This story was published in Volume 1, Issue 1
Tucked between a strip club and a sandwich shop lies The Sundown Saloon — affectionately known as The Downer — established in 1982 and touted by many as the crown jewel of Boulder’s bar scene. As a newly minted 21-year-old, it only felt right to make my inaugural visit there as a rite of passage to my ever-growing affinity for beer, partying and the like.
To get inside, I quite literally had to submerge myself into the experience. Upon the descent down the stairs, I was met with the bar’s dim amber glow.
The Downer waged a visual skirmish with the sterile and garishly modern bars that I grew accustomed to. Adorned with tricolored string lights, a jukebox and seating areas fit for a caucus, I felt I found a sanctuary. No longer did I carry the sentiment that I was “too young.” The renegation of the “no-chairs-everyone-just-huddle-awkwardly” policy met me where I was: a university student who can’t bargain for a seat.
I could almost guzzle the froth of its beloved PBR pitchers just from standing there alone. I smelled an olfactory handshake between their beer and the kind of musk that feels ordained for a saloon. Just my language — pitcher please!
Upon “breaking the seal,” I decided I had the gall to investigate further. What do people really think of The Sundown Saloon, and why are they here anyway?
The answers came fast and loud, as if everyone had been waiting for someone to ask.
“The Downer is in the top three places on planet Earth,” Liam Dutka, a 21-year-old student at the University of Colorado Boulder said. “Nowhere else will you find every person you know, whether it’s happy, sad or both. This is the living waterhole for the city of Boulder.”
Similar sentiments were shared by girls convening at the literal waterhole: an orange canister of water beside the graffitied bathrooms. As portended by the great heavens above, it seems you are cosmically bound to see someone you know. The people I didn’t happen to know, however, had a unique way of making me feel like I should.
“It’s always been a place where people can come and find their friends, even though they don’t necessarily text their friends,” owner Sarah Downs said. “You can just come in, run into someone that you know and have a fun night.”
Downs also pointed to one of the small, deliberate choices that helps shape the bar’s character.
“We’ve always tried to instill consistency in always having a jukebox and not having TouchTunes, or music that people can just play off of their phones,” she said.
As a result, I observed that few patrons were glued to their screens. Still, some of those drawn in were only passing through.
Juliette Nanney, for instance, was on a short-lived return to Boulder from North Dakota. That very night she planned to rekindle an ex-fling, or in more modern prose, an ex-situationship.
Per her Notes app — and streamlined reviews of guys she had gone under the sheets with — he had far surpassed the near two-out-of-five-star average of her past partners’ sexual performances. To pass the time while he was at a concert, in hopes of off-roading with him the following day, she drank and sat at a clustered booth with friends.
The throngs of laughter and clatter of glasses droned around her, grounding visitors into a night that felt lived-in and authentic. I decided to drift onward.
Elsewhere in the bar, Niel Mondava and Art O’Kelly struck gold at the near-damp pool table. O’Kelly had nearly forfeited, but Mondava’s sound judgment convinced him to stay for a winning game. O’Kelly and Mondava were visiting Boulder on a work trip for an outdoor brand that they work for, but wouldn’t name. Mondava considered the prospect of moving to the city in January for the same company. The rest of their late stay at the bar proved to be fecund with promises of tours around the city.
In other conversations, it was unanimous that the cheap beer might be part of the traction factor. But praise for The Downer’s cheap beer doesn’t cut the sentimentality and nostalgia that some feel for the place.
Sara “Coco” Moore, a CU senior who began her college years visiting the bar with friends, said The Downer has become a second home for her.
“I am here probably once a week,” she said. “My friend’s grandma, who has now passed away, originally owned the place and is in the pictures on the wall, so I really do feel connected to this place.”
Wilson Elliot, another Downer inveterate, plans to move abroad and bought a hoodie as a keepsake because of the sheer amount of memories he made there.
“I want a piece of The Downer with me to remind me of the best parts about being home,” Elliot said.
With the rest of the night living in blurred absentia, in my day-old mascara and clothes, I can say that The Downer reaches far and wide.
Whether it’s the foosball, darts, pool, shuffleboard, cigarettes for sale or craft beer that disarms every wanderer who meets the bar, I know a latent home-like quality hums beneath it all. The Downer beckons like an ale-soaked cottage in the Holy Roman Empire.
