Popination Degradation
a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: Outback Saloon
Amid my mild changing of some of my Popinations rules, I thought I’d revisit this VIP (Very Important Popination) from my past, in a little more detail than in that brief mention back in Popination #1, before I knew this would become one of my more popular series here on my Substack.
So I have a rather edited and streamlined description of this beloved bar, and then after that a Musing from several years ago: a reminiscing from 2017, of days somewhere around a decade or so before that, about only a couple of the very many visits I had regularly made to that very worn out dive bar.
Outback is one of those places that, when you walk in first, you feel slightly threatened, or that maybe you don’t belong. It looks pretty tough, and smells rough, and the row of taps is markedly bereft of grassy craft beers (though their collection of local basics is tasty even to me) and they have a very cheap happy hour, including Rumple Minze shots, which I only recently realized was a thing that cheap drunks did. /blushes in alcoholic/ Maybe I should change my Xmas liqueur of choice to Grand Marnier…
So here’s a couple chunks of older writing: one is a doctored-up version of the writeup in the original Popination Mention. The other is a kaleidoscope I created in 2017, from earlier memories of Outback. That one I’ve kept a bit more intact as a museum piece of sorts, though I’ve ensmoothened it a bit (ooo I like that word I’m a keep it) and made it a bit less bitchy and a bit more private. As much as I’ve embraced a clean and righteous and very carefully placed hatred as part of my healing process from abuse, I also know that in older pieces I sometimes indulge in it a tad more than I imagine an average reader would feel comfortable with. So.
I hope these old and older ruminations on this Popination give you a good idea of the place and my deep comfort zone within it. Cheers.
This place feels like a real tavern, I think, even though its own name calls it a saloon, and it’s been called a dive bar too, for good reason. It’s an old, seedy place that actually hasn’t changed much since I used to frequent it in the late ‘90s and early aughts and on into the early 20-teens. It’s located right next to my favorite used book store, so every time I go back to Boulder for the one, I visit the other.
The Outback is a classic dive bar, with its pool tables hosting one of the more active billiards leagues of the area*, a sticky old wood bar fronting the well stocked liquors and taps, and a crusty old shuffleboard, at which I used to play many a drunken competition with my fellow martial arts buddies over pitchers of 90 Schilling. It also has a karaoke night twice a week, and it boasts some of the best singers in the area—you’d think they held auditions. Their food is basically a wide selection of your classic fried pub grub, but it’s very tasty fried pub grub.
*UPDATE: I don’t think they do the pool tournaments anymore? Someone who knows more, please chime in. I do notice there’s a new axe-throwing service happening there though. So I mean. Cool?
A kaleidoscope of ideas (edited only slightly from 2017)
…not to be confuscated with the chain steakhouse of nearly the same name, the Outback Saloon is an ancient dive bar of the type you don’t expect to see in Boulder. To wit: scuzzy doesn’t even come close to describing this place. Even wearing sandals there makes one worry about the health of one’s toes, getting too close to that floor. The bar opens early in the morning (for the night shift folks), and closes late. Also, at least when we used to go: no food after a certain hour, but for the ugly and shady, goo-besmudged popcorn machine. Husband used to put Tabasco on said popcorn, as an alcoholic’s desperation snack.
This was a regular haunt of mine way back in the late ’90s. Ish. The karaoke days were more in the early 20-teens.
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Just after a rigorous and disciplined three hours straight of hard martial arts practice, we all walk down there, in half-gi and half Boulder comfort gear. The Big Bear, the Dreadlocked Wonder, my brother, my husband, our roommate The Badger, and me.
We order copious pitchers of 90 Schilling, then move on to the clotted, scruffy shuffleboard table, where we divide into teams, one headed by husband (the sensei) and the other headed by me (the senpai). Comraderie in the form of competition ensues.
The night goes on, pitchers are drained and refilled, and after husband and brother get farther into their cups, they spin the theory of The Sobrunken-Stoned Index (tm), which is the level of intoxication necessary for prime sport or game performance. They spin the science of this, detailing that when one is too sober one’s inhibitions get in the way and one tends to be a bit too careful or hesitant; but when too far gone, technique gets sloppy and outcome suffers. They come up with a formula. We all laugh. It’s a good night, and it’s nice to lubricate after such rigorous training. Or is that an undoing of it? Doesn’t matter, that night.
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Since Christmas Eve was always the holiday with my family, husband and I walk on over to The Outback late morning on Christmas Day. We play a little shuffleboard, then sit right at the big picture windows, watching the fluffy snow fall onto the red and green Christmas lights wound around the railing of the patio outside. We toast with our pints: to many Christmases together to come.
There were a few after that, but not there. Not at that level of calm, of serenity, of good snow and thoughtful reflection upon a year past and a warm holiday. That all wound tighter and tighter until it sprung a leak. And then unraveled.
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Karaoke night here is quite competitive; not everyone gets to sing, and those who do actually have pipes to show for it. Only a slight step below actual auditions, especially on Saturdays. I always thought this was surprising, in such a rough-seeming place.
The karaoke host is my bank manager—I went to high school with him (acted in The Way We Live Now together in fact), and so he knows I’ve got pipes.
Husband performs his slightly off-key rendering of his fave Peter Murphy song, and our girlfriend sings that one song about the kids and their kicks, better run better run…? That one? She’s a few years younger than us, and I am not versed in her era of music so much. I take a risk (the risk coming from the level of beer down my throat), and pull off with aplomb and extended high notes the theme to James Bond movie Goldfinger.
Then girlfriend and I go up for a duet: Violent Femmes’ ‘Blister in the Sun.’ We alternate verses and share choruses, and jump around together, and mosh each other, and somehow by the end of the song I’m on my knees, arched back over my heels, mic protruding from my lips like a bird beak, and she’s likewise on her knees, worshiping the mic stand in a quasi child’s pose.
That whole three-way relationship was ostensibly secret, but I cannot imagine our circle of friends didn’t suspect something was going on at least between the two of us, after that performance. She claimed not at the time, but she had been lying to both of us about a few things, for a while, so. Who knows.
I do remember needing to wash my hands after touching that peeling-away carpet, and did an actual shot of actual Goldschläger to sanitize my mouth after contact with that mic.
CURRENT AUTHOR NOTE: (imagine this as a ‘Where Are They Now’ credits montage)…
I haven’t spoken to my ex-husband for close to 6 years. And that’s a good thing. But I have no hard feelings about this girlfriend I mention, even though she treated me pretty poorly. Mainly because, hot mess though she was and is, she was big enough to apologize to me later, and took accountability for her own behavior. She’s a theatre colleague to this day—I actually choreographed the fights for a Shakespeare show she directed in the Before Times, amid other things. I have no problem with that. And she’s still good at karaoke, so I hear. Last I heard from my ex, he was pontificating about conspiracy theories online. Because of course.