Denver bar and music venue So Many Roads Brewery, the location of protests and police investigations over the past two years, will shut in mid-January 2024, co-founder Jay Bianchi wrote on Fb.
“As we are saying goodbye to 2023 and howdy to 2024, it pains me to say that after 28 years we won’t be again for lengthy,” Bianchi wrote on Nov. 29, including that the bar would host its last concert events Jan. 12-14. “And now its (sic) time to say goodbye to all good firm…”
The Grateful Useless-themed bar, owned by Tyler Bishop, has been the supply of Denver Police Division stings for underage alcohol gross sales and cocaine dealing. In summer time 2021, the bar was picketed by musicians and members of the Colorado Musicians Union over the alleged misdeeds of former co-owner Jay Bianchi, together with complaints of assault and underpaying bands.
Bianchi declined to remark when reached by cellphone on Friday, saying he would discuss extra in regards to the closure on Monday. Bishop didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
Two ladies alleged in a 2021 Denver Submit investigation that Bianchi sexually assaulted them at his former, shuttered bar, Sancho’s Damaged Arrow, in October 2020. Sancho’s closed in late 2022 after an undercover sting and metropolis violations of mandated pandemic closures.
Bianchi has repeatedly denied all allegations and no expenses have been introduced in opposition to him.
Bianchi additionally previously ran the bar Be on Key Psychedelic Ripple which, like Sancho’s, was the topic of a public nuisance case for opening throughout city-mandated pandemic shutdowns.
Bianchi mentioned he was retiring in 2021 amid mounting controversies, however has remained a vocal and visual worker of So Many Roads, each on-line and behind the bar.
So Many Roads bumped into authorized issues within the fall of 2022 when a Denver police sting resulted in 4 counts of offering alcohol to a minor, one depend of distribution of a managed substance (cocaine), and one depend of disorderly habits. That 12 months, the Metropolis Legal professional’s Workplace and bar got here to an settlement on Oct. 12, 2022, that closed So Many Roads for 30 days.
Within the newest motion, So Many Roads was ordered to shut for 90 days in September 2023 as a part of its up to date settlement with the town. Earlier that month, the town’s liquor licensing division had taken the extremely uncommon step of rejecting a settlement with So Many Roads proprietor Bishop that was brokered with the Metropolis Legal professional’s Workplace.
The rejected settlement — in addition to the one reached in September — coated a brand new spherical of violations, together with serving alcohol to an underage Denver police cadet, metropolis paperwork say.
Bianchi wrote on Fb that the bar’s last reveals will occur Jan. 12-14 because the Useless tribute band Forgotten Area with Stu Allen performs the stage. The bar itself is a tribute to the Grateful Useless and options a lot of Bianchi’s non-public assortment of band memorabilia.
“This can be your final likelihood to see this magnificent place,” Bianchi wrote in his since-deleted Fb publish, “so let’s come collectively one final time and enjoy our triumphs, in addition to rejoice the doorways that can be opening as this explicit chapter of our historical past attracts to an in depth.”
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