LONGMONT2022 YOUR GUIDE TO WHAT’S GREAT IN LONGMONT
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Dear readers, in these pages you’ll find a few of the many bright spots Longmont has to offer. Learn with St. Vrain Valley School District’s Innovation Center. Explore Longmont’s public art and meet a couple creative souls that call Longmont home. Catch a new angle for regional fly-fishing. Take a ride with the Brewhop Trolley, then join our food and beverage writers for a happy hour. Welcome to this year’s Longmont Insider, and cheers from Boulder Weekly.
F rom beets to boomtown, Longmont has been carving out its own identity for years and years. Long gone are the days of just being “Not Boulder,” but instead a vibrant, creative community in its own right.
BOULDER WEEKLY I LONGMONT INSIDER ’22 I 9 Reader, welcome to LONGMONT. MATT MAENPAA in sider 690303.494.5511S.Lashley Lane, Boulder, CO 80305 Insider is a special issue of Boulder Weekly, which is available every Thursday throughout the county. 11 ....... By the Numbers Longmont at a glance 13 ....... Innovation Center SVVSD’s hub for education 14 ...... Fly Fishing Take part in the meditative sport 16....... Public Art Curated and ephemeral art on the streets of Longmont 22 ....... Coy Ink Sketching Longmont en plein air 27 ....... BrewHop Trolley Catch a ride to craft libations 28 ...... The Happiest Hours A meeting of the culinary minds 2022 STAFF Publisher, Fran Zankowski Special Editions Editor, Matt Maenpaa Circulation Manager, Cal Winn Editor-in-Chief,EDITORIAL Caitlin Rockett News Editor, Will Brendza Arts & Culture Editor, Will Matuska Food Editor, John Lehndorff Interns, Chad Peterson, Ben Berman ArtPRODUCTIONDirector,Susan France Senior Graphic Designer, Mark Goodman SALES AND MARKETING Market Development Manager, Kellie Robinson Account Executives, Matthew Fischer, Carter Ferryman, Chris Allred Mrs. Boulder Weekly, Mari Nevar CirculationGENERAL Team, Sue Butcher, Ken Rott, Chris Bauer Bookkeeper, Gina Campanella Founder/CEO, Stewart Sallo Editor-at-Large, Joel Dyer Cover Photo, “Generations,” by Gamma Gallery, photo by Matt Maenpaa
For a small town we have a lot of heart. Come let your heart experience our great little town.PhotographyBesnetteDavidofcourtesyisphotoGalleryOsmosis BIG SHEART. MALL TOWN. We also have great independent stores, restaurants, coffee shops, art, sculpture, history, and an outstanding children’s park. NIWOT.COM/HEARTNDIAGONALHWY IWOT ROAD LONGMONT BOULDER
BOULDER WEEKLY I LONGMONT INSIDER 2022 I 11 Longmont 2022 Waterways: St. Vrain Creek, Boulder Creek, Union Reservoir, McIn tosh Lake, Golden Ponds, Izaak Walton Pond, Ralph Price Reservoir. Parks: 54, including Greenway trails, nature area, athletic felds and Button Rock Preserve west of Lyons. SUSAN FRANCE by the numbers Founded:1871 Incorporated: 1885 Counties: Boulder & Weld Elevation: 4,979 feet Land Area: 28.7 square miles Highest Visible Peak: Longs Peak (14,259 feet) Breweries: 14 Cideries: 1 Distilleries: 3 Dispensaries: 8 (4 in city limits) Population: 100,758 (U.S. Census, July 1, 2021)
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SVVSDCOURTESTY
“The way kids have talked about it, it’s a special place for them,” Reitzig says. “It’s real world, authentic work that they’re doing. They have expectations, they’re getting paid, it’s a real job, but they also have space to explore, try things out and make mistakes without feeling like they’re getting punished for it.”
Those project teams often work with local tech companies to give them real world experience, but some of the conservation efforts have involved collaborations with county and city governments as well. Working closely with aquatic nonproft Ocean’s First Institute, Colo rado Parks and Wildlife and Boulder County Parks and Open Space, Innovation Center students have spent a couple years preparing to reintroduce the northern redbelly dace species of fsh into Colorado waterways in and around Longmont. The project combined artifcial intelligence and aquatic video capture to determine if the fsh rein troduction was successful.
