Meet the artist who made the giant disco dick hanging in Hell or High Water

Hell or High Water has big dick energy. About 25 pounds and 4 and a half feet of it.

The infernal and absurd tiki bar that reopened in a new RiNo location earlier this month has been penetrated by a groovy force that’s garnering a lot of excitement both online and inside the establishment. “Disco Dong: The Most Heavenly Thing in Hell” is a giant disco-tiled penis complete with wings, pubes and a beaded cum spout now hanging in the bar.

“The feedback that’s been gained from it was surprising and a little overwhelming when it started to hit random parts of the world,” says the Disco Dong’s creator, Denver artist Stephanie Nelson, whose alias is Lady Lewd. “It was like, ‘Oh, it hit German Instagram now.’ It was getting all these German comments, and then it would hit French Instagram and Russian Instagram. It was crazy how many pockets of the world it started to hit, and everyone actually responded to it very well, for the most part. A lot of people were asking where it was and then being like, ‘Well, great. Now I have to go to Denver.’

“It’s exciting to know people are excited enough to even think about planning their travel around it,” Lady Lewd continues. “And the bar calls for that, too, because there are a lot of tikiphiles, and they definitely travel to go to these bars.”

Created by Lexi Healy, Hell or High Water originally opened in LoDo in 2022 and quickly became popular for its creative tropical drinks and chaotic decor, quickly outgrowing its tiny mezzanine-level space on Blake Street. So at the end of 2025, Healy shut the gates of Hell and began working to move the bar into its larger RiNo home next to the LGBTQ+ nightclub Tracks. All in all, a fitting location for a giant, disco-tiled schlong.

Lady Lewd, who says her art leans into the playfully taboo (a video of Jeff Bezos pole-dancing in space to the Donna Summer track “She Works Hard for the Money” is another of her creations), also had a hand in curating Hell or High Water’s original location.

“I made graphics for the menu, papier-mâchéd a skull wall,” Lady Lewd recalls. “(Healy) would give me the company credit card and I would go to antique malls and grab stuff for her, which was exciting, to spend somebody else’s money on weird shit.”

One day, after deciding to move the bar to RiNo, Healy messaged Lady Lewd and asked her if she could make a disco dick. “And I was like, ‘Absofuckinglutely,'” she says.

It started with a large cardboard cylinder from Home Depot, two blown-up beach balls and a shit-ton of spray foam. Not having enough space in her small duplex, Lady Lewd worked mostly in the alley behind Hell or High Water, much to the scrutiny and interest of people passing through.

“I assembled it all, spray foamed the hell out of it, carved it down with an insulation cutting knife and papier-mâchéd the whole thing,” she says (with copies of Westword, it should be noted). Next, she clad the joystick in tin foil and started the hefty task of disco-tiling it.

“I very much avoided the balls for as long as I could because they were so lumpy,” she laughs.

When all that was done, Lady Lewd stepped back and felt that it needed more. “I was like, ‘I’m going to put wings on it, I’m going to give it pubes.’ I started to lose a few more people when I started talking about the enhancements. I knew that alone it would be striking, but it wouldn’t be as much of a playful piece of art without the wings and the weird little beaded cum spout and the pube tutu.”

She found the pubes (a sparkly tulle material) and the beads at a craft store. But for the wings, she headed to Reinke Brothers in Littleton. “I was so totally annoying to the attendants,” Lady Lewd says. “Of course, the wings were displayed on the ceiling, so I was having them get the hook out and bring down all these sets of wings. They were like, ‘What are you using this for?’ and I was like, ‘Oh, brother.'”

While Reinke Brothers had wings of all colors and various aesthetic leanings, Lady Lewd was particularly pleased to find an angelic silver pair.

After about 150 hours of work on the shiny penis, a Hell or High Water team helped Lady Lewd figure out the process of safely hanging the Disco Dong, which would be dangling over all the people walking into the space.

Since Hell or High Water’s reopening, Lady Lewd has had a good time watching customers interact with her masterpiece. “It’s a fun, interactive thing for people,” she says. “They’ll take pictures under it. Bartenders come by and do a little jump and hit it. …It’s an immersive space in itself, and my piece is just an accoutrement to it. So it definitely has a great environment to live in, and without that backdrop, I don’t think it would be as successful as it is.”

Still, Lady Lewd is interested in seeing the demand for Disco Dick decor. She’s currently working with a woman in Switzerland who is a 3-D sculptor, so that she will be able to 3-D print dicks in the future. “And then tile them and hopefully have a few for sale in the bar,” she says. “They’ll be more like two feet, so it’ll be more for home.”

She plans to switch up the colors, maybe add devil horns to some of them.

“I think in the moment of the current state of the world and affairs, everyone’s just looking for that sense of escapism, something to take them out of the harsh nature of reality and bring them back to the point that life should be fun,” she says. “I’m excited to keep going.”

Follow Lady Lewd’s art and Disco Dick journey on Instagram @ladylewd. Hell or High Water is located at 3542 Walnut St. and is open from 5 p.m. to midnight Wednesday and Sunday, and 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Thursday through Saturday. For more information, visit hellorhighwatertiki.com or follow @hellorhightiki on Instagram.