Popination Tarnation
a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: Tivoli Brewery
O Tivoli, I Hardly Knew Ye…
It was kind of weird, walking up the hill to the light rail station, waiting for the E train, taking it down to Auraria campus, downtown. That’s not a campus I have to go to anymore, but I wanted to compose a Popination piece about Colorado’s oldest brewery, and a pub that has given me comfort through the last leg of my long time teaching at one of the three colleges that share this urban space. So I did what I had done for many, many, years, and haven’t done for a few: I put in my earbuds, played a podcast, and took the train to Tivoli.
It was like taking a trip through a time machine—I even put a mask on whilst on the train, just because I’ve been hearing about a new strain, new cases of Covid popping up, etc. So it really did feel like plague times all over again, like the last time I had a physical commute there. Why did I bother? I wanted to take my own pics of the brewery, and I thought it might be an interesting trip emotionally, to come down to this place that I spent a dedicated 20 years working at, that I haven’t been to in over a year, that I haven’t heard a peep from any erstwhile colleagues. I feel like I’m visiting an abusive ex-partner after a painful divorce and 0-contact contract. Which I have also done, only a couple years before my split from this place. I don’t know how I’d feel if I ran into my ex-husband, and I certainly wouldn’t take a train to meet him. Maybe this is how it would feel.
Tivoli is the oldest brewery in Colorado, and second oldest in the whole US. Wow! No, I’m not doing any research, as per usual, but as this brewery has so much history behind it that isn’t just my own personal history, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about that even a little. I mean, not everything is about me, you guys, seriously (I mean yes it is but okay not really)...
Now for a good portion of my time teaching at (mumblemumble) school on Auraria campus, the Tivoli was closed. I’m not doing research to find out why, but this beautiful and ancient relic didn’t re-open again until I think 2012 or 2013, which was more than a decade after I first started working on that campus. Once it was up and running, though, I made myself a habit of going to the Tivoli for a pint pretty often after class—it was better than the old days of McDonald’s iced coffee and fries for lunch, and there is a reason why it’s well known for their flagship lager to this day.
Actually, I wasn’t sure why, other than that I knew a German guy had started this whole thing back in the 1800s, and so obviously it would be lager. But as I sit right now being hit with both nostalgia and feeling like a stranger, I decided to forego my norm of IPA (they only have hazy ones here anyway) and taste the OG, the flagship lager of Tivoli, first brewed in 1870whatever, called Helles Lager. And you know what? It’s delicious. Much more full bodied and flavorful than most lagers I’ve come by, and I’m enjoying it very much, especially after a slightly warm walk from the train stop past the big concert arena, past the new fancy classrooms where I used to teach frequently, into the student union, also called Tivoli, into the brewery.
Once, just before one of these pieces below was written, I conducted a first day of class—you know the kind: when the professor reads you the syllabus aloud and everyone knows perfectly well nobody will look at it ever again for the rest of the semester. On this day, though, there was a full solar eclipse happening outside, and so we left class early to go look at the crescent-shaped leaf shadows on the ground from the trees just at the foot of the Tivoli steps. A lot of people were already out there in the odd dark yellow light, looking directly at the eclipse through those special pinhole safety viewing apparati, but I didn’t have one of those. So one of the students showed me how you can look at the eclipse by looking not up at the sky, but down at the shadows cast by the trees, which I had no idea was a thing that worked. I let the trees show me the view.
What follows is a twin post: one of these pieces is from the Before Times (2018), and the other is from just last year (2022), before I stopped working on Auraria campus. The longer-ago piece is revised and adapted from an old pen-named blog, and the more recent segment is another section from my memoir.
The Power of Zeus Compels You
2018
Sitting at the upper bar of the Tivoli, I order a pint of something called Power of Zeus. I ask the young bartender if it will truly give me some of Zeus’ powers if I drink it, and she insisted it would. So. We shall see.
The Tivoli was a big deal for a while way back in the day, then was shut down for quite a long while after that—someone decided to clutch their pearls about a brewery being located on a college campus, among other reasons, I think including a big flood. But then it opened up again, all refurbished in a burnished, old fashioned looking way, and has a huge and pretty decent tasting beer selection, all made on premises. After all, I know at least one of the three schools that use this campus has a robust hospitality program, including brewing and fermenting certifications. Degrees, even, I think, in those things. So why not a brewery on campus?
Sitting where I am, my view is parallel to the shiny mad scientist’s lab that is the upstairs brewing facility. If I look down, I see the two lower bars, facing away from each other, one facing a wall of charging stations, the other facing the downstairs taps. If I turn and look behind me, I have a view of the Speer edge of campus, and much of the downtown skyline. It’s a pretty comfy pub, and I find myself wishing it existed back in the early aughts when I was down here three, four days a week. All I had was a dreary food court, from which I ate McDonald’s too frequently.
I’m down here this afternoon on an errand: I gave a couple collections of my poetry to the head of the Theatre Department where I teach. See, since none of the three places where I already teach are paying me anything till late September, and two of my three assigned classes here at this school are still low-enrollment enough to be at dire risk of cancellation, I have applied for a few more teaching jobs. One of these is a full time professor of poetry down at DU (which would be a pretty nice gig—cross your fingers).* So, this theatre Chair, not being familiar with my talents and expertise in that area, wanted some of my poetic work to read so she could construct an authentic recommendation letter.
