Working man Jay Bianci (from his Facebook page)
Jay Bianci on Facebook, 2/02/21: The 6th edition of Quixote’s True Blue has now closed and I am not going to pretend that there will never be another one because the spirit of Don Quixote
is an indomitable force. The first Quixote’s True Blue at 9150 East Colfax was a wonder to see, it was the only place I could afford on a stretch of East Colfax that was on the border of Denver and Aurora filled with call girls and pimps plying their wares because they could cross the street and be out of the jurisdiction of the local police. It was a true Shakedown Street.
One time we had a band come in and it seemed ( I say seemed because I really do not want to draw conclusions based on pure speculation) like the whole audience was under the influence of psychedelics. The police, like they always did because our bar was one of the only safe, happy places filled with youth and vigor that they had on their route, they were always smiling and my brother always made them feel welcome. My brother Al / Phil Bianchi always made sure he got them a coke or a water. This evening they were showing a new, young cadet the hippie bar. All the patrons were dancing with wild abandon and Arty – The One Man Party – made sure that he danced extra wild in front of them. I was sitting at the door and I heard the senior officer say to the cadet — “They are all tripping out of their minds.” They turned around and left with no further comment.
Everybody who came to see this legendary venue would walk in and say to me, “I thought this was going to be bigger.”
Zero played here with Steve Kimock, Sound Tribe, Sector Nine played here. Merl Saunders, Vince Welnick, The Disco Biscuits, Chief Broom, STIR FRIED, Vassar Clements, Juice with members of Galactic, Dark Star Orchestra, Split Rip Rayfield, Railroad Earth, The Motet, Mountain of Venus, Jack Bruce of Cream, Commander Cody, members of The String Cheese Incident, Pete Sears, Stephen Perkins of Jane’s Addiction, RAQ, Robert Walter’s 20th Congress, Vinyl, Willie Waldman and a whole slew of others. It was a dream come true to hang out with your brothers and friends and listen to the Grateful Dead and have the top bands come and play at your living room with an awesome fireplace in the middle that people would dance on when the show got grooving, because – although it was a venue – it was more like a living room.
There are an infinite amount of legendary stories about this little bar that could and as Han Solo
would say: “I used to wonder about that myself. Thought it was a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. A magical power holding together good and evil, the dark side and the light? Crazy thing is, it’s true. The Force, the Jedi — all of it. It’s all true.”
Except for my one friend who asked me if we really got up and brushed our teeth with LSD toothpaste – that was not true.
Quixote’s True Blue was the best thing I ever decided to do, and although it moved from location to location successfully failing over and over, being propped up by the graciousness of Sancho’s Broken Arrow – Not one place ever made money, it just kept borrowing from Sanchos Broken Arrow. It moved from Colfax to 7 South Broadway, to 2637 Welton Street to 2151 Lawrence, to 314 East 13th Thirteenth Avenue to 2014 South University. I was always hopeful that each one would be different, and they were different, they had different vibes, different feels, but they would always eventually run out of gas, or I would. So when this last Quixote’s True Blue ran out of gas, I was not sad because I knew that eventually it would appear again and make me happy again.
So this is not the last time that I will say ‘so long’ to my muse, Don Quixote – it is just another time to say goodbye in a long series of goodbyes.
Thank you for a real good time. See you soon in the near future!
https://www.facebook.com/QuixotesTrueBlue/
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Jon Solomon also covered this for Westword:
https://www.westword.com/music/grateful-dead-entreprenuer-jay-bianchi-closes-the-sixth-quixotes-true-blue-11893376