Charles Phoenix visits Denver
Vintage slideshow presenter Charles Phoenix recently returned from my hometown of Denver, Colorado, where he visited a few of the retro-highights that the Mile High City has to offer, including The Cruise Room (a 1933 art deco bar), Arapahoe Acres (a mid-century post and beam modern neighborhood), Rockmount Ranch Wear (a western clothing store owned by a 106-year-old fellow who still comes to work every day), and the famous "Mexican" restaurant, Casa Bonita:
My number one priority was having a delicious Mexican dinner (and it was delicious alright!) at one of the most over the top themed restaurants ever and timeless-classic monument to kitsch, CASA BONITA. This very well preserved, and still-amazing-after-all-the years, Americana classic of the highest order is a spellbinding time warp of the year it was built, 1973. It’s worth a trip from anywhere to experience. Eight or so individually themed dining rooms overlook a central two story waterfall where human divers take the plunge Acapulco style every twenty minutes. Each dining room is more amazing than the next. There’s the stalagmite and stalactite room; the western room; Aztec jungle room; the Cinderella and Prince Charming Room and several others. You can even have dinner behind bars in jail. They also have a baby-scale puppet theater, scary walk-through monster cave, temptation filled gift shop and beret-wearing caricature artist. I can’t wait to go back!Charles is being kind about the quality of the food there. When I was a kid the owner of Casa Bonita made a TV commercial to quell the rumors that the restaurant prepared their dishes with dog food.
Here are some YouTube videos of Casa Bonita: Casa Bonita 2001, Cliff Diver at Casa Bonita, Casa Bonita Walk It Out
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yay Denver!
Casa Bonita. That brings back childhood memories. The food really sucks but for a kid the whole place is magical.
The Cruise Room is awesome but space is quite limited, go early or on a weekday if you want to really enjoy the atmosphere. Great place for a highball.
Here is how I came to know of Casa Bonita.
My goodness, Casa Bonita. That used to be THE place to go, back when Elitches was still on 38th and DU was the only place to watch hockey.
I think the whole point of the diving show at Casa Bonita is to distract you from what's on your plate.
I have to say, I never thought of the food there as "delicious". It's not really the kind of place you go to for the food. Sort of like Hooters in that sense.
I saw the above South Park episode and laughed wildly all the way through it -- I went through all that as a child! The pangs of longing to go there! My husband thought I was insane.
Xadrian -- yes! Elitches on 38th! The new one will never be the same...
Oh man, Casa Bonita! It was *the* place to go for your birthday dinner as a kid in the 70s. Thanks for the links!!
I may or may not know/be a person who runs a very unofficial myspace page for casabonita. Who ever actually runs it is very secretive and writes blogs and comments from the restaurant's point of view.
There were two Casa Bonitas, the other being in Tulsa. Every bit as kitschy, but without the cliff divers, unfortunately. When I was a kid in the late 1970s-early 1980s, having a birthday party at Casa Bonita was The Cool Thing To Do.
It closed in 2005 but then reopened under another name. Here's a Flickr photoset of its last days.
Like some of the posters above, I have never considered Casa Bonita food delicious. The food and bad service is the price you pay for the fabulous entertainment.
I was there a couple of months ago for a family gathering, with one generation (mine) who grew up going to Casa Bonita, and the next generation (my niece and nephew and cousins' kids). It was great to see the younger generation enjoy the bad food and cheesy skits with every bit as much enthusiasm as I did as a kid. I got to relive some of the best moments of my childhood.
I can't believe they still do the gorilla skit.
And that old wooden roller coaster at Elitches is the first one I ever rode....I was so excited when I was finally tall enough for it.
Casa Bonita has some of the worst food I've ever been served in my entire life. We actually had to go somewhere else to eat after eating dinner there, because there was nothing edible.
The show was lame too. I can see how it appeals to kids in the same way that Chuck E Cheese and Showbiz Pizza appeal to kids. CB was staffed by the same bored teenagers that run the rugrat-infested pizza joints, and it had that same dirty-carny, "who-just-peed-in-here?" atmosphere.
I would heartily un-recommend it, unless you're interested in spending the evening reveling in unrepentant disappoinment and mediocrity.
On the other hand, we got a great story out of it.
When I was eight I knew the food at Casa Bonita was awful. I was eight, however, and was thus distracted from eating anything at all by the option to run around and see tons of crazy stuff. I went to a tour kickoff party there last spring and can say that it's equally awesome when you're in your twenties, but for totally different reasons.
Also, I think probably Lakeside is going to close for the fall soon, but it's a quintessential Denver landmark. It has, (I think), the oldest roller coaster in the nation, the Wild Chipmunk, which is also the scariest roller coaster I've ever declined to ride on because you can watch it sway and hear it creak from the ground. If you're around, it's well worth a trip. It'll run you less than ten dollars to spend two or three hours there.
as yet another person who grew up in denver (littleton, actually) in the 70s, i have to agree with so many others here who have said that it was THE cool place to go for a birthday. i have very strong memories of casa bonita from back then. (can anyone else here sing the jingle? do they still have the *same* jingle, i wonder? why mess with perfection?)
i also concur that the food is awful. but that's not why we go there, now is it?
