Club 404 Lounge

Club 404 Restaurant and Lounge has been shuffling Denver south siders through its doors on South Broadway for ages.  It was SOBO before there was a SOBO.  The sign outside is one of those classic roadside antiquities that you might find in a museum somewhere or in a sign graveyard in the desert outside Las Vegas.  It acts as a perfect dive bar marker:  decrepit enough to make casuals move on by to the fancy Hornets and such down the street, but showing enough dated class to give an inkling that it might be worthwhile stopping.


I am not sure why, but walking into the 404 I felt like I was stepping on board a 1970’s pleasure cruise.  There was entertainment on one side of the boat in the form of some comedian, and I am sure there was a shag-covered keyboard over there somewhere as well; T-bones were on special in the restaurant for the blue hairs, the bar was filled with patrons you could easily characterize as scallywags, and to get to the bathroom you had to walk through the galley.  Bartenders served up on the cheap from behind the sexy vinyl covered bar (And not only the bar is covered in vinyl, the entire ceiling is covered in vinyl.  I imagine that in one of the back rooms they have a massive stash of Liquid Leather, just to keep the place together) that is backed by a glorious ancient wooden back bar that has a patina coming from many a hard voyage.  It provides the perfect spot to kick off your topsiders and get a drink with an umbrella.  Of course if you do show up in topsiders and start ordering Piña Coladas, your fellow patrons may choose to pick a fight with you, as they did when I was there (luckily they were arguing with each other and not with me, since even though I may be able to swear like a sailor I cannot fight like one), so keep your wits about you and be ready to disembark at the next port of call if necessary.


The Club 404 Lounge sets sail daily from 404 South Broadway.

The Sports Station Redux

My relationship with dives is kind of like the relationship I have with my kids.  Having that first breakfast burrito at Charlie's Silver Fox is not entirely unlike the joy of watching my boy ride his bike for the first time.  Sometimes they both can be a source of happy surprises (like getting a free beer at Mr. A's).  Sometimes they give you indigestion (a $1.10 scoop from Little Panda, with aplomb), or worse, just plain make you sick.  Each also can disappoint: this week The Sports Station made me feel like I just found poop on the bathroom floor.  I have visited The Station before, and found it to be an enjoyable stop.  It was a nice mix of worthless barroom banter, crap on tv, and an amenable owner who is more than happy to sit at the bar with you and blow that evening's take on drinks for himself.  So you can imagine my chagrin upon hearing that there was a shooting there recently.  Here's what a semi-reputable news source had to say earlier this week.


This just goes to show that you don't need to hop a plane for some exotic locale or find a lonely stretch of trail up in the mountains in the search for adventure.  Just head down to your local dive and watch what happens.  

Bar Bar

One of the best dive bars in Denver is happy enough without you.  It can be found surrounded by parking lots on a desolate spit of no mans land, in an area bungled by Broadway shooting straight southward across the jacked up diagonal grid of downtown Denver's streets.  It's not exactly right around the corner from anything, or super convenient to anyone.  The sign hanging over the door simply says 'Bar', giving away nothing and giving you no reason to assume that it is anything out of the ordinary.  You have to want to go to Bar Bar.  And one night we did, and we were not disappointed.

I stole this picture from Westword.

The Carioca Cafe, as Bar Bar is known to the tax collector, accosts you (probably literally, on some nights) with reasons to not bother and move on.  First and foremost is the clientele.  I would put them a step down from the welcome wagon or a friendly neighbor bearing cookies.  You might find, as we did, a gentleman wandering around on the sidewalk, and sometimes in the street, outside the bar between drinks.  His surly looks did not really scream 'welcome!'.

Bar Bar goes one step further to discourage one from spoiling its dive bar riches - it kicks you right out on to the street, as happened to the fellow sitting next to us at the bar.  He must not have appreciated the effort made by Bar Bar to keep the place cool by strategically placing dangerous looking box fans around the room.  Or perhaps he got greedy and tried to grab get an extra cigarette out of the coffee cup where Bar Bar had them on offer 3 for a dollar.  A very nice amenity and fairly priced, by the way, and I don't even smoke.  The poor guy could have tried to pay with a credit card as well, which is disallowed.  A handwritten sign attempted to make it obvious that cash is king at Bar Bar, but the sign obviously failed.  Whatever it was that got him booted (probably the fact that he had a hard time staying upright in his stool and was yelling in the direction of the barman) I felt for the guy.  We were enjoying the hell out of Bar Bar.  Its general disrepair and pictures of people we didn't know that covered every square inch of the dingy walls were somehow comfortable and familiar, and the three beers and three beers only on tap (Bud Light, Bud Heavy, and PBR, in case you were wondering) spare you the trouble of decisions, making it easy to get into a zone and spend some time pondering.  Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got, know what I mean?  Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.  Bar Bar isn't the place where everybody knows your name, though, it's the place where nobody knows your name, no one cares, and sometimes that's a good thing.

On the way back to our car, I noticed that there was graffiti on the side of the building, adjacent to the parking lot.  It was nothing too elaborate, only one word actually: 'Sloshed', which I thought summed up Bar Bar pretty well.

Bar Bar is located at 2060 Champa.  Go find it.

Denver Snubbed: Playboy Proves It's Not Even Worth It For the Articles

And now, a very special Denver Dives editorial report.

