Your old dive bar is gone but the memories aren't
Mile high on the wire — altitude and attitude.
Okay, context—you know how sometimes a place just *feels* like Denver, even as everything around it changes? The Imperial on East Colfax, that forty-year-old institution, finally bit the dust for good this week. Westword ran a piece that basically said, "We knew it was coming, but it still stings." It’s a classic Colfax story, really. That strip, from Aurora all the way through Capitol Hill and into Lakewood, it's a living history book, and The Imperial was a chapter many of us remember flipping through.
So here's what's wild—The Imperial wasn’t some fancy spot, never tried to be. It was the kind of place you’d hit after a show at the Bluebird, or just because you wanted a cheap beer and no judgment. It had that gritty, real Denver vibe, a world away from the shiny new spots popping up in RiNo or the Highlands. For a lot of folks, it was the last holdout of what Colfax used to be before all the new high-rises started going up, before the 'luxury apartments' became the standard. The article really hit on that feeling of losing another piece of the city's soul.
* **What This Means for Denver:** It’s another reminder that the Denver we grew up with is constantly morphing. Places like The Imperial are part of our collective memory, woven into the fabric of East Colfax right alongside Casa Bonita and the Ogden Theatre. It’s hard to watch these spots go, especially when you think about the folks who kept them running for decades.
It's just another chapter closing on a piece of Denver history, making you wonder what’s next for those long-standing, unpretentious spots that still manage to hang on. The city changes fast, sometimes too fast, and these closures really make you feel it.
Mile high on the wire — altitude and attitude.
Ben and the crew on the Morning Wire dive into these stories every day — catch it live at mornings.live.