Colfax Avenue has inspired a lot of stories over the years, so much so that what’s real and what isn’t sometimes blend into one another. Chris Marchio is aiming for that feeling with the Circular Lounge – something that could be best described as a dive-bar-themed dive bar.
One part brewery taproom, one part retro dive bar and two parts make-believe, the Circular Lounge, 5126 E. Colfax Ave., opened last weekend, serving the very real craft beers – hazy IPAs, lagers and fruited “smoothie” sours – that Marchio makes at Knotted Root Brewing, his six-year-old company in Nederland. But the beers are just the beginning of the experience. The bar also draws in guests with darts and arcade-style games, pool, a jukebox and mini golf on the patio.
A self-created backstory will offer another layer to the place, similar, in some ways to what Meow Wolf does with the loose, mind-bending storylines that back up its artwork, Marchio said.
In this case, the fictional backstory is that there was a previous dive bar at the same address from 1973 to the late 1980s. “A hub for famous musicians and Hollywood celebrities .. many famous people were regulars there when they would pass through Denver. They were drawn to the original character and mystique of the place, citing it as beyond description.”
The goal of this fiction, Marchio said, is to transport people back through time, and possibly dimensions, to a bar where David Hasselhoff and Gary Busey might have been drinking together with local musicians as they talked about life and their worlds of cool. To help complete the look, there are a few dozen celebrity photos on the walls, with characters like David Hasselhoff, Eddie Murphy, John Ritter, Tina Turner, Ted Danson and the Seinfeld crew.
“It’s as real as we want it to be,” Marchio said. “And it’s going to be constantly evolving. There will be inside jokes that people can tune into if they want. If not, it will just be a fun place to hang out.”
The location, which is now painted an astonishing red color in a nod to Knotted Root’s brewery in Nederland, was formerly home to the Bellwether coffee shop and bar, as well as Horror Bar and Slashers.
A native of the East Coast, Marchio was one of the first professional brewers in Denver to make a New England-style hazy IPA back in 2015, a kind of beer that would eventually dominate the menus at craft breweries in Colorado. He brewed it at Fiction Beer Co., just a mile east on Colfax.
He later moved to Nederland to open Knotted Root. But he returned to the metro area more recently to start a family and began looking for a separate but related project. “I wanted to do something that was a little more fun and presented challenges and opportunities for me to get more creative than just saying this is Knotted Root II,” he explained.
Eventually, Marchio would like to add food to the menu at the Circular Lounge, but for now the space will just serve snacks and rely on other nearby restaurants as well as Marczyk Fine Foods next door. The two businesses may team up in the future, he added.
“The idea of being on Colfax fits what we are trying to do,” he said. “We wanted to create a taproom experience that is unique to us.”
Subscribe to our new food newsletter, Stuffed, to get Denver food and drink news sent straight to your inbox.