IDEAL DENVER BIRTHDAY CA. 1987:
1) Ice Cream at Lickety Split, now known as ‘Liks’. Not nearly as good now, alas.
2) Celebrity Fun Center! Dangerous waterslides, unwinnable minigolf, and surly lifeguards. Huzzah! Celebrity has since been demolished.
3) Dinner at Casa Bonita. See the sights, feel the excitement, choke down the food. Still magical after all these years.
4) Drive in at the Cinderella Twin (Short Circuit 2, perhaps?). Soon to be demolished.
Next Year: Perhaps Elitch's and the crappy 1988 Denver Zoo?
The trick was, convincing your parents not to go to Lakeside.
In the 1970s, my best birthday would have been Celebrity Sports Center for slot car racing followed by dinner at the Yum Yum Tree.
Yum Yum Tree... is that the weird sushi place with the sushi boat/canal system between all the tables? I've *heard* of this....
the sopapillas at casa are pretty good, but it's kind of hard to do fried dough bad ...
my wife and I went there the other night (to entertain a visiting 4-year-old) and the place has not changed one iota since I was a kid.
pictures of the Beautiful House:
http://flynnstory.blogspot.com/
Seriously, I think they are still working off the same gorilla chase script from 1979.(yes, a gorilla runs around the restaurant with a guy chasing him with a ginormous net... while you are dining. And no, you are not allowed to bring your own gorilla suit to the restaraunt. I asked.)
But like I always say "If you have a good gorilla chase skit think long and hard before you go tinkering around with it." That's a hard, fast rule that I live by.
A weird note from my experience there the other day.
There were more than a few childless couples seated at tables around us. Who the hell goes to Casa Bonita on a date? (Once again, I must emphasize that a man in a gorilla suit is literally chased throughout the whole restaurant during your meal.)
Very strange.
I asked my wife to picture our relationship if I had taken her to Casa Bonita on a first date. I don't know if we would have made it. It's the restaurant equivalent of trying to impress a girl with magic tricks.
For the record: we had a four and 2 year old with us when we went the other night.
I've heard it called Casa Vomita on more than one occasion. Having been there a year ago, I can say with certainty that the service is just as terrible as the food. And don't think that people are saying it's "bad" in a bad-but-lovable way, like drunks might find White Castle endearing. No, the place truly has the most wretched food and sub-par service I've ever encountered. How Charles Phoenix could find it "delicious" when there are so many better and authentic options for Mexican food in Denver is beyond me.
Ahh, Mark F., the perfect birthday dinner was always to be had at Fuji-En.
Slot cars at Celebrity Fun Center was to mark the first day of summer, after which the blissed-out 11-year enjoyed a happy dinner at Bonnie Brae Pizza.
Yeah, I gotta agree with Mark.
The Yum Yum Tree was the place to go - it had it all.
All the commercials were by Blink the Clown. (I seem to remember that Blinky was the clown here in Denver on KWGN because KWGN was owned by WGN who had Bozo the Clown) The Yum-Yum tree was so cool back in the 70's - it was mostly what we all now so commonly know as a Food Court - you could get Pizza, Hamburgers, Chinese, etc...)
Of course after the Yum-Yum Tree it was over to Celebrity Sports Center! Bowling, Arcade Games, Slot Car Racing - it was awesome. (I heard Celebrity Sports Center was constructed by a sub-division of Disney...)
Sadly, both are gone now, along with Cinderella City - holler if you remember Zeezo's Magic Castle in Cinder Alley or that victorian Ice Cream Parlor, the Soda Straw!
Sigh - I'm way to old now.
This thread is blowing my mind! I was born in Denver in the early seventies, and the memories are flooding back...enthusiastic gushing follows:
For me, the ideal birthday would have included Casa Bonita and Celebrity, but the theater would have been the Cooper! That's where I saw Star Wars AND The Empire Strikes Back when they premiered. My mom loves to tell the story of how the line for Star Wars was so humongous we had to get McDonalds burgers and eat while we were waiting (IN THE RAIN) because it took so damn long! Now, the Cooper is also gone, like the old Elitch Gardens.
The food at Casa Bonita was strictly incidental - criticizing it is like saying the food at Disneyland sucks. Who cares? When you've got grottoes to explore, gorillas running around, and guys cliff-diving in the middle of the room? C'mon! Food is the last thing on your mind.
I'll never forget the time I was finally tall enough to ride Mr. Twister, the old wooden coaster at Elitch's. It scared the holy hell out of me and made me sick all night! I kept getting dizzy. Man, that was great.
I, too, remember the Soda Straw! My cousin always had his birthday parties there. I was really envious. There was something peculiar about the way they sang happy birthday, but I can't remember exactly what it was...
On a side note, my aunt worked at Celebrity, and one summer in the 80's, my dad got a job remodelling some part of it. I got to hang out there with my little sister for DAYS at a time, playing free skee-ball, free video games, and watersliding until our eyes were blood red from the chlorine. In retrospect, it was perhaps not ideal parenting, but for a kid it was freakin' AWESOME.
OLD SKOOL DENVER!
for pizza, Shakey's. Ice cream, plus the birthday sundae with lit sparklers on it, the Soda Straw, of course. The Cooper or Continental, for movies, and for shopping, the big-ass Woolworth's on 16th street, one block long....