Shift Drinks: Comedian Nathan Lund Returns to PS Lounge a Decade Later, Sober

Unless you were sitting on pallets of hand sanitizer or owned stock in Zoom, the summer of 2020 was defined by how you adapted to the new world of COVID-19. Among my friends, the comedians were hit the hardest. If they were decent, standup comedy earned the few hundred extra bucks a month that helped bridge the gap between rising Denver rents and their random, often shitty day gig.

When a global pandemic comes along and wipes that all out in days, you have to do some hard math. That's how Nathan Lund found himself moving his wife and dogs to Trinidad. “In 2019, I never imagined I would have lived there,” Lund tells me over a soda and cinnamon bitters in a booth at PS Lounge, the dive bar at 3416 East Colfax Avenue. “But…COVID. And Denver getting more expensive with me not wanting to work hard enough to stay.”

This wasn’t the move of a lifestyle blogger “simplifying” his life by cashing in a 401(k) and buying some property in a small town to the whispers of quiet jealousy among his friend group. Lund planned to find a cheap rental and deliver pizzas until there was some sense of certainty about the future of standup. The idea of people gathering in a room with the goal of expelling droplets into the air as much as possible seemed as popular as a karaoke-themed buffet.
“The ’Dad Lounge opened [in Trinidad] before Sexy Pizza, so I thought working the door was just going to be now and then,” says Lund of his bar, a restoration project headed up by Curt Wallach and Suzanne Magnuson, who also co-own Denver’s proudly punk hi-dive. As musicians, Wallach and Magnuson understood the premium on flexibility for an artist and offered Lund shifts that worked with unpredictable gigs. “They asked me if I’d be interested in bartending, and I said yes, thinking maybe in a few months, something would open up.” Soon, Lund was pouring drinks on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, perfect for him to moonlight weekends in Denver when he had a show.

September marks six years sober for Lund, or at least what people refer to in the modern parlance as “California Sober,” where he avoids alcohol and allows himself a substance or two that won’t ruin his next few days. “When I turned 29 and the hangovers got worse, I thought something had to give, but then I drank another five years because I didn’t think I could quit,” Lund tells me.

It came to a head after day drinking for an early Broncos game at Prohibition, blacking out after bottomless mimosas another comic left behind, then barely waking up in time to co-host his regular announcing gig at Lucha Libre and Laughs with fellow Fine Gentleman’s Club member Sam Tallent. “I needed him to fill,” Lund recalls. “My brain wasn’t working good.” Instead of sleeping it off, he went to see his buddy (and, surprise, another comic) Bobby Crane behind the bar at the Squire. “When I woke up the next day, I felt like I had three hangovers fighting for supremacy, and I said ‘I’m done,’” Lund recalls.

Drinking was easier in his college days with the “fourth-floor crew” from his Reno dorm, using their fake IDs at the now-defunct Cars Bar to order Dr. Pepper and Jägermeister, which they dubbed the Dr. J. It was his first dive, far enough from campus that it wasn’t filled with the horned-up youths but rather the impetuousness of real drunks who have a couple hours and regrets. They’d watch contingents of Irish and New Zealand nationals get wasted and rumble until a crew member from Lakeview, Oregon, announced that they were celebrating his 21st birthday. “They were like, ‘You’ve been coming here for two years. What the fuck?’" Lund remembers.
He started doing standup after graduating from college, and cascaded into a career that mostly played out in bars where people had minimum amounts of alcohol that needed to be consumed. The worst of the dives was a nameless gig none of the comedians I asked could remember in Rawlins, Wyoming. “It was always tense, because you never had everybody on your side. It’d always be touch-and-go,” Lund recalls. “The owner was a dick and a creep.” It wasn’t unheard of to receive some of your pay in drinks.

After shows in Denver, Lund would pour himself into a booth at the PS Lounge, a classic hole-in-the-wall frequented by fellow comic Kevin O’Brien. “I haven’t been here in probably ten years,” Lund says as a wave of nostalgia passes over a smile. Tonight, our bartender, Lacey, approaches our booth and silently sets down two shot glasses of orange liquid, then reminds us that the bar is cash-only. “They’re Alabama Slammers,” she explains, continuing a dangerous trend where I drink Southern Comfort while interviewing people. She can’t take one because she’s working, and Lund can’t break five-plus years of sobriety, so I politely finish both.

The PS Lounge trades in a bygone era of gruff hospitality, like when Rosa Lonardo would dress you down at Carbone’s before making you the best sandwich you’d had since you moved here from the East Coast. Here, ladies are greeted with roses, everyone gets a shot, and owner Pete Siahamis oversees all of it from the bar on most nights. Being on Colfax, the staff is understandably skeptical of you. It was probably a decade outdated when it opened in ’81, with all the wood paneling and carpet straight out of an uncle’s rumpus room turned time capsule, lacquered and preserved in alcohol. Portraits of Hollywood’s most famous dead men and printed photographs of various female patrons watch as you drink.
In many ways, Lund seems like he’d be at home behind the bar at PS. At one point, I tell him I can’t gauge how much contempt he has for people, as he frequently tells stories about patrons who piss him off for various reasons on his podcast, Chubby Behemoth. “It’s easy to blow it at the bar and be an idiot,” Lund explains. “To not know what you want when it’s busy and take forever. There are a lot of ways you can get on my bad side at work.” In an era where mixology is treated as a lifestyle and more than one bartender has asked me to follow their Insta, his Surly Duff, straightforward approach feels refreshingly un-contrived.

As much as I interview service-industry lifers, I forget that for some, bartending is simply a means to an end. Comedy has mostly returned. Earlier in the night, Lund asked a crowd of twenty-or-so folks at Ratio Beerworks, “Is anyone else in here sober, just hanging out?” A young smartass raised his glass filled with a random, cloudy yellow IPA, then lost his courage and quickly confessed it’s actual beer. “They serve NA beer, so your joke fell flat,” Lund says, needling him without having to push it into the “comedian destroys heckler” range of vitriol that a younger, intoxicated version of himself might have.

After all, it’s been a decade this month since he appeared with his comedy cohorts on the cover of Westword. At forty years old, he’s done sparring with anyone, turning his ire to big-picture concepts like affordability for artists in cities, and how people act with disregard for others, whether it’s racing to the front of an airplane or not picking up their dog’s shit. He’s not sure when or even if he’ll return to Denver, a city with which he feels increasingly at odds.

It reminds me of how Lund talks about troublemaking drunks in Trinidad. As the new bar in town, I wondered if the ’Dad Lounge attracted a crowd of everyone who had been banned from the few other spots. ”A couple of the bars in Trinidad don’t 86 people for life,” he explains. “They do different lengths of suspensions. You can get six months or a year. I think one month is the most popular one. Which is nothing, right? Drink at home for thirty days and practice hitting the heavy bag so you’re ready for your next fight.”

After two years in Trinidad, I wonder what Lund’s next fight is.