27 DECEMBER 1-7, 2022 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | Neon Dreams PETE’S SATIRE LOUNGE CELEBRATES SIXTY YEARS ON COLFAX. BY SKYLER MC KINLEY Spend enough time squinting up at the iconic sign snaking above Pete’s Satire Lounge and you’ll almost fi nd yourself fl ung to the Colfax Avenue of yesteryear. It’s a humming memo- rial to the days when neon used to ring the block — from the Aladdin Theatre (now a Walgreens) to the Playboy Lounge (now the Lion’s Lair) to advertisements for “topless talent” at Sid King’s Crazy Horse Bar (most recently the Irish Snug) just down the way. All told, these signs were monuments not just to commerce, but to sin in the age of the automobile, from beer runs at John’s Liquor Store to three-martini lunches at Bastien’s and the Bluebird Theater’s sordid streak as a stroke palace. As famous as Colfax is for its characters, you might imagine the sort of person run- ning these joints: good-timing lounge lizards with whiskey on their breath and cigarettes in hand. That certainly was true of Sid King, the diminutive club owner known as the “sultan of striptease.” It might have been true of Sam Sugarman, who erected the Satire’s famed marquee when he owned the place. He advertised it, known then as Sugie’s Cocktail Lounge, as a “headquarters for good fellowship and good cheer.” He changed the name in 1960, swap- ping out the neon let- ters “S-U-G-I-E-S” with “S-A-T-I-R-E” when he rebranded as a live-music venue — about the same time that Bob Dylan got booted off the stage. Look below the Satire’s main marquee and you’ll see a more modest sign welcoming you to Pete’s Lounge. Pete, of course, is Pete Contos, the Greek im- migrant who, after open- ing the Satire in December 1962, launched an empire that grew to encompass nine businesses. And while that story can’t be told without tales of spilled drinks, slurred words and barroom brawls, it starts where you’d least expect it to: church. It was at the Assumption of the Theotokos church, then located at Sixth and Pennsylva- nia, where Pete Contos fi rst met Elizabeth “Liz” Zavaras in 1957 — just two years after he stepped off the plane from Greece. Born and raised in Denver to Greek immigrant par- ents, Liz is about as solidly “old Denver” as it comes. She graduated from Dora Moore Elementary, Morey Junior High and East High School — as did her brother, Ari Zavaras, who later served as Denver’s police chief and in the cabinets of governors Roy Romer and Bill Owens and Mayor Wel- lington Webb. Zavaras ran for mayor himself in 2003, coming in third to John Hickenlooper after a stint as the presumed frontrunner. Liz was wrapping up at East when she started going out with Pete, seven years her senior. “He’d come pick me up at the high school,” she laughs. They were engaged by 1958 and married in Oc- tober 1959. “I had a schol- arship to go to Vassar, and we met, and I said, ‘No, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to stay here.’” The Contoses’ son, Dean, was born in 1960, while Pete was still chasing dreams. “The fi rst day Pete was in this country, his uncle took him to a little bar downtown,” Liz says. “He was mesmerized watching the bartender, and he looked at his uncle and said, ‘That’s what I want to do.’” Liz took a job at an insurance company while her husband worked at various fi ne-dining joints around town, with the small family initially living with Liz’s parents in Alamo Placita. “Pete would say that we couldn’t get ahead if we had to pay rent, so we stuck together and put our money together so that he could do what he wanted to do,” she says. The stars aligned on December 1, 1962, when Pete, Liz and a busi- ness partner were able to buy the Satire Lounge from Sam Sugarman, though the barman fi gured it was a temporary sort of depar- ture. “Sugarman told all the customers in here, ‘These Greek kids don’t know what they’re doing. They won’t make it. I’ll be back here in six months,’” Liz recalls. Sugie was wrong: By 1965, Liz and Pete were able to buy out their partner — and “Pete’s Lounge” was born. While it was Pete’s name that graced the door, and his near-constant pres- ence behind the bar that set the tone, the enterprise very much belonged to Liz, too. “We made a deal when we bought it: He took care of hiring, fi ring, the menu, whatever went on in the place,” Liz says, “and I took care of everything else: the books, the checks, managing the money, managing it all. I told him, ‘I’m not going to tell you what to do, and you don’t tell me what to do, and we’ll be just fi ne.’” In all those years, Pete only ever signed one check — which created a problem when the bank didn’t recognize the signature and took it for fraud. Still, while her signature graced nearly ev- erything, Liz didn’t take a visible role in those early years. Little wonder why: On top of all the complexities of managing a small business, she was also raising a family. Daughter Andrea came in 1963, followed by another girl, Nikki, born on Christmas Day 1966 — the only time Pete had to shut down the Satire early. Pete was a family man through and through. The bar’s schedule allowed him days at home with the kids followed by eve- ning shifts behind the pine. Sometimes he’d be able to sneak dinner back at the house, but often Liz would prepare a meal and load the kids in the car so they could eat together at the bar. “The regulars would laugh and say, ‘You’ve got a restaurant, and your wife is bringing you dinner?’” Liz remembers. “Pete would say, ‘Look, we’ve got the best Mexican food in town, but you can’t eat it every single day, and I want to see my family.’” Before long, the Satire became something like a living room for the Contos clan. Dean started coming in regularly as a tyke. “I grew up in here,” he says. “He had me washing glasses at fi ve.” The family would soon blend with the family of regulars who made the Satire home. As they bought each other drinks, they’d buy Dean one, too. “I’d have a ginger ale shot, and we’re all sitting there taking shots together. Those guys became my uncles,” he says. Nikki, who also CAFE continued on page 28 FIND MORE FOOD & DRINK COVERAGE AT WESTWORD.COM/RESTAURANTS The new mural of Pete and Elizabeth Contos at Pete’s Satire Lounge. SKYLER MCKINLEY The Satire sign still glows today. SKYLER MCKINLEY
