Rock out at the Rockstar

People are going to drink through the good times and the bad. But where they drink may change. Mike, who owns the Rockstar Bar (3358 Mariposa Street), thinks that a lot more folks are buying booze at liquor stores and drinking at home these days. Mike doesn't like drinking alone at home, because after a few beers, he gets the urge to do stuff and have women around.

A guy I knew used to say that drinking at a bar is an entirely different high from drinking alone at your own place, and he had a good point. That's why it's taken me a year to finish off a bottle of Maker's Mark, and why there are four bottles of assorted microbrews rattling around every time I open the fridge. For the most part, if I want a beer and a shot, I want at least one other person around — even if that person is watching South Park on the big screen behind the bar, like the night I was at Rockstar.

Had the place been busy, though, I still think Mike would have come over and introduced himself. He told me that he bought the bar a year and a half ago, changing the name from Roni's Place to Rockstar. Mike obviously likes his rock: He digs Elvis enough to have his silhouette airbrushed on the pool table felt, has records hanging on the wall, and wants to build a giant replica of a '59 Fender Stratocaster on the roof so that people can see it from I-25. (Rockstar is just a few blocks from the highway and the 20th Street overpass.) But for now, he has to be content with a six-foot-long plywood guitar that hangs outside the door of his place.

When I told Mike that I'm a fan of the rock (among other things), he said I really needed to come to hear 11th Hour, an act he'd booked. Rockstar brings in rocks bands every weekend and serves free food when the Denver Poker Tour folks come in on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

While the Highland Tavern, which is a block west, at 3400 Navajo Street (and has a great Elvis in its black-velvet painting collection over the bar), may attract a hipper crowd, and the Arabian across from the Highland draws more longtime regulars, Mike's doors are open to everyone — as long as they're drinking. And as the sign by the door proclaims, "Everyone is a rock star."

Club scout: Dazzle Restaurant and Lounge (930 Lincoln Street) recently introduced Vinyl Mondays, a weekly event that starts at 9 p.m. Hosts Erik Troe and Miles Snyder, both KUVO DJs, and Marinos Vidikitis, founder of the "On the Corner" jazz radio program, will spin classic jazz, blues, soul and more from their private collections — and they'll even spin your own vinyl if you bring it in.

The Railbenders show on St. Patrick's Day at La Rumba (99 West Ninth Avenue) may be the band's last in Denver for a very long time since frontman Jim Dalton recently joined Roger Clyne's band. Over at Rockbar (3015 East Colfax Avenue), Git Some guitarist Chuck French will spin Irish punk and rock on March 17; five bucks gets you a cup for the keg of green beer, Michael Collins Irish Whiskeys are four bucks, and green Jell-O shots are a dollar. And there will be free Mad Dog shots anytime French yells "Bollocks!"