Popination Titillation
a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: Liquor Pie Speakeasy (and Peepshow).
Walking in to Odde’s Music Grill, I didn’t think there was anything Odde about it—it’s a nice roomy sports bar abutting on the corner of a suburban Westminster strip mall. The patio was peppered with heating columns (it being still pretty chilly at night in Colorado in March) and festooned with strings of lights. Inside, it was starting to get busy and the middle aged jazz band was just setting up. But I was told to go through the back, into a ‘fridge door,’ for what I was here to do. I asked the young enby checking IDs at the door where I could find such a door, and they pointed me to the back of the sprawling bar, across the parquet dance floor, to a mysteriously plain metal door, propped open and marked only with a pink ‘LP’ in cursive script, shedding neon glow over what was certainly an erstwhile walk-in freezer.
How Odde is That
It already felt like an escape room, or an adventure, to find the venue called Liquor Pie Speakeasy, where I was scheduled to perform Saturday night. I’d heard of Odde’s before, but not this little speakeasy that’s apparently hiding deep within its entrails. So I stepped hesitantly through the freezer door, and was again surprised.
The first thing visible upon entering was a mysterious Victorian library with red plush chairs, walled with full bookcases, and there—an elegant woman in a long sequined pegnoir there to greet patrons. Where am I?
Venturing through the little library’s short curve, I found my way opened up into a lovely little cabaret-seated jewel box of a speakeasy. A video screen backdrop framed the central part of the cement floor that was set up for the stage area, a mixing board and laptop set up stage right in the nonexistent wing for the sound needs of the show. Old wood chairs surrounded round tables of varying heights, and the mirrored back wall framed two big blue couches. I posted up in the corner of one of those, since the couches were raised up on a platform and I felt like I’d have a better view of the show.
What show? It was a cover-song-themed burlesque show put up by friend Katya Peepin’s troupe, Badass Burlesque. Since my own Blue Dime Cabaret is taking something of a Spring Break over the month of March, I thought I’d audition for a couple friend’s groups and maybe occupy myself and my own jiggly bits during that hiatus.
Liquor Pie and Badass
As I mentioned, the show was called Uncovered, as it consisted of all acts that used covers as their accompaniment. I was bringing an older burlesque act of mine (one of the first I’d ever choreographed for myself, in fact), to Chet Faker’s mellow and kinda country-flavored cover of ‘No Diggity.’ It’s a simple and fun piece, and I haven’t actually performed it in quite some time.
I spent the pre-show minutes saying hello to Katya and those performers I knew from past shows, and paced around this lovely little speakeasy in my stupidly tall platform boots, sipping on my Bulleit Rye. Once it was getting to be show time, I snuggled up in my little couch corner and made sure my eyeliner was still intact. Three middle-aged ladies came up needing a seat and I cheerfully shared the rest of my couch with them. Turns out they had come to Odde’s on a ladies’ night out, and were similarly curious as I had been about that mysterious fridge door in the back. When they walked in, and were told there was a burlesque show beginning, they knew immediately what they’d be doing for their night out. It was their first burlesque show ever, and they were happy to chat with me as I waited my turn in the spotlight. One of them was also a Boulderite of old, and so we reminisced about the old days in the hometown.
What a neat night of adventure that was! The Badass Burlesquers were indeed badass—some pretty amazing costumes, including the Queen of Hearts plastered with oversize playing cards. Katya Peepin herself is one of the bendiest of babes I’ve ever seen (and cast myself) so her chair acro was a treat, and one guy whose performance was his first ever burlesque, had such high level dance chops you’d never know. It was a lovely time and a marvelous little place.
Though a great way to spend a Saturday night, it was a really long slog to get there. And back. About an hour each way. Why did it feel like a longer & more annoying slog than Boulder & DV8? Dunno. Familiarity, maybe? Maybe that’s it—I spent so many years commuting back and forth to Boulder that Westminster just seems like the boonies, even though it’s technically not as far. It’s a past home of mine, and the long trip is familiar.
All in all, it was an enjoyable show, and after, there remained a lovely small gathering of odds at Odde’s (well, Liquor Pie); it was very pleasant to hang afterwards for a short bit with the eclectic audience and glittering performers. And I was surprised to find that several people there had heard of me, or at least of Blue Dime. So that was cool. I was happy I’d made the trip out. I asked the flower-crowned, fae-made-up, non-gender-specific bartender to pour me a Guinness for dessert, and I hung out for a little while before I turned into a pumpkin and needed to order my long ride home.
Doing stuff like this is well worth the $ for the long Uber: obviously I paid more for my transportation than I will get for my performance, but again, that’s not the point. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t afford it, but I’m thankful that today, I could.
I was thinking about what my life was like before Blue Dime and my new found freedom and life-partnership in Denver, and how it would have been impossible for me to have done half the things I’m involved with now. That’s a thing, isn’t it? That’s why people get too attached and stay too long with abusive or problematic people—they can’t afford to branch out and/or aren’t allowed to do things on their own or for their own selves. That was one of the biggest problems I had with both my first husband, and the first problematic burlesque troupe I worked with, in the early days when I first choreographed ‘No Diggity’—I was trapped not only by their attitudes, but by serious monetary restrictions. Huh. Well. Whattya know.