A new project in conjunction with the city of Longmont government has students working with artifcial intelligence and trail cameras, monitoring wildlife activity at the Jim Hamm Nature Area in northern Longmont. Mentored by SV VSD Assistant Superintendent of Innovation Joe McBreen, the students were tasked with developing a system that would record species movements as well as analyze it—what McBreen calls “critter cams.”“(The city) reached out to us last year and were curious to see if our students could come up with an automated, AI-based mechanism to determine a baseline of animal activity at Jim Hamm,” McBreen says. “Once they have that baseline established, they can do a before-andafterProjectsanalysis.”like the “critter cams” or redbelly dace reintroduction are prime examples of the intersection between science and community at the Innovation Center because of what they offer students—working with real world mentors, cutting edge technology and working toward a worthyReitzigcause.refers to it as putting the horse in front of the cart, moving past the traditional separation of subjects in pre-college education.
“Knowledge gets dissected and kids don’t always see how it’s related,” Reitzig says. “Having a specifc problem to solve or a client to work with brings everything together.”
St. Vrain Valley School District, or SVVSD, stretches across mu nicipality and county borders, a vast district that serves students from Lyons to Erie and Mead. SVVSD’s Executive Director of Innovation, Axel Reitzig, refers to it as a hub-and-spoke system with programs at middle and high schools that directly connect with some of the larger projects at the Innovation Center.
Roberts, who is working on his masters degree now, was in the frst cohort to go through the Innovation Center’s Apple Technician program. After that, Roberts started getting involved with the competitive robotics teams in the district. Now he helps coach and organize robotics tourna ments for students now, which also helps support his studies in e-sports business.“Itsucks you in and you get excited about it. You can’t really leave it behind,” Roberts says. “Getting the opportunity to sit in a room and not break $10,000 robots, it was another opportunity to throw yourself into it without worrying about messing up.”
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BOULDER WEEKLY I LONGMONT INSIDER 2022 I 13 Longmont 2022 East of Main Street, situated near both the Longmont Recreation Center and the Longmont Museum, looms a building of glass and steel. When the sun hits, it could be an architectural drawing brought to reality, with clean lines that evoke a blueprint. That building is the Innovation Center, St. Vrain Valley School Dis trict’s hub for advanced science and technology education. Transcend ing traditional classroom education, the Innovation Center offers handson experience for students in more than a dozen different programs, including aeronautics, bioscience, cybersecurity and robotics.
“There’s really a lot of collaboration in the schools. For example, our aero program works together with the aero program at Erie High School,” Reitzig explains. “We’re fortunate to have equipment here to build a plane that would be hard for any high school to offer, but they offer classes there that we don’t have here. There’s a synergy between the schools.”Thatsynergy doesn’t start at middle school, Reitzig says. Summer programs and feld trips bring the elementary schools into the Innova tion Center, while competitive robotics teams bring SVVSD students of all ages to the national spotlight. Tying it all together is the Innovation Center’s mobile lab, a bus packed with demonstrations aimed at enticing students and encourag ing new ways of thinking at a young age. The mobile lab doesn’t just visit schools, but can be found at fundraisers and festivals throughout the area.Beyond just taking classes, the Innovation Center actually employs around 180 students throughout the district on a variety of project teams ranging from media production to conservation work.
Getting to take that experience as a student, hands-on learning with tangible rewards in both knowledge and a paycheck, is one of Roberts’ favorite parts of the Innovation Center.
Inside St. Vrain Valley School District’s Innovation Center hub of innovative education innovative
MaenpaaMattby
That sense of ownership and authority in a project helps keep the students invested and inspired, Reitzig says. Some students, like Jake Roberts, even come back to work at the Innovation Center during col lege, to mentor the next generation.
