Popination Habitation
a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: Bar Nun.
I heard there were portraits of nuns with Kiss makeup, and Jesus with luchador masks, as well as bras adorning the walls along with goth-religious kitsch. My interest was piqued. When I then heard that their pickle shots were famously delicious, I was sold. So, I decided to go on another Capitol Hill adventure. To Bar Nun.
The journey there was an interesting one. The city surroundings changed three times in one 20 minute uber ride: we began on the familiar stretch of highway, of course, which is the lifeline between my little office-park-y suburb and anywhere else Denver. Then there was a stretch just at the exit for several blocks which were run down, rough, industrial, and not the kind of place anyone wants to ever find themselves walking. Then that crunchy stretch blended surprisingly quickly and sort of abruptly into a brownstone-ish, hip, older but cooler area with gentrified coffee shops and boutiques and such, bricked to match the older venerable (and hella expensive, I have no doubt) residences.
Bar Nun? I hardly know none…
The exterior of Bar Nun blends in rather with the part-residential surroundings, and itself looks kind of like it used to be a house with a big porch, that got adapted into the bar it is today. Though I do hear it used to be a bar of old, in days before kitsch: I think it was the Cap Hill Tavern? I think that’s right (but no research allowed in Popinations, remember)? As it is, I got dropped off at the side of the narrow street and saw a covered, stone-pillared patio so filled with crusty yet beautiful people, I had to remind myself I wasn't in old Boulder. Walking in, it was all open to the air, with a little marble bar facing out and a vast lounge replete with quilted leatherette booths lining the far wall, a neon-green skeleton presiding over the dividing pillar between the two.
The interior decor at Bar Nun is everything the hype said, and more. There’s no surface area of anything that’s not papers over with framed punk art, artifacts and toys and odd religious objects, and the aforementioned bras. There’s a rosary draped over the jug of pickle shots, and a sticker on same that declares, ‘Jesus would be pissed off at you.’ There’s a crust punk flavored hipster vibe here, and it really did remind me, as I mentioned above, of old ‘80s and ‘90s Boulder back when it was still weird and wasn’t overrun quite with tech bros, rather with trust funded white guys with dreadlocks whose dog and bike are worth more than most homes. It’s certainly a different place now, though there are little stone roses of the old way that are discoverable here and there. But Bar Nun is certainly of this vibe, and the Leia-bunned pierced beauty serving me, let alone the regulars already gathering ‘round to yell at the Broncos game on the big TVs made me feel much at home, like I used to back in Boulder before it got uncomfortable.
What Nunsense!
And now, DAMON DEMON!
Wow, who’s that? That’s a real person—one of these old punks I’ve been Musing about and praising lately, who used to be too hot to be cool but who are now so cool you’re in danger of hypothermia. He was there for the Broncos game: a 70-year-old (he later told me) white-haired gent with huge gauges in his ears and both tattoos and age-related wounds perforating his arms. He was obviously a regular, as everyone seemed happy to see him and in fact were wondering where he’d been. As we chatted, I learned he used to be in charge of a big biking event that weekly happened around this area, that he grew up in New Jersey and that’s why he can’t stop talking, and that he averred everyone named Jenn was cool. Okay so I’m not arguing here, only that there are a very many of us; not all of us can be this cool, surely?
There’s a venerable wisdom (and wildness) of the agéd punks of the world. They/we’re really something. As we grow out our whitened beards and shave parts or all of our heads. Wearing multiple piercings and reading glasses. Our tattoos settling in to our skin like the oldest of venerable oils. Doing amazing things the likes of which could never be possible till now (I can’t help but think yet again of current Judas Priest, Metallica, Lars F and the still-robust Rancid, to name a few). Not amazing in spite of our age, but because of it. Damon Demon was living his best life, and as much as I don’t really know him or his situation, I was happy to talk with him, an old punk of many years, who assured me he’d quit chatting at me once I stopped laughing. I didn’t. And so he didn’t.
Get thee to a nunnery!
I’ve written earlier about my strange wistful feelings in being hit with not just nostalgia, but a visceral sense of a long life behind me, that must mean something:
[QUOTE]
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.
My own feelings of agéd punk-ness (gothiness in my case), and what we give to the world of the world’s varying undergrounds has been a topic of Musing quite often for me lately, both in writing and in conversation.
Next time you see an Elder Punk (or Silver Metalhead or Goth Crone), salute them, and buy them a drink. Ask them their story. We’ve all got quite the lives already lived to regale you with, and who knows? You might just learn something.