Monday, March 13, 2017

Denver Speakeasy: B&GC




At Mystery Playground we are always on the lookout for new speakeasies. These bars might be modern, but they takes us back to a bygone age. Where liquor was banned and people needed to sneak around to visit hidden drinking establishments. Kerry Hammond discovered a new speakeasy in Denver and is here to tell us about it.

It’s not every day that a new speakeasy hits your city, so I was extremely pleased when I started to hear rumors. The word on the street was that a new hotel in an upscale Denver neighborhood had a hidden bar inside. I was on a mission.



My preliminary research unearthed a website for B&GC. The front and only page of the website shows a gold doorbell and a telephone number. After further investigation, I knew what I had to do. I got three friends who were willing to hold a Friday night free without specific plans and I waited until that afternoon. 




I didn’t call the number—that would be too obvious. Instead, I texted it. It was a simple text, it read: 4 for tonight? Then I waited. Nothing happened for almost an hour, but then my phone buzzed. We were in, and were told, via the same text, to show up at 8 pm in the alley behind the hotel. It said we would see a gold doorbell and we were to ring it and wait.




My friends and I showed up, wandered down the dark alley behind the hotel and found the doorbell. It was attached to a cinderblock wall underneath a sign that read “Stair 3.” We rang the bell.




The door was immediately opened by a young man who asked to see our identification. Once that was taken care of, he led us through the door. We were in the back halls of the building, surrounded by more cinder blocks and lots of metal railings. We walked through a few corridors until we came to a door with a gold handle. We had arrived.



We went through the gold handled door into a dimly lit, beautifully decorated bar. In the background, we heard big band music and there were candles on each table. The menus were left for us and we spent some time trying to decide on a drink—they all sounded tasty.




We first ordered something off the menu, choosing Blackthorne #3, New Money, Seward’s Folly and The Sun Also Rises. We passed the drinks around the table (cold viruses be damned) and I can attest that each and every one was delicious.

Then we decided to go rogue. A man who wasn’t our waiter was wandering around the bar, making sure everyone had everything they needed. He informed us that they loved to create specialty drinks to fit the tastes of their guests. So we each told him what we liked in a drink. 


Our descriptions were varied and complicated, but when our drinks arrived each of us was amazed at how spot on they were. My friend, for example, said that she liked things that were refreshing, like the ocean….and she liked the color blue. Her drink tasted like citrus and had a foam top like a crashing wave. There were drops of blue curacao on top that accented the foam.



A great time was had by all!


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