Volume 3, Issue 23
November 8 - November 21, 2001
by Alex Neth
Bars. You gotta love what they do. Which is serve alcohol to sops like me, in case you've been locked in a broken dumbwaiter for the last 5,000 or so years. It's one of the great lovely sureties of life, being able to go into a bar, order a drink and sit down and look at the counter and think your own damn thoughts on your own damn time. It makes you feel good inside, like voting for Ralph Nader or huffing gas, except without the accompanying Republican Presidency or blindness.
The only problems you experience with alcohol are irritability, the death of ambition, gin blossoms, a pervasive unpleasant odor, vomit on your clothing, rejection by family and friends and, eventually, a horrible cirrhotic death.
But hey, is any one of those things worse than being hit by a bus? Or being devoured by your pet dachshund, ala Marie Provost? Or living a long, happy, community-conscious life? Come on now. Go-Go readers have priorities, and I'm guessing they don't involve waiting in neighborhood association meetings to complain about the height of their neighbor's outbuildings. No, they involve waiting on a stool for a guy to bring them a drink. Which, in turn, brings us to The Skylark Lounge.
This is a bar, all right. There is beer here, and booze, and a squadron of friendly bartenders, and a regular clientele of Broadway irregulars. There are $2 Pabsts, and pictures of pin-up girls and old Hollywood starlets, and a jukebox chock full of Country Music. Walk in to the strains of "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive" by Hank Sr. Shoot a few games on the tables in back. Chat. Or don't. It doesn't matter. At a bar, a real bar, like this one, you don't need to play society's dress-up games. This is, like every similarly understated bar in our fine state and across the nation, a bar that doesn't think too much of itself. Sure, there's been some cleanup here, but name one bar on Broadway besides Len and Bill's, The Great Divide, Nathan's, The Brown Barrel, The Casual Lounge, Club 404 or the late and unlamented Red Shanty where there hasn't been. Didn't think so. Gentrification, accompanied by its crowd of suburban gawkers and glamour-starved teens, must by necessity happen everywhere. It is the nature of the modern city to bulldoze, wipe clean and rebuild a facsimile.
Thankfully, that hasn't happened at the Skylark, where the old guard of drunks still makes appearances and the scum of the street has only been partially scrubbed away. This is also a bar well-lit by the sun, especially in the late afternoon, which is a relative rarity all over Denver. We are a city of windowless cave bars, for the most part, and while that helps the more photosensitive among us, those who aren't putting roots through the cracks in the floorboards must surely appreciate some genuine light. It helps the senses, makes you feel like the fourth Wednesday afternoon drink is only the second. And when you go outside, you don't run the risk of staggering in front of an unrushing car like a soused mole.
These are the treasures of our neighborhoods, places like this, places like the Stadium Inn and Charlie Brown's and The Punch Bowl and My Brother's. These are our bars, the idiosyncratic watering holes of the Mountain West's only real metropolis. (Salt Lake City is actually a massive collection of animatronic robots. Walt Disney built it in 1933 as part of a failed attempt to gain control of the U. S House of Representatives. And don't even mention Albuquerque.) These are the places that bind our communities together, the threads of our collective fabric.
Yeah, church, school, the YMCA, whatever. You know where you hang out and get to know your surroundings, and it ain't at the gymÐ unless you're one of those healthy people poisoning our planet with your adductors and delts, and if you are, put this column down and back away slowly--or at school or the Christian Science Reading Room. It's at the bar, with people like yourself, drinking booze. The Skylark Lounge is where it happens, a comfortable, inexpensive environment with capable staff and enough grittiness to make the experience pleasant. It's time to get down to the real civic business of Denver. Build a network, create a space, have a beer. But don't feel like you have to talk to your neighbor if you don't wanna. This is, after all, a bar. A
All Rights Reserved © 2001 Go Go Media, LLC, Denver, Colorado