The rich, cool waters around Longmont remain prime for fly fishing, a sport growing in popularity thanks to its meditative qualities. release and the art of slowing down by Ben Berman
Catch,
“The general idea is that these trout, they’re pretty smart,” Burditt explains. “They’re not going to go eat something that’s not in their world. Let’s say you’re out fshing with a salmon fy, which maybe only hatches for about two weeks a year in certain areas. So, towards the end of that hatch, all of a sudden, if you’re fshing with this thing that looks like (a salmon fy), you’re gonna be catching fsh all day long. You try with that same one before that hatch happens, or even two months after it’s gone, you’re not going to catch a fsh to save your life.” Because of that, Burditt prioritizes entomology in his fy fshing excursions above almost all else, making sure the clients he takes out on excursions gain a
COURTESYANGLES SPORTS
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“It’s about trying to match what’s in the environment,” he says, referring to the diligent, yet rewarding art of fy fshing. A Colorado resident for the last 20 years, Burditt has found success as a business owner and outdoor enthusiast, operating a sports store in Steamboat Springs, and, later, opening Angles in Longmont in 2015. Both shops have seen massive success thanks to the outdoor-hungry population of Colorado, but Burditt has relished the opportunity to branch out and go all-in on this summer sport, both in terms of gear offered and the shop’s community programming.
The sport requires a degree of patience and strat egy, but also a deep appreciation of the outdoors and the natural world. A big component of fy fshing, Burditt says, has nothing to do with the coveted rainbow, brown and cutthroat trout that act as rewards for a long day spent casting and wading in the river. Instead, it’s all about the multitudes of carefully crafted, colorful fies that a fy fsherman puts to use, all of which are made to mimic a huge variety of different insects.
Burditt’s shop received its outftter license in the summer of 2021, perfect timing for the second year of a pandemic that offered the opportunity for many burgeoning fshermen to try the sport out for the frst time. Now, it’s not an uncommon sight to see Burditt leading a group of fshermen, both young and old, on the various rivers and streams around the Longmont area, or hosting a fy fshing class at any of Boulder County’s many breweries. “We’ve got trips almost every day and classes are flling up,” he says, “We’re probably going to fgure out how to have more classes.”
S tanding boot-deep on the shores of the Big Thompson River, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed as the ice cold water surges around you, making it diffcult to plant your feet on the slippery rocks. Doubly so if you’re trying to balance that with the careful, precise art of fy fshing. But for Angles Sports co-owner Matt Burditt, the focus required is exactly what makes the sport worth trying out this summer.
So, where does the community’s interest in fy fsh ing come from?
For all your angling needs or river gear, check out Angles Fly Fishing, 463 Main St., anglessports.comLongmont, Details: deeper understanding of how to craft and implement artifcial fies, resembling multitudes of insects that live on the rivers. At its core, fy fshing is a battle of wits between fsherman and fsh—all centered around insects. “The entomology part is fascinating,” Burditt says. “So let’s say you’re hiking and you notice grasshoppers. Chances are good the fsh in the river are looking for grasshoppers, and are typically even more specifc with it. They’re looking for a particularHowever,color.”itgoes deeper than amateur insect-watching. For Burditt, the level of observation required for a suc cessful day on the river is a special way to stay connected to the outdoors. “To me, taking people out and showing them the beauties we have all around us is so important,” he says, of the degree of stewardship he feels through his job. “I also like being able to share the conservation aspect: teaching people to leave no trace, and how to handle the fsh when you’re catching and releasing them. It’s about how to treat the world around us, because there’s certainly not less people coming here everyThroughday.” the repetitive, meditative process of making the trek out to the woods, taking the time to document the bugs around you, constantly adjusting and re-adjusting your lure in the water, all culminating in the rewarding catch and release of that shimmering trout, there’s no wonder fy fshing has so many outdoor enthusiasts hooked. “You get to put what you’ve learned into practice,” Burditt says. “You think you know a ton about (fy fshing) and next thing you know, someone throws you something new. It keeps your brain working.”
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CURATED AND EPHEMERAL ART ON THE STREETS OF LONGMONT
F our faces look to the east, smiling as fngers weave braids through four generations. The mural overlooks the Cheba Hut at Longs Peak Avenue and Main Street in Longmont, a piece that has become something of a touchstone in Longmont’s public artworks.Themural, titled “Generations,” is the work of the elusive Longmont artist Gamma Gal lery. It may well be one of the longest standing and unchanged pieces in Gamma’s repertoire of murals. Most of Gamma’s works are put up on buildings that are soon to be torn down.
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The changing face of public art story and photos by Matt Maenpaa “Lady and the Damselfy,” by Amanda Wilshire, uses old car and bike parts to create two larger-than-life insects along the trail at the Dickens Farm Nature Area.
Public art memorializes the historic foods of 2013 in Longmont. A number of pieces of public art along the St. Vrain River were destroyed in the three days of torrential rain. The food spread out over 200 miles into 14 Colorado counties. Boulder County was hit hardest, with a recorded 17 inches of rain falling on a single day.
