BOTTOMS UP!

This place, this room, this Boiler Room. This might be the most spacious bar in Denver, except that most of that space is vertical. The ceilings are at least 30 feet high, giving the whole establishment an airy, cathedral-esque feel. But how many cathedrals offer NTN Trivia? Oh, yeah-- the Boiler Room in the Tivoli Center has church beat.

This is a college bar. And not just because the clientele is predominantly college stu-dents-- although it is-- but because it is actually, physically on a college campus. Forget Mohammed and his mountain-- move the liquor to the kids. What's next, minibars in dorm rooms? Complimentary cocktails after trigonometry finals? I should be appalled, but I'm me, so I'm not. I'm drinking instead.

Make no mistake: the Boiler Room is a fine place to drink, whether before the first class or at the last call. The waitstaff and bartenders are almost comically hip, but without the unattractive snottiness common to LoDo service personnel. This college bar is a collegial bar. Friendliness rules. Orders are taken with a smile. Food arrives with a rush. Beer is guzzled with a vengeance.

Did I mention food? I shouldn't have. This isn't a place meant for eating. Food only exists here as a kind of afterthought, something to keep the alcohol down. Eat here at your peril, but if you must, have a bowl of the green chile. It possesses that rarest of qualities in Denver green: spiciness. It almost makes you forget how soupy it is.

Anyway. This ain't about eating, inconstant reader. If you read this column, you probably haven't had any solid food in four days anyway. Chances are you're reading it over a morning beer. And if you're smart, that beer will come from this place.

It's all about the value. The Boiler Room is a great place to drink without dipping into the rent money (unless you really, really want to, and then it's okay). For instance, a recent lunch special promised a cheeseburger with chips and a BlackJack Porter for $2.75. For that price, I'll take the beer and a handful of sawdust. Happy hours run Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 in the afternoon, with discounted drafts and wells. Fridays and Saturdays offer cheap pitchers, ranging from $4.50 for swill to $7 for micros and imports. You can take a tenspot into the Boiler Room and come out feeling grand, which is something that can't be said for most bars in the Queen City of the Rockies.

Besides, the beer goes down better when you know that you are supporting a worthy cause.

"People come in before class and drink a lot," said Maria Cardamon, who has been slinging drinks here for more than two years. "The professors hate us."

Well, hot damn. I'm all for the disruption of education. And any place that the professors hate is probably a place you won't see them when you're cutting class to have a couple scoops. See? This is why you read my column: useful information. Write this stuff down, because in five minutes you won't remember where you read it. Drunk.

The Boiler Room serves as an hangout for club sports teams, Notre Dame fans-- there is a definite pro-South Bend sentiment here, so leave your Wolverines jacket at home-- and people leaving the Pepsi Center, but students make this bar viable. On any given day, hundreds of different people walk through the door for something, whether it's cigarettes (the only place you can buy them on campus-- write that down, too), booze, food(?) or a noisy place to study. The turnaround between classes is remarkable-- the only other place in town that gets drunks in and out as fast is the county jail.

But somehow, it never seems busy. Perhaps it's because the high celiing opens things up, or because the staff's attitude is as consistently positive as Carol Channing. Perhaps it's the way the tables are set up; some here, some there, some upstairs, some around the corner. I don't know. Maybe it just isn't, ever.

But who cares? Crowds are hardly a blessing. This bar manages to survive, even thrive, on the business it always does. They don't need a marketing director here, or a spendy general manager with a list of things that need "repurposing." They don't even really need to advertise, although they do a little, because they're surrounded daily by their core clientele. All they need to do is what they have been doing, and that's schlepping hooch to glassy-eyed college kids. Would that every bar had so clear a mandate. B