Jay Bianchi Is Resurrecting Owsley's Golden Road in Boulder

Jay Bianchi, owner of the Grateful Dead-centric bars Quixote’s True Blue and Sancho’s Broken Arrow, is resurrecting the Owsley’s Golden Road name in Boulder, seven years after opening a venue of the same name in Denver.

While Bianchi is currently booking shows at the Goose Bar (1301 Broadway) in Boulder as Owsley’s Golden Road Presents, he says that around the middle of May, he’ll be taking over the bar, which has a capacity of 300, and turning it into Owsley’s Golden Road, named after the famed LSD cook Owsley Stanley, who was also an early sound engineer for the Dead.

Bianchi says Owsley’s will have a Sancho’s-style jukebox and Sancho’s-priced drinks.

“It will be kind of a Sancho’s/Quixote’s in Boulder,” Bianchi says. “We’re bringing the posters up and having more music. The jukebox is going to be more representative, and the music coming out the place is going to be more representative of what we do.”

Bianchi says he didn’t open a spot in Boulder before since he couldn’t figure out how do it at a time that worked well for him.

“It seems like Quixote’s is settled enough and Sancho’s is settled enough that I can do that in Boulder and spend some time in Boulder,” he says. “Because I don’t want to do something where I can’t be there all the time, or most of the time. I don’t want to consider it a chain or anything. I like to be hands-on, and it’s hard to be hands-on with a couple of places.”

Bianchi originally opened Owsley’s Golden Road seven years ago at 2151 Lawrence Street. At the time, he and his brothers also owned Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom and Quixote’s True Blue, which neighbored each other on Welton Street in Five Points. Close to two years later, he sold Cervantes’ and its neighboring space, which is now Cervantes’ Other Side, and Bianchi relocated Quixote’s to where Owsley’s was. Because the building at 2151 Lawrence Street was slated to be demolished to make way for condos, Quixote’s relocated to the former Bender’s Tavern space at 314 East 13th Avenue. 

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