Brill works for the city, managing commis sions and placement for Longmont’s offcial public art commission, a board that has been in operation since the 1980s. AIPP has brought hundreds of pieces of art to the city over the years, from permanent sculptures and murals, to the vibrant and ever changing painted electrical boxes scattered throughout the city.Walking to every piece of public art in Longmont could be the work of a lifetime, sprawling as the city is. Some pieces can easily be found wandering the St. Vrain Greenway, however, particularly heading west from Hover Road, such as the naturalist and bronze sculptures of Robert Tully. The ephemeral nature of art is subject to
See PUBLIC ART on PAGE 18 Longmont 2022
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“(Gamma) is putting street art into a com munity knowing that art is ephemeral,” says Angela Brill, administrator for Longmont’s Art in Public Places, or AIPP, commission. “Every piece of art is ephemeral. It has a lifespan. The fact that he is putting up street art to send a message to his community, knowing that it’s going to go away, is exactly what good street art can be.”
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Above: “Cupid’s Arrow,” by Gamma Gallery, resides on a wall of the old turkey plant in Longmont. The building— along with the mural—is set to be demolished.
Left: “Justicia,” by Gamma Gallery
more than just the whims of human construction, but the land itself. Rob ert Tully’s “Listening Stone” used to perch on the banks of the St. Vrain Creek, until the damage from the 2013 food redirected its course. The stones now rest far enough that the interactive and meditative qualities of the artwork are lost. Likewise, the “101 Faces” by Jerry Boyle was installed along Lefthand Greenway, near Sunset Street and Pike Road. Concrete faces peer from rocks, trees and even the water, but many were lost to the food as well. “I haven’t found very many of the faces these days,” Brill says. “I think the food took quite a number of them.” Not all art was lost in the food, but the natural disaster certainly inspired more. The Dickens Farm Nature Area is one of Longmont’s more recent parks, a result of restoration work and the Resilient St. Vrain Project. Though the park itself could be considered a work of art, it contains several pieces of public art commissioned by the city, including Josh Weiner’s “Rejuvenation.” “The idea was to pay homage to the food. It’s a very lovely piece, but I think it’s evocative of the rain coming down and the healing coming from
See PUBLIC ART on PAGE 20
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PUBLIC ART from PAGE 18 “I had the concept in my head for a while,” mural artist Gamma says of his Cupidinspired mural on a wall of the old turkey plant in Longmont. “Sometimes you can’t get a certain concept out of your head until you make it happen.” 2022
A damselfy stretches wings of bicycle gears across the path from a ladybug, constructed from the hood of an old Volkswagen, sporting golf clubs for antenna. From Dickens Farm, one only needs to walk north on Main Street to fnd more art. Hidden behind Wibby Brewing at Second Avenue and Emery, a few pieces from Gamma can be seen as long as the buildings remain standing. Set to be demolished to expand the South Main Street Station apartment complex, a trinity of paintings decorate the last remnant of the old turkey plant. One mural plays with Cupid’s arrow—a woman draws a bow with a rose nocked on the string. Across from her, a rose protrudes from a man’s eye, another in his heart. “I had the concept in my head for a while, just didn’t have a building it ft on,” Gamma says. “Sometimes you can’t get a certain concept out of your head until you make it happen.”Onthe opposite side of the building, Gamma paints Blind Justice, his response to social justice and the Su preme Court’s decision to overturn Roe V. Wade. A third piece, a 3D illusion on the nearby silo, was completed recently as well. “That building is coming down in the next couple weeks,” Gamma says. “Three new murals will be all gone at once.”Putting work up on buildings set to be torn down doesn’t bother him much, he says. “I don’t really worry about it much anymore. People don’t care about that stuff. They live in the same city as the art and never see it in person because it’s on the internet, so it is what it is,” he explains.There’s more art to be found walking down Main Street, heading north toward the mural,“Generations”somefrom Gamma, others through AIPP. More art will always come into the city, Brill says, through committee, neighborhood improvement projects and private commis sions.More importantly, Brill hopes to see a change in the nature of public art—be it city-commissioned or otherwise. Though offcially sanctioned city artwork has a whole slate of public policy that determines what qualifes as art, the goal is to expand those defnitions to bring in more interactive and experiential artworks for the community to enjoy and see themselves refected in. “We want to take the program and expand it. It might be something kinetic or something you interact with, where you participate with the work,” Brill says. “It won’t just be monuments.”
