Popination Gamification

a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: Press Play.

Pasta Jay’s next door is also a Boulder institution of legends.

What am I doing back in Boulder?

It’s a simple matter of stopping in to a friend’s birthday party after a day of errands—this is a guy I went to high school with (he was a year behind me) and I first got to know him in Hello Dolly!, my senior year. He remembers me as ‘his director’ from that musical, and introduces me as having taught him everything he knows. When in reality I was just a year older and the whole reason why I was assistant director for that show was that I was not cast in my senior year musical. I talk a bit about this situation and my feelings regarding it in Chapter 3 of my memoir, called ‘You’re Looking Swell, Dolly.’

In Dolly, I got to compose my first dance choreography and was in charge of being basically an acting teacher and director for the whole cast, as I was the one to give notes after each rehearsal. And I was great at it. But for an 18 year old kid to be literally left backstage because she’s not small and pretty enough? 

But that’s not how my friend remembers it at all—he has no such bitter memory of unfair treatment of me as a peer and role model; quite the opposite, in fact. And how much better is his version than my sour reality? I decided that night, after the third time he introduced me to others of his friends as that glorious role, that I’d accept his version over mine as the truth. I like it better. Also, what a lesson that was for me as to how I treat myself with my memories, against what the reality is for that man who was there too. 

But all in all it was a lovely time, and quite fun to reminisce and chat about high school and such. And as his kids and my stepkids were all out at homecoming that night, it felt warmly connected—old and new high school traditions staying lively and alive, in tandem.

I always try and get an Avery IPA whenever I’m in Boulder, because it’s rarely on tap here in Denver.

Press Play

My friend’s birthday gathering was at an old arcade-cum-dive-bar called Press Play. He told me he chose Press Play for specifically his 51st because it’s one of those few bars in Boulder that hasn’t changed hardly at all over the years. Old places on Pearl Street Mall that remain untouched (since way back when we were all going to high school a few blocks away) are incredibly rare these days. Sundown Saloon is one of these. Mountain Sun is another. And Press Play is so too, with one slight caveat: it wasn’t always an arcade and wasn’t always Press Play, but it was always a grungy basement dive bar with pool tables, called Round Midnight before it added the gaming. But even that change happened many years ago, and withal the place is still the old dive bar it always was, just with the addition of a bunch of old school game cabinets from the ‘80s. And I bet that’s part of my wave of nostalgia being there: celebrating my friend’s 51st, and actually putting quarters into a pixelly old arcade game that I used to be so good at when I was 13.

Outside, you’ll see a pub sign hanging overhead depicting a pair of pixelated cherries meant to evoke the ones from Pac-Man. Looking closely, you can see a grungy wooden Press Play sign as you descend the staircase down the long crusty brick-walled walk to the neon-bordered entrance. Inside, you’ve got the long sticky wooden bar to the right, in the middle there’s an air hockey table and then three big pool tables in a row. Off in the darkness there’s a room with a couple giant Jengas and some ping-pong, which is where the DJed dancing happens late nights. Two closed-off rooms on either far end house a few old analog pinball machines each. And all along the left wall are lined a vast array of arcade games from the ‘80s and early ‘90s: Joust, Galaga, Simpsons, Frogger, Burger Time, Donkey Kong…you get the picture. And they all still take quarters: yes there’s an ATM and a change machine there so you can relive your Gen X childhood arcade memories. Remember, those red backlit 25 cent slots? Yep.

Don’t laugh at me for not having any pictures of the wall of games: the one I did take has a knot of young teenaged boys playing pool in the foreground and, as they’re minors and I didn’t get their permission to use their image, I’m leaving it out. So. Use your imagination. It’s a glorious place, though dimly lit. In all its tinkly-music-ed neon pulsing ways of days gone by.

Between pints and conversation, I played Galaga and then Mortal Kombat and sucked at both—my middle aged probably-arthritis in my sword hand has made Galaga impossible to play anymore unfortunately. I don’t know what my excuse for Mortal Kombat failure was. But I was a little disappointed in myself, as I used to be pretty damn good at Galaga. Oh well.

And when I piled my quarters on the high top table where most of the birthday partygoers were sitting, it excited all these 50-somethings very much. The light in our eyes was the light of all our pre-teen selves, playing our favorite games before making our way to Zeezo’s Magic Castle.

Press Play has this arcade mood during the day, a very dive bar-y flavor throughout, and then later in the night it becomes a nightclub (with DJs and gogo dancers and the whole lot). As far as dive bar criteria go, it hits most if not all of them on the nose: old and crunchy inside and out, dimly lit, shady entrance, weird bathrooms, and the games at least are cash-only. They do have a kitchen at Press Play, too, but its fare is limited, and it’s not even always open—they’ve got a neon sign that says ‘Kitchen Open’ and if it’s lit, you can get food. If not, you’re relegated to the chips in the vending machine in the corner.

The view as one emerges from the depths:

Be Kind, Rewind

Though Press Play is the same scuzzy dive bar that it has always been (pre- and post-arcade mode), but when you walk up the stairs to leave it’s this very upgraded corporate view that greets you once you emerge streetside, which feels (to me) very not Boulder. But then again, I remember Boulder from way back when, and I don’t know that that makes it better necessarily. Partially it must’ve been that I was attending a high school friend’s 51st birthday, let alone the fossilized surroundings, that made me plunge so deep into nostalgia that could be so shocked asunder by some fancy cars and modern buildings on the other side.

One of my friend’s other high school friends there was a woman that remembered spilling Coke on me, back when she was 16 years old and I was 17. It happened on the plane to France as we traveled to an exchange program. I hadn’t remembered that at all, nor did I remember her, but she declares I expressed worry that I’d have to meet my host family with sticky legs. How weird and funny that that small mishap stuck with her all these years later, but not me. She’s still heavily involved in the French language—she’s a French historian to this day. I had to admit to her I’m no longer fluent. 

So odd, to feel like a relic. To notice what one remembers and what one doesn’t. To come up the stairs, knees complaining with pain, from inside a time capsule where a quarter will get you a game of Joust, then seeing that glassy office architecture and black shiny luxury cars as a blunt contrast. Leaning against the ancient exterior red brick, to pulling up the Uber app on my phone, a computer the likes of which we didn’t have even at full room size back in a-quarter-for-Frogger days, let alone in the palm of my hand with its smudged touchscreen. I do have a court jester/Harlequin sticker on the back of it, though, which does still track for me. In ‘85, it would have been on a notebook tucked into my back jeans pocket. So I stick my phone in my back jeans pocket and go to Mountain Sun for an FYIPA while I wait for traffic (and Uber prices) to reduce a bit. They only take cash, which is another relic from the past. I’ll scroll social media while I wait, posting an old picture and a new one side by side for everyone to see. The old and the new. Side by side.