cargo, New Deal, River City, Bar Botellón and Point West should all be open at once. That's seven of nine. By the time Cumbia Corazón opens on a Monday or Tuesday evening, the coffee shop, Cargo and the bottle shop have closed. Going by listed hours, no regular day covers all nine. Weekends are the hardest. Point West is closed both days, and Bar Botellón is also closed on Sunday.

October 30 to November 1 Fills In the Gaps

The celebration's busiest stretch lands right after this post goes up, and its events are held inside the host spaces that are hardest to catch.

1. Friday, October 30, 5 to 8 p.m. Cumbia con los Muertos turns Cumbia Corazón's studio into a living altar. Students directed by Diana Esquerra perform first, then the floor opens for a cumbia baile. Tickets are $15, and Milagro notes that price may go up. It's the only Friday-evening event at the studio that has the narrowest regular hours of any host.
2. Friday, October 30, 6 to 8 p.m. Pinta Calaveritas at Hey Doc Clinic is a free skull-decorating workshop for ages 14 and up. Donations are appreciated, and you don't need a reservation. The clinic usually closes at 6 on Fridays, so this keeps its altar viewable later in the evening.
3. Saturday, October 31, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Lectura de los Muertos at Nossa Familia is free. Marilyn Shawe talks about the cultural meaning of Día de Muertos and about the café's altar.
4. Saturday, October 31, 11:30 a.m. check-in. The Altares y Muertos Tour gathers at El Zócalo. Each guest gets a garland of silk marigolds to wear or tie to a bicycle, and the first group heads out at noon. Volunteers from The Street Trust guide the route, which runs until 3 p.m. It's free or pay-what-you-wish, with a reservation link on Milagro's page.
5. Sunday, November 1, 1:11 to 3 p.m. El Camino Azul, an art show by RAH AZUL and Atzin, is free at Cargo.

The tour is the only scheduled outing that includes all nine hosts. That includes Point West, which is normally closed on Saturday. Milagro's tour map lays out the order. It starts at El Zócalo, then goes to River City on Belmont, New Deal, Hey Doc, Nossa Familia, Cargo, Bar Botellón, Point West and finally Cumbia Corazón. The route also makes a short stop at the second annual Blumenauer Bridge Witching Hour, held the same day. There's no altar at that stop.

Lectura de los Muertos ends at 1 p.m. and the tour leaves at noon, so the two overlap. The café is the fifth stop, though. If you're at Nossa Familia at 11, the talk is your Saturday morning and the tour group will come by the café later.

The Weekday Window Before November 6

After the weekend, the altars stay up for one more workweek. From Monday, November 2, through Friday, November 6, the Tuesday-to-Friday midday window applies on four of the five days. Bar Botellón is closed on Monday the 2nd. Monday the 2nd and Tuesday the 3rd are also the last two evenings, by Cumbia Corazón's listed hours, to see its altar outside the October 30 event. Point West is easiest to catch this week on a lunch break, since it's open every weekday.

What Keeps Going After the Altars Come Down

The altars close November 6, but the rest of the celebration continues around El Centro Milagro on SE Stark.

Marigolds y Memorias is an original ensemble-devised play directed by Juliana Morales Carreño. It follows a younger generation learning Día de Muertos traditions and building an altar, told through humor, music, song, dance and short vignettes. From the day this post publishes, the remaining performances at Milagro Theatre, 525 SE Stark St, are:

Tickets are $32 for adults, $28 for seniors 50 and up, and $24 for students. Groups of 10 or more pay $18 each. On Halloween, you can take the tour at noon and see the 7:30 show that evening, with both starting from Milagro's addresses on SE Stark.

On Saturday, November 7, from 4 to 7 p.m., El Zócalo hosts The Lost Table, a free or pay-what-you-wish community gathering for grief and remembrance. The celebration ends Tuesday, November 10, with ¡Viva Milagro! 2026, a fundraiser in the same space from 6 to 9 p.m. Tickets are $150.

IDEAL PDX's Say My Name show on Sunday, November 1, is outside the Central Eastside. Nine artists build personal altar installations in the McMenamins Kennedy School gymnasium at 5736 NE 33rd Ave, with showings at 6 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $8, as OregonLive's Día de los Muertos guide reports.

An Evening Stop After the Shops Close

Most of the altar hosts close by 6 p.m. Patufet, a new Barcelona-style vermouth bar and café at 2511 SE Belmont St, opens at 4. It's farther east on Belmont than the River City stop. Eater Portland reports that owners Madeline Kenney and Chris Perry opened it on October 8 in a pink Craftsman house that once held the Rocking Frog and Lucky Cup Coffee. It's open Thursday through Sunday, 4 to 9 p.m. Vermouth starts at $12, wine by the glass mostly runs $13 to $14, and a pizzelle cookie costs $2. Through April, Secret Sauna is running bookable sessions in its mobile wood-fired cedar sauna on the back patio. If your afternoon ends at Cargo or River City around 5, you can head east and be at the door just after Patufet opens.

Shelley knows the Central Eastside as a neighborhood, not just a set of listings, and that includes the small businesses that host events like this one. If you're thinking about a home where an afternoon like this is a short walk or bike ride away, Shelley Lucas can help you find it. Right-Size Your Life — Book a free consultation.