Longmont
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the food,” Brill explains. Across the water, another piece of art stands out, “Lady and the Damsel” by Amanda Wilshire. Two insects cling to wooden poles, large constructs made of recycled parts.
“After about a year and a half, I stopped wanting to draw from photos. It felt like I was just turning things out to make money and I didn’t really feel connected to it anymore,” Maldonado explains.
W hen you need directions, you look for a map. For Longmont artist Amanda Maldo nado, the direction of her life and business as an artist started with a map. Only Maldo nado didn’t read the map, she drew it.
Working as a graphic designer, Maldonado spent a lot of time doing ink sketches of critters. At a time when she was focused on nurturing herself and her art, the animal drawings were something that brought her joy without the worry of whether she was a good artist or Maldonadonot. sold the critter sketches as watercolor paint kits, postcards and more, but found herself growing a little weary of it.
Sketching Longmon t in plein air
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Observations into the business of art with Coy Ink by Matt Maenpaa
BOULDER WEEKLY I LONGMONT INSIDER 2022 I 23 See MALDONADO on PAGE 24 Longmont 2022
“I decided to do it for Inktober and it turned out to be something way more de tailed than could ever be a tourist map,” she says. “I was excited to make it happen, it was a project I started and didn’t give up on.”
She turned her attention and artistic talents to en plein air, painting or drawing outdoors rather than off references in a studio. It stemmed from a need for connec tion with the community and other artists, Maldonado says, and she found herself sketching her companions more than the nature surrounding them. That observational drawing took root in her, leading her to sketch buildings and people, eventually inspiring a whole map of downtown Longmont.
The map takes notes from both Where’s Waldo and Eye Spy, packed full of little details and recurring themes for the observer to spot while looking over some of the businesses and landmarks that populate Longmont’s Main Street environs.
The map gained some popularity, while also helping Maldonado fnd a new sense of direction in herself. During the time it took to make the map, Maldonado made the decision to quit her day job as a designer and pursue art full-time. Already working as a liaison to Longmont’s Creative District, Maldonado harnessed her business experience as a graphic designer to share her experiences with the local art community at large. “These are some of the things I had to fgure out on my own and want to make it easier for others,” Maldonado says. “But it’s also a lot of encouragement in a community space, where by being in these workshops you’re not alone. You can create your own community of collaborators. It’s a combination support group and lessons on how to thrive.”Maldonado’s creative classes, under her Coy Ink Studios brand, offer lessons for aspiring artists on a range of subjects. Some are practical—registering a business, marketing basics and social media— or art focused, like en plein air nature journaling in one of Longmont’s open spaces. Others bring into light the struggles of any entrepreneur, like “How to Avoid Burnout & Stay Organized,” a valuable life skill most people struggle with. “People get excited, they have that sparkle in their eye when they know where to go next,” she says.
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Classes aside, Maldonado still fnds the time to sit and sketch around town, honing her skills and practice as an artist. Working en plein air has encouraged her to work faster to keep up her focus and stamina as an artist. “I enjoyed it so much, I decided to stop drawing fnished paintings and just use my sketchbook to draw everything,” Maldonado says. “It allows me to be present and stay calm in a space, so I can listen better and capture a moment of time in my sketches.”
Her classes and workshops are held throughout Longmont, at the Firehouse Art Center, the media makerspace Longmont Public Media, even coworking spaces like the Times Collaborative—coincidentally, all spaces Maldonado frequently haunts while sketching.
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Lewis and the other Brewhop drivers keep an eye on their riders, making sure that they aren’t overly intoxi cated. The point, Lewis explains, isn’t to treat the trolley like a booze cruise, but to visit and enjoy the atmosphere at each place, hopefully discovering a new favorite local spot along the way. For frst time trolley riders, Lewis recommends getting to wherever your frst stop is early enough to sample a beverage there before getting onboard. More importantly, parking in some places can be limited and breweries are rightfully concerned about having enough spaces for patrons visiting throughout the day.
Longmont Loop
The Brewhop Trolley returns to it’s
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Fortunately, each Brewhop trolley has water avail able and at least half the stops offer full menus or bar snacks, Lewis says.
