12.22.09»CRAWLING FORT COLLINS

We struck out on a Saturday night, prepared to drink our way through Fort Collins, Colorado, the town rumored to have the most bars per capita second only to San Francisco. As it turns out, this is an urban legend, but a persistent one.

As a college town, Fort Collins’ drinkers are numerous, with young, healthy livers. Our group doesn’t quite fit that profile, although we are still relatively young in the big scheme of things, our livers have been around the block more than once.

We have all drunk our way through Fort Collins many times before, but never with such a deliberate purpose. I set out with my accomplices: The Muscle, The Mom, and Pink Drink. We were to meet up with The Other Mom and The Bartender some time later in the evening.

7:45 p.m.
Drunken Monkey Cantina
151 S. College Ave.
Orange Blossom, $4

This bar is the reason I wanted to write a Fort Collins Six Shooter. The bar’s slogan is “Blow your Whistles!!! Tequila, making women lower their standards since 1942.” That slogan, combined with the fact that the Drunken Monkey features swings in lieu of bar stools, made this place our first stop of the night.

Now swings instead of bar stools may seem like a bad idea, and it is, but the concept is highly entertaining. This bar is definitely more popular with the late, late crowd who enjoys hip-hop and whistle-blowing tequila shots, so we arrived to find all the swings unoccupied. I think the Drunken Monkey serves Mexican food, but I’ve never actually seen anyone eating there.

We carefully perched ourselves on the swings and I ordered a Drunken Monkey. Turns out they don’t actually have a drink called Drunken Monkey, a situation that temporarily ruined my evening. The Muscle and The Mom ordered beers, Pink Drink ordered a Buttery Nipple on the rocks, while I made grumpy faces at the bartender who, mildly sympathetic to my state, suggested a bunch of tropical sounding drinks.

I settled on an Orange Blossom, which is basically gin, orange juice with a splash of triple sec. As it turns out, this drink tastes exactly like a child’s chewable vitamin C tablet. Exactly. We drank and swung, and reminisced about past experiences at this bar, many of which involve drunken comrades falling off the swings.

The swings are very slick and I kept slipping off the front of mine. Annoyed, I grabbed the rope to pull myself up for a tenth time and ripped my thumb open on the coarse rope.

Two out of our party of four got slivers from those damn ropes. My conclusion? Swings at a bar may seem delightful, but they are a goddamn liability.

8:30 p.m.
Elliot’s Martini Bar
234 Linden St.
The Classic, $4 (with 2 blue cheese stuffed olives at 50 cents each)

This place has a mind-boggling martini list, but personally, I don’t go for all that. A martini should be made from gin, relatively translucent, and just a little ruthless on your taste buds. Of course, I am one of very few people left with this opinion.

Elliot’s has been in Fort Collins since 1997, and it still doesn’t feel like a place you’d find in Fort Collins. It’s sort of classy. They play funky jazz. It’s the kind of establishment where girls like to go on girls’ night out and order pink drinks. Oddly, Pink Drink ordered a Velvet Tongue, not pink at all - it’s a vodka, coffee, hazelnut drink served up in a martini glass. It was, however, keeping in line with her sexually themed drinks.

The Mom, usually a beer drinker, also ordered a coffee style martini called Naked in the Woods. She chose that moment to declare, “I’m gonna let my hair down tonight!” After a long discussion with our waitress, who only had a smile for him, The Muscle ordered a fancy Belgian beer that turned out to be more expensive than my Classic Martini.

The place was crowded and very hot. I was attempting to dislodge myself from my coat when the dour waitress took our orders, so I forgot to specify a gin. I ended up with a house gin that burned up the lining of my esophagus. I’ve had much better martinis at this joint.

Due to the heat and trying to choke down my drink, I didn’t notice the huge flat-screen television until we were getting ready to leave. It was playing a Burt Reynolds movie with French subtitles - an attempt to be pretentious? If so, the pretense was spoiled by a group of guys I noticed sitting at one of the booths.

They stood out because they were guys in a bar full of chicks, and I because they were wearing Carhartts. Only in Fort Collins will you find Carhartts-wearing guys in a martini bar, under a television playing an American movie in French subtitles.

We walked on.

9:15 p.m.
The Town Pump
124 N. College Ave.
Atomic Cherries, $1 each
Jell-O Shots, $1 each

The Town Pump celebrated their 100th birthday on March 11, 2009. The bar holds the prestigious title of Fort Collins’ oldest bar, and it just might be the smallest. Being the oldest bar in Fort Collins is actually quite a feat considering prohibition in the town was only lifted in 1969. I’m not making this up. It’s a little fact I learned while on a ghost tour of the city this past October.

For my friends and I, this has long been a stop on an Old Town bar crawl, so we dutifully made this our third stop of the night. After having our IDs carefully inspected at the door, we were greeted by '70s rock-n-roll and sideways glances from the regulars.

Atomic Cherries are maraschino cherries soaked in Everclear. They are nasty, and the ones we ordered on the evening of our Six Shooter were no exception. The Jell-O shots were equally disgusting, but it’s tradition, so I sucked down two.

It’s hard to find seating in The Town Pump, but we were early enough to get a couple of spots at the bar. At this time of night, there’s a crowd of regulars already tucked in for an evening of drinking – I quickly got the feeling we were taking up a couple of regulars’ barstools, so we moved on.

