Patrons hit the dance floor at Beauty Bar, 608 E. 13th Avenue in Denver, Friday night, December 10, 2010. Karl Gehring/The Denver Post
If you’ve ever cut a rug at 603 East 13th Avenue — formerly The Snake Pit and Beauty Bar and currently Pearl’s — before slumping over a slice at Benny Blancos, you know a Capitol Hill without a colorful watering hole in the space wouldn’t feel the same.
Sadly, that may well be the future, as Pearl’s has launched a crowdfunding effort to stave off apparent closure. The bar is looking to raise $60,000 by Nov. 28 in an effort to, as it stated on its Indiegogo campaign page, “remain open and available to its devoted clientele.”
Find out more about Pearl’s via our entertainment blog, The Know.
By Dylan Owens | dowens@denverpost.com
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Pearl’s opened last September in the revered nightlife space on 13th street. Co-owner Mike Barnhart, who managed the space back in its Beauty Bar days, said the campaign is a last-gasp effort to keep the bar from closing. If it doesn’t reach its goal by the end of November, Barnhart said he and his two fellow co-owners will “shut it down.”
The campaign asks patrons donate $25-$100, offering a perk of a $20 bar tab and a t-shirt to those who chip in $100. So far, six backers have raised $1,345, or 2%, of its goal.
“I’ve talked to a couple people about coming on as investors, but those things take time, which we unfortunately don’t have a lot of left,” Barnhart said. “Instead of just closing our doors, we thought we’d see if the community wants to help to keep the location going.”
Barnhart theorized the cluster of establishments on 13th Street like Pearl’s and Wax Trax just doesn’t jive with the “new” Denver, one fixated on drop-perfect cocktails and trendy restaurants.
“It’s such a cool central business district and it’d be too bad to see it go,” Barnhart said. “But I guess people want to support ‘cool’ neighborhoods like RiNo and whatever.”
The strip of businesses on 13th Street has seen significant changes in the last year alone. In May, upscale cocktail bar Hudson Hill opened directly across the street from Pearl’s, at 619 E. 13th Ave. In late October, Grateful Dead bar Quixote’s closed in favor of a new, electronic music-focused club called The Black Box.
Barnhart thinks part of the shifting scenery is due to the transformation of club culture, whose role as a cultural commons has in part been replaced by the internet.
“It used to be you’d go out to get a drink to maybe flirt with someone, and if it doesn’t work out, you go back to the same spot for another chance,” he said. “These days, you sit on your couch, smoke pot and swipe Tinder.”
For more information on Pearl’s crowdfunding campaign, check out its Indiegogo page
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-pearl-s-family-community#/