And speaking of nature, there’s the waterfall. Normally nestled next to a tagline empha- sizing that Coors is “brewed with 100% Rocky Mountain Water,” the waterfall may also be there to paradoxically remind you that “this is no downstream beer,” a turn of phrase that Coors leaned on in ’80s advertisements. Unlike the lions, the waterfall is real — though drinkers may not know that. The guess from Bloom, who grew up not far from the Coors brewery? “I believe it’s up Clear Creek, up Highway 6 out of Golden.” From Piper, who moved here from Geor- gia: “Probably in the Rocky Mountains some- where. I’m going to go with Crested Butte.” artistic interpretation than, say, a waterfall or a Fritz Scholder painting or a Neil Young record. But like art and nature, it can inspire conversation — whether you’re asking your friends to defi ne a color under the glare of the hot sun and the friendly buzz of a single 5 percent ABV beer, or having a more heated talk at the bar, where you swear you heard the Coors waterfall was near Ouray. The makers of Coors Banquet want you to have these conversations. That’s why on April 7, they rolled out their Coors Banquet Legacy Collection, three new can designs and a new stubby bottle label that attempt to tell various stories about the beer, from tales of the fi ve generations of the Coors THE WORLD’S MOST COMFORTABLE BRANDS OF SHOES DENVER Birkenstock, Teva, Chaco, Lems, ON Running, Altra, Hoka OneOne, Merrell, Keen, Dansko, Ecco, Naot, & More! comfortableshoes.com Next to REI at 15th & Platte BOULDER On the Pearl St. Mall & In The Village Marilyn Monroe drank Coors Banquet while on the set of The Misfi ts with Clark Gable. And from Whitley, the T-shirt designer who comes to Colorado whenever he’s follow- ing what’s left of the Grateful Dead: “I hope it’s not fi ctional. To me, this is the waterfall that makes the Coors. This is the beer waterfall. This is where the beer comes from.” And here you stumble upon one of those rare moments when the truth is more re- freshing than even the best myth. As with that “100% Rocky Mountain Water,” you have to go to the source — in this case, Harris, the Coors archivist. “The picture of the fi rst waterfall on the Coors Banquet label was taken in 1937,” she says. And that waterfall is Routt County’s Fish Creek Falls, just above Steamboat Springs. You’d think that would be the end of it, but Harris, like any good archivist, is a sucker for accuracy. “In 1978, when Coors Light was introduced, another waterfall was chosen, named ‘Milton Falls’ — at Bogan Flats, near Marble, Colorado,” she adds. And yes, a mythic waterfall occasionally graces Coors packaging, too. “The third waterfall is an artist’s interpretation of a waterfall,” Harris notes. The design of something as commercial as a beer can or bottle is usually less open to family to the company’s roots in Golden to the “coveted nature” of the product that inspired Smokey and the Bandit and all those other legends — before pasteurization took the product to all fi fty states. “We’re raising a glass to the history of American beer,” Clanfi eld says of the col- lection, available now through the end of June. “We dug through the archives, and we looked through a lot of different de- sign elements so that our values and rich history come through on the packaging.” That motivation may smack of marketing mumbo-jumbo. Then again, so much of our culture has used Banquet bottles and cans to inject a taste of authenticity by borrowing the brand’s history and iconography, moves often propelled by big marketing budgets. Is it fair for the manufacturer to now draw on that same history in an attempt to make a little art, even if the primary aim is to get us to buy something? The debate over art as commerce stretches back even further than the 149-year history of Coors Banquet. It’s probably best to continue the conver- sation over a beer. Email the author at [email protected]. PARK HILL SUPERMARKET High Quality! Huge Variety! Wholesale Prices! Fresh fruit, vegetables, meat & seafood OPEN HOURS THURSDAY-SUNDAY 9AM-6PM. CLOSED WEDNESDAY MONDAY-TUESDAY 9AM-6PM, 3770 E 40TH AVE. DENVER, CO 80205 Tel: 303-823-3088 FACE MASKS AND HAND SANITIZER NOW AVAILABLE! 13 westword.com | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | WESTWORD APRIL 21-27, 2022 ERNST HAAS
