BETCHA WANNA DO IT NOW, HUH?
The link to apply is in @siddsy_ ’s bio,
Or email [email protected]
Or DM @dadswap
There’s gonna be face painting, balloons, and coney dogs too?!
🕯️Speakeasy culture, reimagined in Denver.
Tucked quietly into LoHi, a single bookshelf shifts… 📖
and suddenly, you’re stepping into another era.
This isn’t just a hidden bar.
It’s a true nod to the Prohibition era… when spaces like this were meant to be discreet, intimate, and intentional.
Low light. Dark wood. Leather.
A room designed for conversation, not chaos.
🍸And the cocktails?
Exceptionally well-balanced, thoughtful, and rooted in classic technique.
And the food follows that same philosophy…
refined, elevated, and meant to be enjoyed slowly alongside the drinks.
Led by @seankenyon13 , one of the most respected names in cocktail culture and former American Bartender of the Year…
whose vision helped shape Denver’s modern speakeasy scene, now even extending into the first speakeasy concept inside @denairport@williamsandgrahamden
They’ve mastered the originals while still honoring the classics…
Williams & Graham
📍 3160 Tejon St, Denver, CO 80211
✔️Follow @artof.dining_ for Denver’s most intimate bars
#denverbars #speakeasyvibes #cocktailculture #denver #foodie
Occidental is hiring.
We’re looking for:
• Bartender / Server
• Part-time Door Person
We work hard, take care of our guests, and take care of each other.
If you’ve got solid hospitality instincts and want to be part of a great crew, we’d love to meet you.
Inquire or send a resume to [email protected]
📸: @jfierberg
#occidental_bar #denverbarscene #denverbar #denvercocktailscene
Detroit. Early 1970s.
Seven years after the 1967 uprising.
Factories starting to close.
White flight accelerating.
Vietnam still raging.
Watergate about to crack the illusion of leadership wide open.
Detroit was loud.
Angry.
Tired of being lied to.
Three Black brothers from Detroit formed a band in 1971.
Before they were Death, they were Rock Fire Funk Express. Funk roots. Tight rhythm. Discipline.
Then their father died.
David Hackney began thinking about death not as something to fear, but something to confront. Not an ending. A truth.
They changed the name.
Death.
Not a gimmick.
A statement.
In 1974 and 1975 they recorded seven songs that were fast, urgent, sharp enough to cut through steel.
What we now call proto-punk.
The architecture before the label.
Before the mythology hardened.
Before London was turned into the origin story.
Listen to “Politicians In My Eyes”.
Then listen to it again with 2026 in your head.
Pressure.
Distrust.
A system cracking at the seams.
Some of the sharpest music has always come from that place.
A label told them to change the name.
They refused.
The deal vanished.
They stayed.
Foundational.
Architects.
Detroit struck first.
Next we head to Philly.
Pure Hell was already tearing into the noise.
#DeathBand #ProtoPunk #PunkHistory #BlackHistory #OccidentalBar
The room is thick with cigar smoke. Gaslight flickers against dark wood. Crystal clinks. Men in tailored coats lean in close over conversations that shape policy and power.
Behind the bar stands Tom Bullock.
He was born in 1872 in Louisville to parents who had been enslaved. The Civil War had ended just seven years earlier, but white supremacy had not. Reconstruction was already collapsing under violence and backlash. Jim Crow was tightening its grip across the country he was born into.
This was the structure of his world.
And still, by the early 1900s, Bullock became one of the most respected bartenders in America.
He worked in elite private clubs in St. Louis. He served industrialists and politicians whose signatures moved money and law.
He built a reputation so strong it could not be ignored.
His authority did not come from permission.
It came from mastery.
In 1917, he published The Ideal Bartender. His name on the cover. His recipes in print. At a time when authorship meant permanence, he secured his place in the record.
The book is technical. Confident. Exacting. Many of the structures and ratios bartenders rely on today were already there, laid out plainly more than a century ago.
He was not orbiting American cocktail history.
He was shaping it.
When we talk in 2026 about who gets labeled volatile, who gets granted grace, who gets written into the story and who gets written out, his life does not feel distant.
It feels instructive.
We stand behind our bar because people like Tom Bullock stood behind theirs first. Because excellence leaves a record. Because mastery outlives the rooms it was built in.
In the weeks ahead, we will be revisiting selections from The Ideal Bartender and bringing them back into the glass.
Not to look backward.
To acknowledge whose hands were already there.
#williamsandgraham #tombullock #blackhistorymonth #blackbartenders #craftcocktails
Punk History IS Black History
Read it again.
When people picture punk, they picture safety pins, leather, white faces.
That’s not the whole frame.
Punk is autonomy.
Punk is protest.
Punk is what happens when people decide they’re done asking.
Black artists weren’t late to punk.
They helped build it.
Architects.
Detroit.
Death.
DC.
Bad Brains.
Hardcore doesn’t exist without them.
Some of the sharpest punk has always been protest music. And here we are in 2026, in a moment that feels loud, fractured, charged.
That energy isn’t new.
There’s a reason the beam in this bar says
“We are here to drink beer and kill war.”
Bars have always been where people gather when the world feels unstable. You sit down. You argue. You listen. You turn up the volume. Music becomes message. Message becomes movement.
Juke joints.
Back rooms.
Dive bars.
Basements.
Different decades. Same current.
We love punk here. It lives in this room.
So we’re telling the story straight.
We start in Detroit.
Pull up.
#occidental_bar
#PunkHistory
#BlackHistory
#BlackPunk
#HardcoreHistory