At last count there were more than a dozen breweries, distilleries, cideries and brewpubs in Longmont alone, let alone the rest of the county. How can a curious day-drinker visit more than one of them in a day? In Longmont, the answer is a trolley tour with a bunch of friends and strangers. That’s the idea behind Longmont’s Brewhop Trolley. Six years ago, Dave Lewis and his wife Radha bought a trolley and started selling day passes for drinkers. Hourly stops to breweries and distilleries makes the loop into a choose-your-own-adventure of Longmont establishments. Within a couple years, the Brewhop Trolley grew to three trolleys—Molly Trolley, Dennis Hopper and the Big Lebrewski— to add private charters and more to the trolley routes.From noon until 8 p.m., the Brewhop makes a loop around Long mont starting at 300 Suns Brewing near First Avenue and Main Street. From there, the trolley makes more than a dozen stops in a tight loop, returning to the start of the loop in about an hour. Riders can hop on and off all day, spending as much time at the breweries as they’d like before heading off to the next stop. Like most of the service industry, the Brewhop took a major hit with COVID shutdowns. The trolley took a twoand-a-half-year hiatus during the pandemic, only offering private charters until COVID restrictions leveled out. “We were shut down for a couple months doing any thing until businesses started reopening to outside dining, but there were a lot of restrictions in place,” Lewis says. With 25 to 30 riders at any given time, Lewis felt it would be unfair to both patrons and businesses when not everyone would be able to visit under capacity restric tions. The weekend loop went dormant, though Lewis carried on with private charters and wedding parties. “We shut down the loop until we felt comfortable that there wouldn’t be any restrictions put back in place, and then we’ll make a determination on bringing back the loop,” he explains. “We just delayed and delayed because we weren’t sure.”
Longmont’s craft libations by Matt Maenpaa Hop along to The TrolleyBrewhop runs Satur days from noon-8 p.m. in brewhoptrolley.comLongmont, Details: MAENPAA
Lewis has recommendations for parking, but mostly encourages trolley riders to avail themselves of a local rideshare service. “We highly recommend ride shares to and from—or call your mom to pick you up—so we’re not putting you or the public in danger after having a great day,” Lewis says. “That’s the last thing we want.”
The hiatus has come to an end now, with the Longmont Loop making a triumphant return on Saturdays, from August to November this year.There have been a few challenges getting started again, Lewis says. Bars and breweries have a lot of new staff since the last time the loop was running regularly, so new relationships had to be made so that bar staff weren’t overwhelmed by a couple dozen patrons descending on them at once during an already busy Saturday. Still, Lewis and the Bre whop staff are excited to be on the road again beyond the private charters. Lewis spends a lot of time researching what events are happening at each stop during the weekend, from live music to food trucks and everything in between to give the trolley riders an idea of what they’re in for besides tasty beverages. Events are posted on the Brewhop’s social media pages, as well as a whiteboard on the trolley itself. Though the loop runs for a solid eight hours around 13 stops, there’s no way to reasonably hit each location and still have a functioning liver the next day. In addition to personal health, Lewis wants guests to have fun while still being respectful to the staff at each“Whatestablishment.Itellpeople when they get on the trolley is that it’s going to be a long day,” Lewis says. “We recommend not trying to double fst beer or cocktails at each stop.”
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Sharing a table full of appetizers and sipping on a couple happy hour cocktails off The Roost’s menu, John and Matt happily dig into the idea of happy hour. But frst, we set the table with a little history. A happy history According to U.S. Navy historical records, the “happy hour social” started in 1913 aboard the U.S.S. Arkansas, following similar social club names from the 1880s. During the Prohibition era, speakeasies would host a “happy hour” for folks to have a cocktail before going off to dinner at a proper restaurant. The phrase “happy hour” itself is fairly common throughout history, with most attributions relating to cocktail hours anecdotal at best.
T here’s a moment between when work ends and the rest of our lives begin, to socialize, graze on appetizers and sip a low-priced libation. We have collectively dubbed this the happy hour.
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A MEETING OF THE CULINARY MINDS
Top to bottom: Blistered shishito peppers; Aperol spritz; tempura-battered caulifower story by John Lehrendorff and Matt Maenpaa photos by Matt Maenpaa
Boulder Weekly’s food and beverage writers—John Lehrendorff and Matt Maenpaa—joined forces, combining their considerable ex perience and well-tuned appetites, to discuss the idea of happy hour in all its glory. The venue for this meeting of the culinary minds was The Roost, a restaurant that’s become something of an establishment in Longmont over the six years it’s been open.
