But in the next few weeks, the remaining walls of the Carioca Cafe — better known to lovers of dive bars everywhere as "Bar Bar," winner of Westword's Best Dive Bar award in 2023 — will come tumbling down.
"I have mixed feelings," says Rich Granville, the musician/booker/bartender who did so much to keep the place at 2060 Champa Street going. "I knew it wasn't going to last forever...that's why I did everything I did for the past seven years."
Before the pandemic, that involved going from performer to regular to bartender. During the pandemic, Granville also became the bar's chief spokesman, protector, fundraiser, booker and license wrangler as the landlord let him take the lead in keeping the club alive. "He really gave me an opportunity," Granville recalls. And then, even as he grappled with some family challenges, Granville continued to serve as chief cheerleader over the past fifteen months — when a fire closed Bar Bar in June 2024, and then a car drove into the almost-repaired building at the end of June 2025, taking out a wall.
And taking out all hopes of Bar Bar ever reopening.
A car crashed into Bar Bar this summer, sealing its fate.
Bennito L. Kelty
Ultimately, this last downtown hole-in-the-wall could not overcome its own hole in the wall.
According to city engineers, the structure is too unstable to be repaired, and so the landlord must demolish it. Granville has spent the past week emptying the place, taking out the last music equipment, saving a few pieces of the old wooden bar. He has high hopes of also salvaging "the wedge" — the triangular entrance that includes the redundant neon red "bar bar" sign that gave the Carioca its nickname. He'd like to find a public place where that can be displayed, sharing just a part of the bar's history.
And this bar definitely has a storied past. It opened in 1913 as the Carioca Cafe — the name is a Portuguese term for residents of Rio de Janeiro — and the backroom that later held a pool table reportedly once operated as a whorehouse; decades later, it was frequented by stars like Dick Van Dyke, Chuck Connors and even Mr. T when the area surrounding it was filled with movie production houses. But those left decades ago, and Bar Bar sank into its final identity: as the last, best dive of Denver.
"From my perspective, it's been a community hub," says Granville. "And for local artists, especially musicians, for a lot of us, it's been a second home. I'm still good friends with people I met when they played one of their first shows or very first show at the bar."
He'd go see those musicians when they had a new project or another show, and he says "that exact scenario played out" this past weekend at the Lion's Lair, where Granville was playing (he also now bartends there). Another musician he'd met at Bar Bar jumped up on the stage and joined him.
So Bar Bar may be going, but its spirit lives on.
The building inspector found asbestos in the floor; after remediation, the rest of the walls will come down. Granville will be watching, and thinking about what to do next. His salvage operations included saving the hard-won liquor and cabaret licenses, and he might explore transferring them to another spot that could become the next community hangout. "I understand full well how big of an undertaking that is," he says. "I'll take a month or two to consider."
In the meantime, raise a glass to Bar Bar.
