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What Is It Like to Work in a Dive Bar: Anika Zappe Talks PS Lounge

Longtime Denver bartender Anika Zappe, now at Central Bistro & Bar, shared some experiences from her days behind the bar at PS Lounge, where she ended up meeting her husband.

by Andra Zeppelin
Anika Zappe
Anika Zappe
Modern in Denver

What did you love about working at the PS lounge?
Probably first and foremost the money. It allowed me to pursue my creative endeavors and that was a real gift at the time. I think ulti

mately the thing I loved the most was all of the wonderful people that I met and got to know over the years. You see everything happen in bars like that. You'll meet someone and then years later you'll have their wake in that bar. You watch couples fall in love and celebrate their engagements and marriages in that bar. Maybe later you're celebrating the birth of their children. The PS was always one of those "clean" dives that people really enjoy frequenting. I felt honored to bear witness to people's lives.

What's your best memory from the PS lounge?
Probably meeting my husband. Pete The owner of the PS lounge, told me later that we would be married because we met at the PS lounge. He always thought that was a pretty funny joke.

And what is the worst memory from your time there?
Oddly enough it was a bachelorette party. I've told the story a few times to friends of the rowdy bachelorette party who were bullying the old regulars into buying them drinks. I cut them off and asked them to leave eventually and might have feared for my life for just a moment.

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