Volume 3, Issue 20
September 27 - October 10, 2001

BOTTOMS UP!

Alex Neth

SANCHO'S

Back from the Eastern shores of this country, back from the damned terrifying airlines, back from cockroaches-- the good people of Charleston, S. C. call them "Palmetto Bugs." Right. They're cockroaches-- that fly and kill you, back in time to write a column for you all, the besotted public who make this effort all the more poignant with your disinterest.

So, let's to the sniping. Although there won't be too much of that today-- it wouldn't be decorous, considering our location. I mean, naturally, Colfax; that endless strip of human interest and cheap domestics (beer, too). Specifically, I mean the inimitable Sancho's Broken Arrow.

This bar earns points before you even walk in, if you have any remembrance of the area, any sense of history. This was, after all, the location of The Gold Nugget Country Disco, one of Denver's finest watering holes for as long as I can remember, which on a good day is several hours. Any place that calls itself a "Country Disco" is alright with me, particularly on Karaoke night, and when the bartenders are all 50- year-old women in tight black miniskirts-- oh, baby. You know what I like. Gimme some of that, um-hmmm. Yeah.

But then some unseen hand, maybe belonging to the property owner, or perhaps Andre the Giant, closed the Gold Nugget, displacing dozens of bleary-eyed country disco music fans and leaving the bartender's fan club sadly bereft of hope. We can only hope that these people moved on, or at the very least, got wicked drunk in an alley four blocks north, because they aren't hanging out at Sancho's.

No, the people hanging out at Sancho's are a, well, a special lot. You know. They're-- how to put it-- they're hippies. A crowd of patchouli-wearin', bong-tokin', peace sign flashin' hippies. Decked out in their lowest finery. Riding in VW buses and wearing dresses over their jeans. This formerly scummy hangout has morphed into a scummy hangout of an entirely different order. Gone are the miniskirted fossils behind the bar. Gone are the men who smelled like urine, at least some of them. In their place find the Widespread Panic army, the dirt-encrusted troops of General Disregard.

And you know what? That's okay. Denver doesn't have enough places for these kids to hang-- I know, there's Quixote's, Sancho's sibling bar, and a few others scattered around, but really-- and it's good to see them enjoying themselves, instead of being huddled in some doorway with a malnourished puppy. The jukebox is good, stocked with the best of the genreŠ Dylan, Toots and the Maytals, lots of Dead, but you knew that-- and the beer prices are downright acceptable.

This is a hippie bar. But it's a good one. Of course, any bar that runs two for one draft specials in the afternoon and sells Pabst by the bottle is fine with me. Admittedly, my standards aren't too high in this particular field, but there's something about the unmistakable, damnable friendliness of these twirlin' hippie folk that puts a snotty old cynic like myself at ease. People talk to each other here, and the funny thing is, they seem to want to. Weird, huh? Most of the time, I like to sit and swill my drink in silence before angrily stiffing the bartender and stomping out the door. Here, I feel like dressing in a rainbow muu-muu and throwing all my money in the air. Must be all the pleasant vibes, man.

The best part of Sancho's, and really its redemption, is that it hasn't forgotten the big, smelly street outside. There's still a comforting level of reality, still loud drunks, still people who can't pay their tab and act like hammerheads. It feels real, here. Drink a Pabst and listen to the combined banter of the indigent, the relaxed and the crazy. Find a niche and cram yourself into it, enjoy the artificial light in the middle of the day. Find yourself waiting hours for one song, get in an argument with a lanky kid from Alabama on what is or isn't The South. Enjoy the sudden crowds and the equally sudden emptiness.

This is what you look for, hippie bar or yippie bar or Secret Life of Walter Mitty bar. This is a nexus, a trading zone of life and information. Come in and learn something about what it takes to get wicked handled on cheap Midwestern swill at two in the afternoon. They even put out an unintentionally hilarious newsletter. Go, for God's sake. They're cheap, the location is the heart of the city, the pulse likewise. Help these hippies out. The bartenders may not wear miniskirts, but who said life was fair?