In the beginning…
…there was Penny Lane. And it was good.
Penny Lane was inked into the memories of Boulderites former and current as the beatnik-come-hippy-punk hangout that featured venerable alt culture events and accouterments like poetryslams, open mikes, up and coming folk-punk bands, the obligatory singer songwriters, the not-so obligatory singer songwriters, terrible art, great art, Women’s Writers Night, among many others.
For some the memory comes from the olfactory; the aroma of petuli and cigarrette smoke that pervaded half a block in each direction along Pearl and 18th from the oddly triangular patio. Juxtaposed with Trident, Penny Lane was the eastern bastion of the late night coffee shop scene.
Sometime in ‘02 Penny Lane installed wireless internet, and there began a revolution.
Suddenly Penny Lane’s stained decaying carpets were graced with kakhi-clad button down business types toting belt-mounted cell phones and wireless-enabled laptops.
Free wireless brought a new crowd to the scene. Mixing of the old and new happened only for brief periods around 3 in the afternoon when one shift was departing for manicured downtown lawns while the other was just emerging from dingy basement apartments. Nevertheless, the afternoon espresso line at Penny Lane was often a sight to behold, the hardest-core bra-less dreadlocked tatooed child-toting Ned freakshow followed by a rope-belted cell phone-loud-talking real estate agent, and everything in between.
It was a lovely special moment in time, but like all lovely special moments they pass too quickly. The building owner, pumped up by the hyper-inflated Boulder real estate market, upped the lease beyond the reach of a humble coffeeshop/meeting place. To the disbelief of wireless-yuppy and hippy-punk alike, Penny Lane, seemingly at the height of its power, closed on 18 July 2005.
The spirit of Penny Lane endured. Of course one manifestation is on the web, where the original website remains here, and at least one other fauning tribute here.
But the real point of all this nuevo-historical spray is the Phoenix-like rise of the Laughing Goat out of the ashes of Penny Lane.
[Ed. note - the person who wrote this is now one of those "kakhi-clad button down business types toting belt-mounted cell phones and wireless-enabled laptops" !!]
BoulderBitch said,
August 7, 2009 at 7:41 am
**Weep** God, I miss Penny Lane. Penny Lane was a true Coffee House. A truly diverse place that served freaks, geeks, queers, intellectuals, and business types alike. None of the mere coffee ’shops’ with their crappy coffee and even crappier service approach the awesomeness that was “The Lane”. Spent most of graduate school there. Had such great conversations about politics and current events with perfect strangers. **Sigh** And then there were open mic nights.
I’ve tried countless other shops in Boulder, but it’s not even close to being the same, so I gave up. Perhaps, if I never knew The Lane, I would not be the wiser, and wouldn’t care about the comparative crappiness of the current options. Thanks for the write-up about the best coffee house in Boulder…still…and possibly ever.
st_rf_ck_r said,
October 5, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Wow…I just found your blog and I was 99.9% on board with everything you wrote until now. Penny Lane was my Allegro coffee…swill on all levels. It was overrun by some of the most self-absorbed and diversely smelling boulderites ever, and served mediocre, indifferent pours with attitude that makes Trident seem polite. All this in the one of the noisiest, dirtiest, draftiest, smelliest coffee shops I have ever been in. No doubt I will burn in hell for this comment. Keep up the great work, truly love your blog.