On Saturday, a piece of my life closed its doors for the last time. Serving its last few cups of coffee in loving Parisian manner, it announced Friday, “Tonight we have wine, tomorrow we have coffee, and then we say goodbye. After opening in Paris on the Platte, a coffee shop and wine bar, it spent the next twenty years stealing the heart and habits of anyone within reach. It’s the final night and day, and the place was jammed, packed with friends and family who had come to pay their respects.
Certainty whether
We have all had places that we associate with certain parts of our lives. They fill a void, serving a purpose (or several), for a period of time. I, for one, will never forget Nick and Willie’s, a take-n-bake pizza place that my mom stopped at every Friday (along with a rental movie) when I was a kid. I eventually made a career out of Italian food with an emphasis on pizza. It has been so long since I’ve had a Nick and Willie’s Pizza that I could not tell you with any certainty whether or not it was a quality pizza. I can, however, tell you with total certainty that in my memory, they were some of the most fantastic slices I have ever eaten. These restaurants and shops engrain themselves into our lives. Their memory stays vivid even as they drift out of our lives. We look back fondly on the dive bar down the street when we first became of age, or of the all-night coffee shop we spent those late sleepless nights while in school. These spots serve a vital purpose in the fabric of our lives.
Paris on the Platte was such a place for me. I first discovered Paris when I was seventeen or eighteen years old. I was a freshman at the University of Colorado Boulder, an endeavor I never completed. At night, you could find me, however, in the back room of the coffee shop. It was a small room with hardwood floors and exposed brick walls. Raised a few feet above the main dining room, it was consumed by one single enormous square table. Paris was spelled in white on a large black barn door. At least that’s what we figured it was; in truth, I never really had any idea. The air was constantly hazy as smoking was allowed, and the room was always filled with an odd assortment of artists, punks, hipsters, and nerds. It was an atmosphere that greatly validated the self-indulgent, angsty, bohemian mindset of my adolescence. I spent many nights back there, doing homework or huddling in a corner, talking rapidly to my friends as we consumed pot after pot of Paris’s five-dollar pots of coffee.
Perfect timing and grace
Many years later, after being a part of a failed Italian, wine-driven concept, I moved to Denver, joining the Platte St neighborhood with my tail planted firmly between my legs. Over the years, the neighborhood had grown and changed so much that I didn’t recognize it as I unloaded my U-Haul in total exhaustion. The cross streets never occurring to me, I was almost floored when a day or two later I ventured across the street in search of a local libation, only to stumble into the favorite coffee shop of my angsty years. It had, at this point, expanded to include a wine bar. A rekindled love was imminent. An icon of my adolescence had, during the years I poured my heart into a wine-centric restaurant, added a wine bar, and, with perfect timing and grace, reappeared at the exact time that I slipped back into angst.
Many of my nights were spent sitting in a Paris bar, surrounded by neighbors and friends. Quirky local art filled the walls that surrounded the small, long bar. Rickety chairs and tables provided odd shadows in the dark bar. The bartender seemed to know every face and bounced around from group to group, providing drinks as well as a bent ear. Faye, the owner (if I got out of work early enough), would be lingering between the coffee side and the bar, always with a kind, almost parental word.
