BOTTOMS UP!
Alex Neth
PUNK PREP
CHIC
@
THE HORNET
82 Broadway, Denver, Colorado
303-777-7676
I don't normally dislike bars with good
beer and tasty food that are located
within staggering distance of my house. Why should I? That, right there, is
everything get in, have some, let's get
ready to stumble. I should be shaking
like a wet dog, happier than a pearlfish
in a sea cucumber. But I ain't, and I
ain't.
The problem here at The Hornet is people.
They're too pretty. They look like
they were all downloaded from
DenverHipster. org. The amount of facial
piercings and Japanese-style tattoos is
truly ridiculous; it's like all the supposedly
cool folks in our Centennial State
just decided to hop on their Vespas en
masse and show up at 82 Broadway
simultaneously. This could be serious
if they're all here, how can they be
sneering at the customers in Fort Collins
coffeeshops? Aren't they leaving parts
of Boulder critically underpopulated?
There are census issues here, for God's
sake. It's true. The average bargoing
schlep a specie of which I happen to
proudly represent will, upon entry into
The Hornet, see the ol' self-esteem drop
faster than a nervous teen's erection. The
guys who hang out here all seem like
they just got done lifting weights and
greasing their hair with the fat of the
weak. The girls look like they should be
in a video, any video. The staff wears the
smug, knowing smiles of the insufferably
fab. Even the bar area itself is sleek
and fancy, dominated by woods, dark
metals and splashy posters. Is this any
place for Larimer County's fourth-ugliest
boy? No. No it is not. I would be
more comfortable at the Skylark down
the block, or at Seven South, the very
first Denver bar I ever visited (age 12
drank Cokes and played Sex Pistols
songs on the jukebox while my brother-in-
law played pool that reminiscence
brought to you by the makers of
Alcohol). This hymenopterous establishment
gives succor to the Biffs and Bettys
of the underground or should I say,
what passes for underground, now that
everything which once was, isn't.
Am I wrong? Does anyone else remember
when every 12 year old didn't have
an eyebrow pierced? Or when being
covered with tattoos wasn't an exercise
in fraternity-style group think? Or when
bars that catered to a hip crowd allowed
a little seediness? Am I getting old, or
did I just happen into a parallel universe?
A Bizarro World where punk
rockers are beautiful, their hangouts
clean and shiny, their clothes expensive
and their bodies inexplicably toned? If
only.
The sad fact is that everyone, every hip
youngster in our Queen City, looks this
way. And most of the bars do, too. What
was once private or at least seemed to
be so has become inescapably public:
the underground has shriveled in the
harsh light of the mainstream. The
punks, freaks, ravers, druggies, weirdos,
chit signers and corner screamers have
all showered and moved into spendy
lofts. They own property and talk about
networking. Networking! Whatever happened
to the skinny kid in the camo
pants who squirted Aerosol up his nose?
Oh, right. That was me.
Bars like this one toss dirt on the lowered
coffin of cool. I cringe when I see
ex-high school football players acting
like Broadway Bohemians. I cringe
when I see gaggles of prom queens in
green cat-eye glasses and tall Docs. I
cringe when I realize this is what happened
the lovely counter-cultural
griminess of my youth has been replaced
by a smarmy plasticity indistinguishable
from that of the "Miami Vice" era.
Sigh. This hip neighborhood, this hip
bar, these hip people. As Chuck D said
suckers, liars, give me a shovel. I'll have
my Guinness elsewhere, in an establishment
where the bartender isn't some
buffed CU student with rich parents and
a fashionable haircut. A pub where the
real business is consumption of significant
quantities of malty cheerfulness.
The kind of place that may not serve
food, but where the staff still understands
the soul-bettering value of a nice
liquid lunch. The kind of place bus drivers
and assembly-line workers drink
after the third shift.
The Hornet's nightclubby chicanery is
for Denver's fat young wallets and
empty young heads. Good food, good
beer, doesn't matter this is the kind of
place that makes an old drunk sad. Go if
you must. But don't dress down: the
arbiters of hip will be laser-scanning and
ear-tagging you at the door. Anyone who
doesn't register over a "7" on the Look-O-
Meter will be dropped through a trap
door onto the rotating knives. D
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