Essay: Neighborhood grieving last call at Denver’s historic Bonnie Brae Tavern

Asked once what advice he remembered from his grandfather, Ricky Dire of the Bonnie Brae Tavern answered, “Get the money.”

The elder Dire had bar patrons’ tabs in mind, but the advice took on a different meaning when Carl and Sue Dire’s descendants sold the restaurant and adjoining property for $4.5 million at the end of May. The Tavern will close June 25, 19 days after the south Denver landmark turned 88.

It will be a sad day for the nine employees and five family members who work there, and a sad day for many in the neighborhood that grew up around it.

Buffeted by COVID-19, shackled with property taxes in excess of $75,000 a year, faced with costly building upgrades and left behind by the public’s changing culinary tastes, the Dires decided several years ago to explore a sale.

“The pandemic killed our business. Our staff went from 32 to 14. I lost my wife, and now I’m losing my business,” said Michael Dire, one of the owners, whose wife, Jen, died suddenly in November 2021.

“We grew up with the place,” Dire said. “My grandparents toiled for years to build the business, and it took a toll on them. My dad and uncle took over and it took a toll on them, too. And it’s taken a toll on me and Ricky,” his cousin. “I’m worn out.”

Carl and Sue Dire started the Bonnie Brae Tavern in 1934, mere months after the end of Prohibition. It was preceded by a gas station that Carl had opened on the property south of the restaurant — and across South University Boulevard from a temperance society zealot who hectored the family for years. But the company that was developing the nascent Bonnie Brae neighborhood went belly-up, so land was cheap.

The Dires and their sons, Hank and Mike, lived in North Denver and commuted in a Model A with a mattress in the back for sleepy children. Eventually, they made enough money to build a modest apartment above the restaurant, according to their granddaughter, Angela. A restrictive covenant in Bonnie Braeat the time would not have allowed the Dires, who were Italian, to buy a house there.

The Dires catered to the laborers who were building houses in the area. “Construction workers made it a success,” Michael Dire said. Carl would cash the construction workers’ checks, and they would buy his food and drink. The Dires kept the kitchen open until midnight and the bar until 2 a.m.

As the neighborhood grew, so did the Dires’ involvement in it. They supported St. Vincent DePaul school and church, sponsored youth athletic teams, and were early and enthusiastic Broncos boosters.

After World War II, the restaurant doubled the size of its dining room and added a new item: pizza. That became a point of pride for the tavern, and it boasted a number of awards for its pizza in plaques and framed certificates that still hang above the bar.

None are from this century.

The tavern’s heyday was in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Hungry customers would wait an hour for a table on T-bone night. Patrons stood three-deep at the bar.

“The thing I got from working there was the sense of family,” remembers Rose Casteneda, a server who worked at Bonnie Brae Tavern for nearly 10 years. “I remember so many groups of five or six people who used to meet there for lunch or happy hour. I met my ex-husband there and made and kept the best friends of my life. We still see each other as much as we can.  It was a glorious collection of the most wonderful bunch of people I’ve ever met.”

At the height of its popularity, competition for parking spaces in the tavern’s lot was so hot that an attendant was hired to chase off people who parked there but tried to go elsewhere. Sue Dire became so protective of the property that she earned the nickname “Grambo” for her eagerness to use a dandelion picker to pry windshield wipers off the cars of parking space poachers, according to Michael Dire.

With its turquoise and brown booths, linoleum floor, turquoise walls and a staff that never, ever asked, “How are those first few bites tasting?” or “Did you save room for dessert?,” the tavern’s lack of pretense made it an outlier among restaurants.

Farm-to-table, free-range and chef-driven it was not. “Small plates” were what they gave you with your pizza.

But there was more than food to be found at the tavern. It had a town square quality, where everyone knew at least somebody there. “On our first visit, it was obvious that this was the meeting place for the neighborhood we wanted to be a part of,” said Jeff Hart, a former president of the Bonnie Brae Neighborhood Association.

“My parents got engaged there in 1946 and thereafter argued every time they went there about which booth they were in at the time,” said Mary Lou Egan. Her father told her brother, Bill, to go there to drink on his 21st birthday, knowing the bartenders wouldn’t let him drink too much.

But eventually, the collegiality and cachet that propelled the restaurant during its good years seemed to dissipate. Carl Dire died in 1982. Sue followed in 2002, and sons Hank and Mike died in 2012 and 2017, respectively. In 2020, the city approved a Certificate of Demolition Eligibility. That meant that historic status would not be applied to the building, and most likely signaled that something was afoot.

At the same time, the Bonnie Brae Tavern found itself a blue-collar restaurant in an increasingly upscale neighborhood. The plumbers, city workers and teachers who populated an earlier Bonnie Brae and Washington Park were supplanted by executives, professionals and wealthy buyers from out of state who could afford the newly built $3 million houses.

“Here is another sign of Denver’s ‘progress,’ ” said Denver historian Phil Goodstein. “It is also another product of uncontrolled land speculation. Values have become so great that they kill precisely the amenities that have been central to the area.”