Denver's best dive bars: old saloons for a new year

The Kentucky Inn, Denver's best dive bar in 2011.

Several of our favorite dives dried up last year, including Club 404 (which will reopen under new ownership), Brown Barrel and the Mickey Manor. And 2012 has already been tough on fans of old-time watering holes: Both Gabor's and Music Bar closed their doors. Fortunately, the Denver area still has an abundance of old-time dives, which we've been visiting in anticipation of choosing the Best Dive for the Best of Denver 2012, which will hit the streets on March 29. (But who are we kidding? We'd be bellying up to these bars anyway.) Here, in no particular order, is our current list of the ten best dives in Denver!

Photos by Jim Wills and descriptions by Cafe Society writers, including Drew
Bixby, author of Denver's Best Dive Bars.

Belly up to the bar at the Hill-Top.

Hill-Top Tavern (4907 Lowell Boulevard)
A favorite hangout of comedian Bill Murray, the Hill-Top's got Busch on tap, Bowie on the jukebox and a bar that stretches from wall to wall. Be sure to bring cash, and if the phone rings, don't answer it.

Inside the Rocky Flats Lounge.

Rocky Flats Lounge (11229 Highway 93, Boulder)
This bar gives a whole new meaning to getting lit -- at one point, it was the payroll office for the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, the federal facility right across the highway that started producing plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs in the early '50s and operated up to 1989. But the Rocky Flats Lounge has a lot more going for it: gritty ambience, great drinks, a deck with expansive views of the Foothills (and future wildlife refuge going into Rocky Flats) and fish fries on Friday nights.

inside the Ace-Hi.

Ace-Hi Tavern (1216 Washington Avenue, Golden)
For more than sixty years, the Ace has been by far the best reason to get wrecked -- and subsequently stranded -- in Golden. 

Inside the Candlelight Tavern.

Candlelight Tavern (383 South Pearl Street)
Separated by a safe stumble along Pearl Street from the neighboring Kentucky Inn, the Candlelight Tavern is a down-home dive that offers greasy grub, the full gamut of bar games and open-arms attitudes from staff and regulars alike.

Punks at the bar at Bar Bar.

Carioca Cafe/Bar Bar (2060 Champa Street)
Just because you don't want to touch any of its surfaces doesn't mean you shouldn't puke or pass out all over 'em. At dawn. For next to nothing. Added bonus for 2012: a coffee machine!

Dive bars continue on the next page.