Which makes me ponder two things: a) dang, I’m really fucking multi-talented; b) how am I going to survive the next few months? That I’m thinking these two things at once is more than a little irksome, because unfair. How is it that I am this powerless financially AND this experienced and skilled? Tell me: is that fair?
Sitting in my customary work corner of the couch this morning, I looked over my LinkedIn whilst taking a webinar about social learning and gamification in LMSes. It was interesting enough, and I made a couple more contacts, so that’s fine; not a complete waste of my time. But. I’ve been doing this since the dinosaur days of online learning, back in the early aughts, when Blackboard ran on steam power. I’m creative and innovative with online learning, but academia is “hemorrhaging talent” (as a friend recently said), and certainly has no money to give me, no matter how expert I am. So how do I transfer my awesomeness from academia to industry, and actually get paid for what I do and know?
A prevailing image for me right now is that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where he is faced with an optical illusion that looks like a deadly chasm. The only way he is able to see that it is indeed an illusion—a bridge, not a canyon—is after he takes his first big step into it. A leap of faith.
I’m willing to take that leap, I just have zero idea what it entails to do so. Do I just send my resumé and body language workshop syllabus out? To whom? Where does my foot go? Where’s the edge, over which I must step?
Since I don’t have an answer to that, I instead ingest more Power of Zeus and hope for the godly transfusion to work its magic. What? Hey:
I’ll take any help I can get.
*Spoiler alert: I did not, dear reader, get that job. Surprised? Don’t be. It’s the way of the academic world. Nothing fair about it.
Spilling the Tea, Over a Pint
Before I go on, read both of these, please:
The first is the prologue to my memoir, and the second is a small snippet of the epilogue, both documenting monumental events that occurred in late Spring and early summer of 2022. Both of these posts are important for context surrounding this next epilogue-snippet–they relate essential background info. This clip (and the whole book, too) is a story of violently maintaining my dignity, setting boundaries, and the grief that comes with the distance of being in recovery (from academia, not alcohol).
The below, like I mentioned, is a clip from my memoir’s epilogue: it entails leaving the meeting, going to Tivoli to blow off steam, and seeing if anyone would take me up on my offer of dishing further details over a pint. Assuming no one will. Vibrating a bit. What just happened? What have I done?
Great Escape
2022
After making it out of the meeting, away from the echoingly empty hallway, down the stairs and out of the building, I walked across a couple quads to the ancient campus brewery, there in the student union, perched on a patio overlooking the amusement park across the street. I ordered a red ale, named after the university mascot. I took bets with myself whether anyone would show up, as per my invitation to dish, earlier. And tried to stop shaking. I figured nobody would have the balls.
Then, to my astonishment, a petite non-binary person hopped up those brewery stairs, and sat down next to me. They were there at the meeting and had been working at the costume shop for a long while—they knew very well who I was, though I didn’t know them hardly at all. They ordered a pint, and said, once it arrived, “Okay, tell me. I want to know why you’re really leaving, and why it’s not in a good way.”
Turns out, they were debating whether or not they wanted to teach as an adjunct again, and wanted to hear more about that word I had used: disrespect. They were surprised, because of my longterm status at that school (no, I’m not going to call it “a long tenure,” thank you very much). They’d also taught as a sort of last resort sub situation in the costume shop and had been badly treated by the administration.* They didn’t want to put themselves in another bad place, and had taken my quitting as a warning. I didn’t know they’d ever adjuncted. We talked.
*Amid many other scandals, including sexual harassment and toxic workplace issues. The rot ran deep at [REDACTED SCHOOL NAME]…
They had recently undergone a relationship breakup with a gaslighter and financial abuser, too, and I told them about this memoir. So we commiserated on both that and the job. I believe I saved a life.
Oh—the tenured head of tech did pop by briefly as well. He had no time for a beer but he expressed his respect for me, the certainty we’d work together again professionally in the future, and said he was sorry it ended the way it did. He didn’t ask me why it had ended the way it did, or even what that way was that it did end. Did he have an idea why, already, before I’d done so, or did he not care, or? Had he expected this? Did Tenured Jim squeal? Did the department denizens deliberately drive me out? I think Tenured Tech was one of the more surprised ones at the meeting, but then again I’m pretty sure I shocked the Chair senseless too. But I don’t actually know. Maybe they knew what was coming.
I’ve not heard a peep from him or them or anyone else since, as of this writing.* Not even casually, on social media. Not even the secretary, the one who hugged me and told me she was there if I needed anything, anything at all.
The silence continues…
*And even still, as of this writing, today: September 4th, 2023, on Labor Day ironically enough: nothing. It’s as though I never existed. I’d been working in that department as an adjunct faithfully since 2005. I left in May of 2022. I’ve heard from none of them since.
My memoir is titled Next Time—a strong woman under the gaslight. It’s complete and revised, and I’m shopping it out to agents and small presses as we speak. Er, type. If you have any ins, let me know.