For Your Lamentations

Those were the words in the header of the email my older brother sent: "For your lamentations." He is my primary news source for things in my hometown. When something changes in Boulder, Colorado, invariably I hear it from him. The things that matter. Like the advent of the closing of Liquor Mart. If you did not grow up in Boulder, the announcement of a liquor store shuttering its doors might be met with a shrug of its shoulders.
I did, and I'm not.
Liquor Mart was an institution. For more than fifty years, it was the place to shop for beer, wine and spirits. Before 1968, Boulder was a dry county. With the exception of a few establishments sprinkled throughout the town, prohibition never ended. Until 1968, when a visionary named Tom Lacey applied for and received the county's first liquor license. In May of that year, he opened Liquor Mart.
If you are familiar with barns like Bev Mo, the notion of a grocery store for booze isn't a particularly new one. Pushing a shopping cart up and down the aisles does not seem peculiar. Back in the late sixties it sure did. The idea that you could pick up bottles and examine them rather than asking for them from behind a protected counter was a brand new one. More than anything else, Liquor Mart was a celebration of Boulder being "wet."
How many adventures of my youth began with a trip to Liquor Mart? Coincidentally, before it was a liquor store, the location where it has stood for most of its existence used to be a grocery store. Where my Aunt Peggy worked. I had become familiar with those aisles searching for jars of Goober 'n' Grape and rows of Clanky Chocolate syrup. Those were the aisles in which I eventually accompanied my father on a hunt for Beaujolais Nouveau, or bargains on the vodka that would mix with tonic for my parents' evening cocktail. 
But it was my introduction to the beer cooler, along with my older brother, that changed my life. He called it "The Disneyland of Beers." He was correct. Braving the cold was worth it when you discovered those odd off brands or imports that couldn't be found anywhere else. I was with my older brother when I first encountered "The Mystery Case," a sealed box filled with two dozen bottles and cans of various brews. Some of them were treats. Some of them were Coors. You never knew what you might get. 
But everyone knew what you got at Liquor Mart. This is where the kegs came from. This is where the Everclear was purchased for the "punch" we served. This is where we bought our Dr. McGillicuddy's Mentholmint Schnapps. Okay. Most of the time we bought it. Liquor Mart was the beginning of every night that we started with the phrase, "I know: let's get real drunk and..."
Somewhere in there, my cousin got a job as manager there, continuing the odd family connection we had with the place. It was also, oddly enough, the place my father suggested we stop just after he had picked up the cremated remains of his mother. He offered to buy my friend and I a case of beer in some sideways wake-inspired gesture that left us grateful but a tad confused. For the record, we chose Moosehead. 
And so it went, even after my own personal prohibition went into place, Boulder's liquor needs were met by the Mart. Certainly it did not hurt business to be located just down the hill from one of the foremost party schools in America, the University of Colorado. Stumbling distance from so very much student housing, this was the place where wine tasting or binge drinking began and ended. 
Ended. The property has been sold to a real estate developer who specializes in retail and residential space. More condos for an ever-expanding student population. On the spot where all those parties started. There will be some powerful mojo going on there. 
But not just now. 
The lamentations have begun.