No one likes being snubbed.  And no one likes one of their beloved getting snubbed.  So you can imagine my salt when The City of Dives got a finger in the eye recently.  Playboy just came out with its Guide to America's Greatest Bars, which included a list of their 15 all-time favorite dive bars.  Denver, with its well chronicled, well seasoned, and well respected (if having a large variety of dives can be called respectable) received a grand total of zero bars on the list.  Perhaps we can just blame Playboy - I see this sloppy bit of journalism as just another sign that Playboy is falling on hard times. 

Here's the list, for those who care:

1.  The Saint, New Orleans
2. Mean-Eyed Cat, Austin
3. Subway Inn, New York
4. Lee Harvey’s, Dallas
5. Specs, San Francisco
6. Jasper’s, Lompoc, California
7. Snake and Jake’s Christmas Club Lounge, New Orleans
8. Ted’s Hideaway, South Beach
9. Lucky’s Lounge, Boston
10. Cal’s, Chicago
11. The Big Hunt, Washington, D.C.
12. Kirby’s Beer Store, Wichita
13. Springwater Supper Club, Nashville
14. Ernestine and Hazel’s, Memphis
15. Milano’s, New York

I will grant you that I personally have never had the pleasure to sleaze my way into any of the places on Playboy's list.  I'll also grant that there are many great dives outside of Denver.  In fact, one of my personal all-time favorites is a place called The Wheel Bar in Estes Park, of all godforsaken places.  However, Denver has the quality and quantity to deserve a token mention on the list.  Maybe I'll make up my own list of all-time favorites at some point, sans naked chicks.  Though that might get me a few more readers....

If anyone that has a history with any of the 15 joints that made Playboy's list, and would like to sound off on their quality versus some of Denver's hometown favorites, please do so.  Regardless, I'll bet that none of them has an airplane made of beer cans....

Taco Dive-Off Part 2: Los Trompitos

I loved the Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was a kid.  What better way to keep a bored kid from Iowa engaged than to give him a book that allowed navigating choices like A) Dive into the toilet, or B) Escape out the door to avoid catching something from the flies buzzing around the stool.  Yes, I did once read a Choose Your Own Adventure book that gave the option of jumping into a toilet.  With this in mind, I'd like to present you with the following, a mini-Choose Your Own Adventure, dive-style.  Choose wisely, though, or you might end up in the vicinity of a toilet yourself:

You're heading east down Montview Blvd. and you're hungry, desperately hungry, and starting to get feisty.  Something small and quick will do, delicious would be nice, but at this point you're willing to settle.  You are unfamiliar with the area and aren't sure what to do.  You can:

A) Quickly pull into the corner gas station in search of a rolling hot dog.

B) Continue east on Montview, in the hopes that you'll soon run into a fast food crap merchant.

C) Head south toward the safety and plentiful food choices of Colfax, with the risk of becoming thoroughly salty along the way and blindly driving your car into a pole.

D) Venture inside the adjacent orange and white building, the one with the crazily dancing carrots on the sign that is questionably barred up like a prison, because you think there is a sign in the window saying something about tacos.

Hopefully your dive-senses were tingling when you read choice D, and didn't get thrown off with the option of going to Colfax - that's usually a good choice.  My dive senses were definitely tingling upon going to Los Trompitos, the lucky establishment that I picked to take on El Taco de Mexico in the first ever dive-off. 

There wasn't a soul in Los Trompitos on my maiden voyage in, other than the person lazily working the counter and one sitting around the kitchen that was jammed up into one corner of the building.  Both were pretty interested in the Univision that was jamming on the TV attached to one of the walls.   I stepped up to the counter, a granite one, no less, something I found extremely unnecessary in a place with bars on all the windows and doors, and perused the menu and its handy pictures.  I went with a trio of tacos - one Bistec (a special recipe!), one Al Pastor, and one Carnitas - similar to my order at El Taco de Mexico to keep things fair.   

While waiting for the food to arrive, I perused what appeared to be a salsa bar sitting under the TV. The spread was pretty lacking, and only included a red salsa, a green one, onions, cilantro, and some dried out looking limes.  Not nearly as extensive as some salsa bars I'd seen, but a nice touch nonetheless.  The tacos came out wicked fast.  The steak one was unremarkable, special recipe or not, and was made doubly so with the addition of the useless red salsa.  Al Pastor was pretty much made up of dry little chunks of meat, that wasn't interesting, though I managed to save it somewhat with a massive slathering of the decent green salsa.  Finally, the Taco de Carnitas, which was absolutely the standout at El Taco de Mexico.  Los Trompitos version, one that lacked juice, flavor, and most everything else, fell well short of the bar.  

I sat for a bit in the brightly colored dining area, trying to make sense of the blaring from the TV before wandering out, disappointed.  This dive-off goes resoundingly to El Taco de Mexico, a very nice blend of interesting crowd, an atmosphere propagated by the taco ladies that will keep you guessing, 100% washable ambiance that sets a dive standard, and a spectacular carnitas taco to boot.  Los Trompitos, despite all the promise of its dancing carrots, bars, and 99 cent tacos, was bland overall, and dulled the tingle of my dive senses to the point of considering a rolling hot dog across the street.

Los Trompitos is located at 9755 Montview in Aurora.  Unless you are interested in green salsa tacos, go somewhere else.