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The origins of the happy hour as we know it can likely be tied into legends like the beginnings of the Buffalo wing or Chicago’s tavern-crust pizza: low-cost options to get regulars to come in earlier and entice new customers while selling a few more cocktails or pints of beer.
The happiest of hours
The happiest of hours 2022 A MEETING OF THE CULINARY MINDS
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Small plates and social snacks
The happy hour menu at The Roost—actually a happy three hours, running from 3-6 p.m.—has a tight selection of food and drink at a nominal discount. The menu is an even dozen, six appetizers and six cocktails, with all but a few sitting at an equally easy $6. For our spread, we started with the Bangin’ Caulifower—tempura-bat tered caulifower tossed in a spicy sriracha sauce—and the polenta bites— parmesan polenta deep-fried and served with tomato sauce, goat cheese and balsamic. To drink, a bourbon and gin concoction called The Hobo and a happy hour classic, the Aperol spritz. The cocktails were light and refreshing, perfectly balanced summer sippers.Eventually we added on the blistered shishito peppers and the ahi poke Top to bottom: Ahi tuna poke bowl; parmesan polenta botes; The Hobo
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By 1984, the state of Massachusetts banned happy hours outright. The U.S. military followed suit, abolishing happy hours on military bases. Ten other states would join Massachusetts in an outright ban, citing varying reasons including preventing drunk driv ing, public nuisance and overconsumption of alcohol. Fortunately, Colorado never had such a ban. The happiest hour will reign supreme. John recalls his earliest memories of happy hours gaining prevalence, working in Boulder restaurants during the ’70s. Free shrimp cocktails for people that came in to enjoy a few drinks were the name of the game.“When I was working at Pearl’s, one of the things they specialized in was peel-and-eat shrimp,” John says. “Eventually they got to a point where food cost with these shrimp and taco buffets meant they couldn’t do it for free anymore. But it worked to get people in the door.”
If you’ve never been, The Roost offers up classic Colorado and Califor nia-style Americana. Burgers, sandwiches and entrees, with some locally sourced ingredients properly cooked from scratch. The restaurant swept most of the categories in Boulder Weekly’s Best of Boulder East County last year, and its sister restaurant, Jefe’s Tacos, won best happy hour.
bowl. As a whole everything was light, easy-to-nosh bites that packed a lot of favor in small plates. There was a little mess if you try to eat them without a fork, but that’s not really a complaint. There’s more than enough on each plate to sate an appetite when shared with some friends.
polentaParmesan-coated deep fried and served with tomato sauce, goat cheese and balsamic reduction.
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From the restaurant perspective, it’s all about offering something light and interesting that won’t affect the bottom line. Nothing too heavy on the food side, or too alcoholic on the drink side, and the costs need to be low enough to make“Wesense.tryto make something that’s really valuable. For happy hour, you aren’t going out to get a $12 cocktail,” she says. “We want it to have value so that guests come out to socialize and have a Addingsnack.”tothat, Moore says, the traditional happy hour times are also during lulls in restaurant service. A time when the lunch rush has ended and dinner service hasn’t really started yet. Happy hour is a perfect time to lure in some new customers and provide them with a relaxed atmosphere to unwind in.
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Paying the tab
• The menu items should be inexpensive • Small bites are ideal.
• Cocktails should be on the lighter side, low in alcohol.
The happiest of hours A MEETING OF THE CULINARY MINDS HAPPY HOUR from PAGE 29
The restaurant perspective
While we were dining, the director of The Roost restaurant group, Alishia Moore, dropped by to say hello. With the fortunate turn, we availed ourselves on Alishia—what is the appeal of happy hour?“I think it’s a great way for people to come in and try a menu when they aren’t sure if they want to have a whole meal there, or maybe they’re just social izing,” Moore says. “They can come out and snack, get a good idea of what they’re in for.”
With all the fne establishments in Longmont and the surrounding, there’s plenty of opportunity to sample happy hour offerings and fnd a favorite. It doesn’t need to be a culinary adventure, but the potential is there if you’re willing to explore.
For the hour we dined, sipped and savored, we discussed what makes a good happy hour. A few points were agreed on:
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