Popination Distillation

a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: West End Tavern.

Well if it wasn’t another one of my trips up to Boulder, for to get my hairs done did, and to see my Dad for a pre-birthday pint or two before Stout Month concluded. And so I thought I should cover another Popination in Boulder whilst I was there. I’ve already written about most of what used to be my regular haunts there, but I haven’t covered West End yet, for whatever reason. I was Musing about this as I sat there at the beautiful bar: how come: a) I haven’t written about West End Tavern before? and b) I didn’t hang out here more often when I lived here and frequented downtown?

It’s been a minute since I enjoyed the rooftop patio here. But then, these days, my knees mislike that many stairs.

It’s always a lovely scenario outside on the Pearl Street Mall, even on the West end of the mall where it stops being pedestrian. And that’s why West End is called that: it’s an old icon of that end of the historic area that is the mall; one of the last of the OG Boulder places to survive, especially downtown. It’s best known for its extensive whiskey list, and its top shelf barbecue. Some nearby favorites are the Trident Café, which is only a couple doors down, and a block down from that, where it’s still pedestrian only, the high end sushi joint Japango. From meeting my Dad for Stout Month, it was a moderate several blocks of a walk in a springlike atmosphere, to the venerable old door of West End.

Inside, it hasn’t changed at all (since the last time I was there, anyway; about ten or fifteen years ago). A longish wooden bar adorned with the multi-amber gems of many whiskeys (as well as a good number of taps) on full display to gaze upon as one sips. The rooftop here is one of the best in Boulder, but it was just too chilly for me to use it that evening. And I was going to have some sushi as a special treat after Popinating briefly here, so I didn’t have any of their amazing barbecue this time. But I used to like it quite a bit, as I recall: there was a brief time when me and my ex-husband used to come down here pretty often for happy hour, and I remember loving their whiskey barbecue sauce but also their stellar mac & cheese. But it’s odd that I didn’t frequent this place, especially pre-first-husband when I was hanging out at Trident so often. I wonder why.

I do enjoy whiskey, and that may be part of my current Musing about why I didn’t go to West End all the time back then, but then again, my palate has changed muchly over the years. Back then, I would have been drinking beer almost exclusively, and back further then, it would have been a brown ale or something sweet. My enjoyment of whiskey for some reason didn’t come about during my ‘90s smoking habit, which is when my love of bitterness just began to expand into my palate (instead of just my heart and sense of humor. Heh). So I guess it does make a little sense. Also once I was living again on my own in The Birdhouse, it was just that much too long a walk away from the West end of the mall, and so Backcountry ended up being my local when I was situated down there.

It’s not that West End Tavern (ooo, another actual Tavern! For a real Popination!) is that expensive, or certainly not posh, whiskey-centered though it is. But maybe the fact that a $12 or $14 cocktail doesn’t make me blanch these days means something too. I was in a very different state of being back then than now, pocketbook, taste, and brain. I was a different person, even just ten years ago, even just eight years ago when I first got into the Birdhouse. It’s been indeed a long strange trip, and I look back through a glass darkly though gratefully.*

This was a bourbon (?) that had been aged in a port wine barrel, and I don’t remember what distillery it was from. But it was delicious.

*Is that too many clichés in one sentence? I’m keeping them. You knew the job was dangerous when you took it. Reading my unhinged essays, that is.

I’m famously, at least among those who’ve been blessed and cursed enough to have to edit or grade my writing, terrible at conclusions. My book is somewhere around 250 pages long, and guess how long the conclusion is? It’s like, three paragraphs. Meaty paragraphs, sure, but only three. So anyway. Let me pluck at a few threads I started above and see how I can tie them up. Let’s see…

Boulder nostalgia plus how I don’t really fit there anymore the way I used to. Old establishments there either shuttering or remaining the same, but it seems, never anything in between. How I have changed with and without that weird little city. Taste in whiskey. Bitterness. Sweetness. History.

That work?