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The world is crazy for competition. Think about it - everywhere you turn there is some kind of competition thrown at you for entertainment purposes. From the mundane (bingo), to the absurd (a video game called Deca Sports 2 for the Wii will let you compete in synchronized swimming), to those so ridiculous I cannot help but pay attention to (The World Beard and Moustache Championship; I'm partial to the Freestyle categories myself), there is something out there to suit everyone's palate.
In order to keep up with the zeitgeist, I've decided to start up my own meaningless competition - The Dive-Off. There lots of dives out there, and distinguishing them is oftentimes challenging, so the idea is to drop them into a head-to-head match of bowel twisting and verbal abuse, and see which dive comes out the other side with its shuffle board intact.
What better starting point than The Breakfast King versus The Breakfast Queen? Two Denver institutions touting breakfast food with similar diner-style settings allows a pretty fair comparison, not that being fair is in any way paramount. The King obviously feels a bit superior to other joints, calling itself The Breakfast King and all. I'd certainly be ticked off were I a breakfast restaurant. This thing is getting hot, so let's get rolling! The Queen being outranked, I decided to hit The Breakfast King first.
136. That's how many items I counted on the menu at The Breakfast King. 136 - and that's not counting the multiple varieties of a single item, such as the omelette with cheese, or ham, or ham and cheese... and despite the name, its not all breakfast food. Anything from liver and onions to a bowl of cereal can be had. The maddening number of choices on the menu fits right in with the atmosphere of the place. It's as much bus station at rush hour as it is diner. When I arrived with my family in tow, the front door was blocked by people in line at the cash register. Once we navigated past that, we had to squeeze by a large group waiting for a table, slide around the gumball machine, and then twist our way through a maze of booths to get to where we ended up sitting. At one point, while trying to return to our booth from outside, I turned right instead of left at the gumball machine. I ended up at the lunch counter and eventually had to wander through the kitchen to find my seat. There are literally booths, tables, and chairs occupying every square inch of tattered carpet. Just about all of them were occupied with locals, half of which looked like they just rolled out of bed.
The Breakfast King has sat on its corner of Santa Fe and Mississippi since 1975, and the lady working the register told me that most of the people working there had been around since the beginning. Our waitress was certainly no exception - she looked like she had been continually adding makeup to her face every morning for the last 30 years, resulting in something that looked like the EPA might ask to have cleaned up along with the old Gates rubber factory across the street. Indeed, when my wife spilled water down the waitress' leg, she responded by doing a little jig - that's seasoning. The decor apparently hadn't changed much since the beginning either, between the crappy wood paneling and the brown and orange glass light fixtures that looked like they'd been picked up at a garage sale. There was a sign posted advertising Wifi that seemed a bit out of place. My hope was that someone had stolen the sign from a local Starbucks and put it up as a joke.
I settled on the chorizo breakfast burrito off the breakfast specials board and a cup of coffee, which saved me 15 minutes of wading through the menu. Does that make 137 items? Regardless, it was a pretty pedestrian breakfast burrito overall. It consisted of unseasoned eggs wrapped in a tasteless tortilla, covered in tasteless cheese, boring hash potatoes (potatoes on top of the burrito is a variation I've not seen before, and did not necessarily enjoy) and average green chile. And the coffee was rubbish as well. I may have been better off had I taken the time to peruse the menu aside from just counting items for my own enjoyment.
One of the highlights of traveling for me is having the opportunity to hang out at the airport. The hectic buzz of it all, the crowds of people all with an unknown destination and story, I find extraordinarily interesting. I think that's why I enjoy The Breakfast King so much. It's got a similar buzz about it, and the fact that you can get a gigantic plate of food for cheap gets you in the door. The Breakfast Queen has a tough act to follow.
Stay tuned kids - The Breakfast Queen is getting oiled up and ready to rebut.
The Breakfast King holds court at 300 W. Mississippi in south Denver.
Men and women ages 24-35 approve of the fancy map of the Denver dive bar world that I just added to the bottom of the blog.