Not much to say about this joint, except avoid the bathroom. Most regular Fort Collins drinkers know this rule. I assume 100 years ago, The Town Pump’s bathroom was the alleyway; today they’ve got what has to be the world’s smallest, and perhaps most stinky, bathroom. While sitting on the throne, one’s knees literally hit the door.

9:30 p.m.
Surfside 7
150 N. College Ave.
New Belgium 2 Below beer, $3

If this bar were a person it would be Matthew McConaughey. It’s a place for the chilled out, low-key kinda party crowd, if you get my drift. There’s a couple couches near the front, surfboards on the walls, and I’m pretty sure Phish was on the jukebox when our group dropped in.

Still early for a Saturday night in a college town, we got three seats at the bar. Pink Drink had to leave after the Atomic cherries and Jell-O shots, so we were now waiting for The Bartender and The Other Mom who were to join us here.

Looking around I noticed a lot of stocking-capped heads and several dreadlock bags. If I had gone to college in Fort Collins, this totally would have been my bar. Totally.

We ordered a round of beers from another pissy bartender. I guess waiting on college kids all the time makes a person grouchy.

It was no surprise when my conversation with a random guy at the bar turned to… wait for it… marijuana. We discussed the ease with which he had gotten a medical marijuana prescription and now gets his pot legally from the guy who used to deal it to him illegally. Interesting.

The jukebox changed from groovy to something straight out of the 1950s, which was appropriate because there was a brood of retro-chicks complete with pompadours sitting at one of the tables. Surfside is definitely eclectic.

The Bartender and The Other Mom finally showed. We finished our beers and decided to hit yet another famous Fort Collins college hot spot.

10:45 p.m.
Trailhead Tavern
148 W. Mountain Ave.
Gin & Tonic, $3

As soon as we walked into the Trailhead, I remembered something I had forgotten – I don’t like the Trailhead. As it turns out, while my tolerance for alcohol has maintained, it appears my tolerance for drunken college kids seems to have gone way down over the years. As it also turns out, the Trailhead is not a place to hang out on a Saturday night if you have a low tolerance for drunken college students.

We ordered our drinks from another unhappy bartender, who was annoyed at my request for a receipt. We made our way to the only free parcel of bar real estate we could find, a patch of ground next to the bathrooms. We did have some amusing discussions, including The Bartender’s recommendations on odd gin drinks for me to try.

The Mom and The Other Mom, who have been friends since high school, were now drinking rum and coke. The Mom revealed her first concert was The Dead Milkmen at age 13. Her second concert was Nine Inch Nails. I briefly wondered if anyone in this bar, besides our group and maybe a bartender, would recognize the name “The Dead Milkmen.”

That’s pretty much all I have to say about the Trailhead. They do have pool tables and video games, including Big Game Hunter, which seemed to be a big hit with a group of guys who all looked as though they’d snuck in using fake IDs.

Lastly, the Trailhead has Jager on tap and serve cans of beans and franks. Oh yes, they really do.

11:30 p.m.
Steak-Out Saloon
152 W. Mountain Ave.
Bombay Sapphire Martini “undercover”, $6

As we departed the Trailhead and stumbled through the thick haze of smoke out front, a figure came running through the darkness. She threw her arms around The Muscle, who was entirely confused by the attack.

The attacker turned out to be an old friend we hadn’t seen for months. She was out with a group of friends and they’d apparently been drinking for quite awhile because she stated her husband was “around here somewhere.” We later learned he was actually at home watching their kids. They were headed to the Steak-Out Saloon, next door to the Trailhead, so we joined them.

There was a time, maybe six or so years ago, when I frequented this bar. The Steak-Out has 22 beers on tap, and darn good burgers. Despite the wide selection of beer, I was determined to order a martini. My companions disappeared to the back to play pool while I sidled up to the bar.

I asked the bartender if I could have a martini, but “please not in a martini glass.” I’m not even sure if the Steak-Out has martini glasses, but I didn’t feel like being jostled about holding a martini glass in my hand.

The guy next to me leaned over and said, “That’s what I call that an undercover martini.” The perfect way to end the night, I thought, an undercover martini in a beer bar. The bartender was friendly, and more than happy to indulge my request. Perhaps he was excited to be utilizing his bartending skills to do more than just pull a tap.

The bartender carefully mixed my drink, shaking it reverently before pouring it into a tumbler. He added olives and delivered the drink to me. “Tell me how you like it,” he said, waiting for my answer. I liked it. It was the best drink I’d had all night, and not at all because it was my last, but because it was made with a smile and it was “undercover.”

The Steak-Out is really cool. They have pool, air hockey, and shuffleboard in the basement. Yes, it was crowded and the music was loud, but the place has a good vibe.

My notes at the last two bars are sloppy, not entirely due to the alcohol, but mostly because I had to write them standing up. As a writer for a local newspaper, I should be better at this task than I actually am.

In conclusion: drinking in a college town will make you feel young and old. It made us feel young because we had our IDs checked at five out of six bars. It made us feel old because it seemed the music was too loud at every establishment, and most of our fellow drinkers didn’t look old enough to be drinking.