Popination Trepidation
a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: Bohemian Biergarten.
Prost!
(not to be confused with Post, right next door, which I’ve written about here before. Ahem.)
Well. What do you know. I haven't been here in a quite a while. Years, in fact. Not sure why. Maybe it’s because it’s so close to Corner Bar, let alone Post (which IPAs I know I like). Maybe I doubt my ability to enjoy German style beer instead of my customary. I just don’t find my way in there when I’m in Boulder (ever more rarely) these days.
The first time I ventured into Bohemian Biergarten, it was way back in the day, during the times of my travel back and forth from Denver to East Boulder to teach, when I was still with my first husband. We ventured inside, and found not only a purveyor of delicious German food and crisp German style beers, but a huge back room with a stage that we later found hosted one of the best (and most popular) comedy nights in the state. I haven’t been to a comedy night since then—I should; I’m always on the lookout for talent for Blue Dime Cabaret. It’s just that it’s such a schlep for me these days. It’s about an hour and a half by public transportation, on a good day.
Oh, but! Why am I here today? I’m here to meet Friend Harold.
Bohemian Biergarten
…is a lovely German style beer garden and pub occupying a corner just off Boulder’s historic Pearl Street Mall. It’s got a comfy patio out front, that’s a great place to hang for an entire Boulder afternoon on a nice day, even if it doesn’t have exactly the people-watching you get on the mall proper. Inside, it’s all old wood and brass and shining glass, dim from only a couple smallish windows that look out onto said patio. Huge heavy picnic tables and benches are the seating in the front section (besides the bar stools), and they’re heavy enough that you can’t really move them for comfort, even if you bash your knee on one thick table leg or other. Their size, too, makes seating arrangements interesting—often it ends up as multiple groups sitting together out of necessity. Do we call that ‘family style’ seating? Maybe. I like to: it reminds me of passing around big dishes for everyone to dip into. Feels like that. As does the sausage, potato, schnitzel, beer cheese sauce nonsense that makes up the food options there. All that I’ve tasted are delicious, though at this recent visit I only tasted the giant pretzel. Thing is, there’s a series of various strong seeded beer mustards on every table, colored various shades of yellow ochre to maple brown, and they’re every one cheek-watering delectable. All you need is a pretzel, tbh.
Today, the gay blue bunting of Oktoberfest decor is up still, though I take it that officially, the 2023 Oktoberfest was over on October 3rd. What’s up with a word like ‘oktoberfest’ actually being about an event that takes place in mid-September? As you know well, if you’ve been following me for a bit, I refuse to do any research for these popination posts, so. I’m not gonna answer that. Maybe one of you knows why the moniker and time frame sound mismatched in English-speaking ears. Anyway. I was caught up in the festive decor and so I ordered a Paulaner Oktoberfest as my beer of the afternoon, and enjoyed it muchly.
Harold-ry
But anyway! Back to Harold: I’ve been seeing several headlines across the journalism/social media landscape variously lamenting the question of: How do adults make friends?
Honestly? I have no idea. My adult friends I have largely met either in school or play casts or …yeah I guess every once in a while bars. I still have a good friend that I met on a dating app back in the day and dated for a while and now we’re friends, but really if I look at those people I feel like are good friends of mine, it’s either been in theatre or in school. Harold is one of these pub rarities, though.
I’ve already described how me & Harold first met, but I’ll describe it again, just because it’s so strange—how many of you predict you’d say you are friends of over a decade with a person you met this way?
It’s pretty simple: I was standing room only leaning against the bar waiting for a seat, heavy overstuffed school bag at my feet, tired out from having taught my evening DU course and waiting also for a bus to take me to Gunbarrel, the buses to which were hourly at this time of night. I was sipping on my favorite FYIPA (this being Mountain Sun, just a hop skip and jump from the bus station), and sighing in fatigue and frustration.
From just below my left shoulder in the corner seat that I often called my own, I heard a friendly voice ask: “Would you like to join us?”
It was two men, one of whom I would call my friend for over a decade, even into today, when we meet as often as I can get into Boulder, had a virtual book club during lockdown, and more. After, I’d meet him and his friend nearly every week the way I did that night, to play dominoes and consume pitchers of amber or pale ale. Harold is still in my life, far away as I am, and now tutors my older stepgremlin in math. Why? Because Harold is a math wizard: he went to college a bit late, but when he graduated in his 30s, he was valedictorian. No, not just in the math department. Not just in the School of Arts & Sciences. In the whole. University. I don’t even need to tell you how hard it was to play dominoes against him and his computer-career friend, as many beers as we may have consumed. The effortless way they counted tiles was astonishing, and I never won more than a game or two in all our many tournaments for quarters. But that’s okay—that’s not why I played.
Harold’s one of these dear good old friends that I’ve never dated. Which is funny, right? So many people I know talk about the impossibility of being in a close relationship with a person of one’s gender of attraction without it turning romantic. I’m bi, so I don’t really have that restriction, but also? My closest friends I’ve made post-college days have been men, and I like the male-flavored friendship very much—it brings my heart happiness the way that often more intense relationships with women don’t. Same with a man I’ll call JQM—I met him in grad school and now we co-host a podcast (tell me what’s more bro-like than that?) and never had a dating phase to our relationship. As I write this at my ‘local’, a new bro-friend is chatting with me about how nice trash-talking feels, and I absolutely agree with him. It feeds my soul and makes my heart full the way nothing else can.
Why do I like this dynamic so much? Is it something to do with my bro-ish-ness? Probably so. I came of age as a man with my sword brothers of the mid-‘90s Colorado RenFaire, and that’s how I learned to be an adult. As a man. I discuss this in my memoir, but one phrase in particular stuck in my head, as I proceeded to grow up and then get caught in the clutches of a male narcissist, so I have to share it with you here too: the men I hung with most, rehearsed and theatrically fought with for months, would date and ditch so many women throughout the summer. As each woman got dropped, she’d come to me to try and be friends. At one point I got so exasperated I asked one of my sword-bros-in-arms: “Why are all your jilted women trying to make friends with me?”
He replied, “Well, you’re, like, one of the guys. But you have tits, so you’re safe.”
Am I safe, though? I have to think about this some more—why am I so readily friends with men, and why do I trust my male friendships so much more than my friendships with women? Maybe it’s because I was bullied so deeply by girls growing up, I trust that a guy will let me know if he’s upset with me up front? That I’ve gotten so much poison from girl bullies? I feel like I’m lucky I’m so gender fluid—I have some versatility in my own comfort level with my own self, and can more readily flow into differently gendered spaces. It’s something I’ve been contemplating lately and I’m sure I’ll touch on this topic again. But. What more is there to say now, but: