Popination Deliberation
a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: Slattery’s.
Initially, I included a rule that I wouldn’t repeat any pubs in my Popination series—even those that I only briefly mentioned in my inaugural popinations posts (Part 1 & Part 2). But those first posts happened as vocab word posts on two Fridays, before I knew this was going to explode into an ongoing series. So. Since I’m now Popinating on Mondays for the foreseeable future,* I’ve decided to make new full essays, expanding on some of the pubs that only appeared in those brief overview posts early on. Think of these as fleshing out the teasers that have appeared before.
Mainly I’ll cover the most important pubs in my world, the real 3rd places and meaningful meeting areas of my popinations past and present. Of course, if I‘ve already featured a pub in a full essay, I won’t repeat it, unless something very unusual happens.
Anywho, today’s fleshing-out piece is about one of the most important pubs in my South Denver popinating. It sustained me during some messed-up transition times in my life, and was the last to close and first to re-open during Covid lockdown. This pub was mentioned in Popinations Part 2, and this has been expanded from there.
*A couple Mondays ago, I suddenly despaired: oh no, I thought, what’s going to happen when I run out of taverns? Have I already? But. Yeah no. I live in Colorado; I’ll be taken care of with breweries alone for the next several months at least. We like to go out for our drinks, here in the centennial state, huh.
Kiss Me, I’m Slattery’s
There are at least a couple real, or at least pretty authentic, Irish pubs in Denver. One of them, Nallan’s, was a place where I spent many a downtown coming-of-age drinking moment, and of course now that I see they’ve opened back up after Downtown Denver’s Covid and post-covid deterioration, I’ll definitely be going back there and will write about it for you. That’s the real deal: old, kinda smelly, bartenders with accents, that kind of thing. The other is Irish Rover, which I’ve written about before.
Slattery’s is not that kind of Irish bar: it’s one of those with the trappings: it’s got a year-long Countdown to St. Paddy’s Day above the bar, it’s got classic corned beef thingies, it’s got really good fish n chips, but they also do know how to pour a good Guinness.* They’ve got Jameson’s and Tullamore Dew, but you don’t want to order an Irish coffee. So it’s the kind of Irish bar I call ‘corporate Irish’. And it’s a comfy and lovely pub. It was my main Denver 3rd place from …oh man, like 2019 till 2021ish? I think? But I’m not a stranger, either:
I still bring people to Slattery’s when I need to meet with someone I don’t know very well, or haven’t seen in a while, or if I like, have an interview or something. I used to write there two or three times a week or more, before I.C. Brewhouse was established (or at least before I frequented it), and before the pandemic stopped all popinations.
*They also have Guinness 0, which I tried for the first time there when I was taking some time ‘sans cans,’ as The Moon Under Water used to call it. It’s delicious, and tastes pretty much like a can of the alcoholic variety. I was quite pleased to find this was true. And it was no more expensive than the 4% variety.
I had written before that most of my memoir’s first drafts and feedback emails were processed there at the bar over a Titan IPA or a Tullamore Dew. But I can’t actually remember clearly: was it there? Or was it later, at IC? No, it had to have been at Slattery’s. But. Man, is it just me, does time during the hardest parts of the pandemic just not make any sense in the memory now? I hate to say: I had to do a little tiny bit of research, because it was driving me crazy, and I noticed that the bulk of the work on my memoir, or specifically the feedback emails were in mainly 2021. So. Probably Slattery’s then?
Thing is, this was a place I could get to easily from the light rail, and is pretty close to my partner’s home, so he and I found this place to be very central and important in our early re-relationship. We would meet here in between my commute and going home to Boulder or the other way visiting him. I’d get off at the Orchard train station, walk across the median and through a weird office park parking lot, and down a winding sidewalk lined with strangely open land, to the Landmark luxury complex, past Dionysus and the posh Asian fusion place (which I should write about one of these days), the steak house, and the low-T clinic as well as the breakfast place I’ve only been to a couple times, when Partner and I were new. But it was an easy stop-off, and I could comfortably park my iPad there and do some writing over a couple pints of Titan or dram of Tully, meet Partner, and go home. Or the other way around, though usually I’d go to Terminal on the way back.
It’s still a comfy place to post up for a bit, even now, though I don’t know anyone there anymore really. When I was a very regular regular, I was friends with a few of the women who tended bar, most of which would gently complain at the unofficial dress code, remarking that it was becoming almost a Hooters. But it hasn’t gotten quite that exploitative, at least not that I’ve noticed in my not-as-frequent frequentings recently. Everyone’s still pert and mostly female and young and… well it’s fine withal.
When Slattery’s Eyes Are Smiling
Slattery’s holds a dear place in my popinating heart, as they hung on longest before closing at the lockdown of the pandemic, was active in parking lot orders out during, and were one of the very first to open back up with masks and expanded outward seating once it was allowed. It was a place of great comfort for my partner and myself, and I’m glad they’re still going strong. Fun fact: I was there the day the mask mandate was lifted. Beloved bartender, petite Tia, tore hers off and tossed it into the air like a graduation cap, as the whole place echoed with relieved cheers.
"Corporate Irish!" I love that!😂
I know exactly what you mean by that; they have all the pseudo-Irish stuff but can't pour a Black and Tan, have no idea what colcannon is and will serve Old Bushmills (which my dad derided as "Protestant whiskey").
My favorite hang out back in my younger days was a place in San Diego known, appropriately, as The Blarney Stone. Owned by a guy named Pete from the old country. He used to charge a quarter more for a Black and Tan than he did for a Guinness draft or a Bass and if you asked him why he would answer, totally deadpan, "Labor charge." They used to sponsor a "half-way to St. Patty's Day" pub crawl where you met there, had a Guiness, and then got on a chartered bus and visited every pub in San Diego that served Guinness draft (back in the 1980s there weren't as many as today). The bus dropped you at home and you came back the next day for your car. Still my image of a pub when I imagine one!
‘Protestant whiskey’ omg I love it.
To give Slattery’s a bit of (bit o’?) credit, they do actually know how to pour a black & tan, and their corned beef is actually good. They don’t do colcannon but they do a very good bangers & mash and an excellent shepherd’s pie. And I mentioned their stellar fish n chips, too, which is something of an accomplishment, it being in Colorado where we have no water to speak of.