We saluted five of these spots — the Wazee Lounge and Supper Club, Racines, McCormick's, Rockbar and Emerald Isle — in our recent list of bygone bars we miss. In emails and comments on the Westword Facebook page, readers served up many more. Where was JR's? Gabor's? Rick's Cafe? Cricke on the Hill? No Frills Grill? Skyline? Deadbeat Club? The original Morton's? The original Elway's? Says Marco:
Not including Park Tavern on this list is crazy. $2 you call it Yuesdays, buy-one-get-one-free-happy-hour-drink poker chips, pool, foosball, great staff, open at 8 a.m. Every house inAdds Tas:
Cap Hill still has a pile of those drink chips somewhere. Rite of passage.
To not have Shelby's on here is a crime.Suggests Susan:
Maybe Tom "Dr. Colorado" Noel will write another book! Denver's history can be told through its beloved bars. Drink Up!
Recalls Chris:
The Compound. They opened at 7:00 a.m., so it was the perfect place to have a beer and read the paper when I finished my Royal Crest deliveries.Remembers Russ:
The Irish Snug (2006–2021) Gone but not forgotten. Sláinte.Offers Frank:
I enjoyed the story on the bars we miss. I'd visited them all. McCormick's was mentioned, but has anyone been around long enough to remember what was in that space before McCormick's? The Corner Room at the Oxford. It was a great spot. Little two-person cocktail tables like you see in movies from the '30s, live jazz and good drinks. I sure miss it.Suggests Ed:
Five that will show my age…. Quixote’s when it was on East Colfax with the big pot-belly stove and where they would pass out Silly String and drop confetti in the HVAC systemAnd Rich really pours it on:
Caldonia’s at Iliff and Parker where you could get ribs and play volleyball in the sand
The Paramount….lots of memories in that space.
Club Corner on 44th & Wadsworth The epitome of a dive bar where you could country dance, play pool, and hang out all the while enjoying iconic local bands like Crispy Nelson.
Duffy’s. You could go in at lunch and get in and out in flash, then come back after work and enjoy.
Lanes Tavern at the far western end of Colfax Avenue had a great gimmick in the early ‘70s: two beers for 25 cents. They were only 8-ounce beers and you had to order $1 worth at a time, but for $1, you got eight beers. And that was for each patron. It was not unusual to have 30 full beer glasses or more on a table.What bygone bar do you miss? Post a comment or share your thoughts at [email protected].
The Bratskeller at Larimer Square on a cold afternoon. The basement bar had a fireplace, and at a time in the late '70s when only Coors was served in Colorado, they had German beers and brats.
Soapy Smith’s nearby honored Denver’s most famous and colorful outlaw, who has now faded into total obscurity.
The Lift was the ultimate disco, gigantic, packed, loud, with chairlifts coming from the ceiling climbing through the cavernous room. Maybe it wasn’t as big as I remember it, but at the time, it was Denver’s (or Glendale’s) Studio 54. Elvis preferred the more quiet Colorado Mine Company across the street and visited there often. Glendale had a dozen bars and scarcely anything else.
Sid King’s got the press as Denver’s best strip club in the '70s (and even a spot in a Clint Eastwood movie) but those in the know went to Aloha Beach on north Federal, a tropical paradise of plastic palm trees and bamboo walls during a period in the Nixon era where strip clubs became revolutionary centers, defying all the existing norms.
But the most missed bar in Denver will always be the Wynkoop Brewing Company in the late 1980s, when it was the only place in a completely dark LoDo, and the only craft brewery in a 1,000 km radius. It was the “Rick’s Cafe of Casablanca” times ten. Everyone went to the Wynkoop. You might start or end somewhere else, and you didn’t always go there, but if you wanted to meet friends, talk, have a real beer, and a fun evening, the Wynkoop was the place where you always felt like “Norm.”
Yes, it's still open, but Denver will never have another bar quite like that in that time.
