Ah, Denver. What a serene scene, where an intoxicated man can drift from bar to bar and stumble out to dig the snow-capped mountains looming in the distance like stone-faced bouncers ready to kick your ass. A paradise of picturesque buildings that bookmark the alleyways where Colfax dopers shiv rats and Rats. Freshly cut lawns and freshly cut throats, figurative and literal, daddy-o. Denver is Fat City all day, and with the fat comes the gristle. When that fat underbelly drags in the dirt and grime is where I come in. I pound the pavement, scope the swill, dig the scene for the magazine, I dig the troughs up and see who coughs up the ready, the aim, and the kill. I’m the foul owl on the prowl with his eyes on the prize, Jackalope, and here’s the news you need to know:

THE PLACE TO BE: Sorry, ladies, but the notorious madman-about-town ADAM PITTMAN is officially hitched, and the wedding routine was a stone gas. The crowd of respectable family members spooled about with cultural notables, criminal artistes, and a cadre of hard-eyed yeggs eager to witness the happy union. Booze flowed solid from the word go, and the official hitch marked an unprecedented amount of shots, many of which were chased by the salty tears of dolled up Denvertantes who pined for The Mastermind. A.P. cut the cake with a switchblade and offered bouquets of bottle rockets as an exploding consolation prize to we single fellas who are condemned to a life of fun and adventure. The combination of fireworks and high grade hooch made for a mean scene best left imagined. For my dime, it was the party of the year, and if you wasn’t there in the lair, you was square, dad.

OUTRAGE!: The despicable smoking ban is still upon us, and this reporter is HOT LIKE RAMEN over the unwholesome shebang. Would you believe that I had occasion to host a burlesque show wherein some dingy broad complained about me smoking backstage? The green room is the last refuge for full-on indoor smoking and some BURLESQUE DANCER has the gall to tell me to snuff my stick. Burlesque is an art form born in the blue clouds of tobacco smoke and the fume of scotch, and yet even this art form’s booby purity has degraded to an outrageous kibosh. The smoking ban is un-American no matter how you slice n’ dice it, and every breath of fresh air you take in a bar is another sickening sanguine pulse in Osama’s hard-on for tyranny. There, I said it.

END OF AN ERA: Boulder’s bespectacled bon-vivant filmmaker JOEL HAERTLING has officially closed his subterranean martini mine known to those in the know as THE OFFICE. His literal museum of priceless art and astutester ephemera surrounded a wild meeting of wild minds on the last night of the joint… hatin’est Satanist and caustic Gnostic BOYD RICE wowed the crowd with the avenues of his encyclopedic egg, shitbag prankster about town LORIN PARTRIDGE showed off a dame that’s too good for him, and our own not-so-humble editor FRANK KELLY RICH taught a few braggadocios college kids what it means to really drink … but none in attendance could hold a miser’s candle to Joel himself, the Vinyl Solution, who flipped the wigs of every cat n’ kitten in the bunker with his LP collection. J.H. was the pure cure for the obscure, treating us to BLOWFLY rarities, Italian sound tracks, and the phonographic/pornographic discord of bands us lowly humanoids have never heard of. Sad to see THE OFFICE go, but like an artist, people will dig it more now that it’s dead.

THE HOT TICKET: Listen up, screwballs, cause Uncle Al is about to hep you to a solid scene to blow your gold: The LANCER LOUNGE is the strongest pour in town, hands down, clown. I don’t mean kindasortasomewhat strong or half-a-shot more strong, I mean SEASONED IN THE SOUSE, MAN-SIZE strong! Tonic for color, dig? Pink elephants on a ten dollar bill all the way. Go there, get stupid-cocktailed, and tell ‘em the Owl sent ya.

ON THE HORIZON: Keep your eyes peeled, oh ye plastered! There’s a new bosh bar on the brink, ready to open in late December. The CONTINENTAL CLUB, 5th and Santa Fe, is hiking up its aesthetic shorts and readying their doors for an onslaught of booze and boozosity. Nestled in the art district, the CONTINENTAL will be the hot spot to sit and get lit, mark my words. A short talk with proprietor RYAN SMITH yielded the following quote: “It’s going to be a cool, unpretentious bar. Low light, strong pour.” Lack of pretension and a solid swill? That’s all this Night Owl needs to hear! Pay special attention to New Years Eve at the C.C. — it’s gonna be a who’s who of the real people, the hep cognoscenti, the full-on where and the why.  

—Alan Owl

Got the dirt? Handle some scandal? Drop the ol’ Owl a line at owl@drunkard.com and squeal the real deal. I may even duke ya for something juicy.