Popination Assignation
a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: Prost Brewery.
Not to be confused with Post Brewing Co. Also: Locals Aloud.
I’m back home (well I have been for several weeks now—it took me that many Mondays to get through all my London Popinations—and so I’m Popinating in Denver and its environs once again. I mean, yes, it’s nice to be home. And there are so many more pubs around that I still need to explore, including two suggested by the podcast host I chatted with last week.
Ever since I started the Popinations essays as a continuing series, now whenever I have a thing to do in person someplace, I’ll be sure to add a Popination to my outing. I just look at my Google Map and see what’s around the area, and, it being a hard-partying foodie city Denver, there are always a few. This has brought me to a few new-to-me places at each outing, and has (I think) made my essays a little more interesting, as I can include these little windows into the apparently interesting things I do in the world. Besides pubs. But I digress.
Prost!
Not to be mixed up with Post Brewing which is an American style brewery specializing in fried chicken, Prost Biergarten is a German brewery, food and beer included. It’s located just north of downtown in just a bit less iffy an area than the recording studio I’d been in only an hour before. But it was still situated in a strange cul-de-sac-cum-corner behind a sort of frontage road to the highway exit? Kinda? Suffice to say the u-shaped patio looks out on the behind of downtown, and is nestled in to a little gentrified strip that houses a few more little bars and bistros that look like they might be good, if I find my way down there again.
Inside, it’s flush with much natural light as the wall-sized windows are open to the expanse of patio. Low wooden picnic tables and benches line the inside and out, and there are just a few barstools positioned at the brushed steel secondary bar (the first of which is only the area where you place your order. That place has a strapped-off and signaged queuing guide set up, which makes me think this place must get pretty busy, probably of a weekday happy hour.When I was there, it was pretty dead, and not a little windy, so I opted for the bar instead of the patio.
Me Aloud
The reason I was out on this expedition to the quite inaptly named Sunnyside quadrant of roughish Denver was that I was set to appear on a podcast called Locals Aloud. This podcast is a branch of Denverse magazine, and is basically an interview show, where the host, one Anthony Elio, chats with some of the more interesting denizens of the Mile High City. Apparently, I am one of these. (Cue my husband saying, ‘duh!’)
Funny enough, my own worse-than-modest view of myself was summarily dashed by Anthony, who declared I was pretty much the most interesting person he’d talked to yet, which did fluff up my self-esteem muchly. If you’ve followed Zuko’s Musings for any length of time, you’ll have already heard about my irrational complex regarding talking about myself (including my memoir’s Chapter 1 and my Popination about impostor syndrome at the Opera House). It’s a weird thing, really—I’ll be listing out a few of the many things found in my professional portfolio for whatever reason, and I treat this fascinating work with such a blasé attitude, it’s hilarious. More than once, my husband will turn to a person I’ll be chatting with, say, at the bar, and he’ll be like ‘Okay but she’s not even telling you the half of why her work is so fascinating. Here, let me elaborate…’ It is a thing, I must admit: a conundrum, when a friendly stranger asks me that dreaded question: ‘What do you do?’ I…well. How do I answer that? Let me count the ways?
Here’s another funny thing—impostor syndrome was a major theme in last week’s Visual & Physical Communication class that I’m teaching. We covered what impostor syndrome is and how Amy Cuddy’s ‘power poses’ can help to assuage such a thing in a few different ways. What timing. What serendipity.
Shoutout to Anthony at Locals Aloud (&
also) for a great talk. Thanks, too, for liking my Popinations and thanks yet again for the further suggestions of some cool sounding pubs and breweries near the recording studio. I’ll have to do another episode and try one of those places on my next visit.