Much has changed, naturally, since Jack Kerouac’s heady Denver nights of 1948. Larimer St., where Dean Moriarty lived, is now a fancy bisto-and-sports-bar neighborhood, while the jazz neighborhood where they got their kicks is now full of adult bookstores and a limping hobo who tried to sell me Vicodin. This seems to be Denver, from the brief glimpse I got. A sort of pre-Giuliani Manhattan, with high-rise buildings and fancy restaurants a few blocks away from neighborhoods where it’s not safe to walk at night.

Denver is also one of the beer capitals of the US, it seems (along with Milwaukee). The national Coors and Budweiser canoe brands are brewed here, as well as dozens of microbreweries with local beers that aren’t bad at all. It’s also the host of the annual Great American Beer Festival, where hundreds of brewers come to share thousands of different beers. It starts this week, but I am already far, far away…

And amidst all the Bud Light-peddling sports bar, you can find some very, very nice bars. Yes, these are all working taps.