I stopped in to Barry's on Broadway the other night to check things out. While it is far too well kept up and organized to be a dive bar per se, it does have some redeeming qualities.
The first thing I laid eyes on upon entering was a naked female mannequin behind the bar. Interesting. It almost succeeded in sending me back out to Broadway. Scanning the crowd trying to ascertain the type of establishment, I gained some comfort in seeing a docile looking mixed bunch - the greasy guy who looked like he had been there drinking for 12 hours, a girl dressed in a pirate shirt (I gave her the appropriate 'Argh!'), and some 20-somethings carousing. The lack of stripper poles, chain link, or strobe lights also eased my mind a bit.
Most of the lighting is supplied by overly gaudy glass chandeliers, a touch of class that I found humorous in the bar setting. Finally, the men's restroom sported trough urinals, one of my favorite john accoutrements. Two-man capacity at 5 pm, three-man at midnight.
Barry's isn't the diveiest of dives, so if you are looking for someplace that makes you feel like you are in danger, go elsewhere. It is interesting enough to drop in for a beverage, though.
Barry's on Broadway is located at 58 Broadway in Denver.
'I promise it's not a gay bar,' Matt told me as we made our way to The Lancer Lounge. Not that it mattered, despite the fact that we were two dudes out on the prowl together. Ok, not exactly prowling... our objective could be better described as slow-moving loitering. Luckily that type of attitude turned out to be par for the course at The Lancer, which is right up our alley.
The Lancer is located interestingly enough next to some uber-posh restaurant Matt had been to on a previous occasion, the patrons of which glare at you through a plate glass window as you pass. He described it as the type of place where you eat dinner, leave, then have to go somewhere else to eat dinner again because the piece of asparagus and medallion of beef they charged you $22 for did not quite cut it. The Lancer was quite the opposite. Everyone is too content or inebriated to glare, and we drank all night for $24.
To call The Lancer cozy is a bit of an understatement. The dark wood paneled ceiling was low enough to make you think you were in someone's basement. A sign on the cash register stating 'No Tabs!' welcomes patrons. The full bar, overwhelmingly full, has bottles stacked and crowded on every inch of open real estate on the back bar, some teetering on the brink of disaster. Speaking of the back bar, there was a small window there that looked through to the game room where a pool table and a crappy pinball machine reside. A nice touch. At one point during the evening, the bartender shouted 'Steve! Window!' to the other guy working there (for some reason they needed a multi-person staff to serve the six patrons). Steve proceeded to head around to the game room where the bartender set up a couple of shots in the window that they pounded. Steve then returned to whatever it was he had been doing. A bar staff that is drinking always gives me encouragement.
The crew of drinkers kept things interesting. There was the token guy sitting in the corner by himself getting blitzed on pitcher after pitcher of beer. Not much to talk to, but fun to watch. There was the pony-tailed bartender, dressed suavely in his white jeans and white fruit-of the loom T. He could easily have doubled as the bad guy on any given episode of C.H.i.Ps. Sitting next to us at the bar was a friend of ours, at least he acted as such. He stared at us quite a bit, alternating between an uncomfortable grin and a painful grimace, and grunted in our direction every so often. You cannot get much better than that, and you cannot get much better than The Lancer Lounge for a solid dive bar.
The Lancer Lounge is located at 233 E. 7th. Don't even think about opening a tab.
The Montview Bar & Grill: So much promise, so very little delivery. Located on a dark and cranky section of east Montview, its location has the makings of a great one. Unfortunately judging dive bars by their exteriors is as fickle a business as judging beers by their fancy labels. The night I pulled in, the place had the atmosphere of a senior center. A bunch of kids were playing slow games of pool in a large, well lit room off to one side. Most of the patrons in the main bar sat around watching with disinterest as a DJ tried in vain to drum up support for his karaoke session. We hardly lasted a beer.
The Montview Bar & Grill is located at 11680 Montview in west Aurora, up near Fitzsimons.
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