Boulder has known that it would be losing Catacombs for several months now, we just didn’t know what we’d be losing it to. The dark, crowded, college/hipster/30-something/wedding party bar, with the cheap drink specials, hipster karaoke, and personality-driven trivia nights would soon be replaced by something that, we all assumed, had 100 percent less personality and 100 percent more… well, Boulder.

Today, we can all rest easy knowing that we were all 100 percent right.

As reported last Sunday in the Daily Camera, “(Catacombs will) be named License No. 1… in reference to Catacombs place in Boulder bar history. The theme also will have strong ties to Boulder’s past.”

Because in order to provide customers with an authentic display of city history, you should probably gut and remodel a standing display of city history, and replace it with an “authentic” version of that same history.

(With any luck, we’ll still be able to see Otis chugging along through the service window, but who knows. Maybe his grinding gears and electric sparks are next on the list for an update.)

The bar will also be shifting its focus from cheap drinks and even cheaper happy hours to a new concept that “will emphasize providing a variety of fine liquors, fresh cocktail ingredients and products from in-state suppliers.”

This will certainly make License No. 1 (how do we pronounce that, anyway? Are we going to License tonight? Or One? I prefer No One, I think.) a unique destination on the Boulder bar scene, where no establishment currently fills any of those needs. I can think of no single place downtown where one can obtain fine liquors (Riff’s, Salt, West End, Kitchen), fresh cocktail ingredients (Bitter Bar, Beehive, Oak at 14th) and products from in-state suppliers (every single restaurant that serves microbrews and Stranahan’s) at the same… ok, I can’t even finish that sentence with a straight face.

So the drinks are going to be the same old upscale nonsense that is a dime a dozen in this town, since affordable cocktails are definitely something that we have way too many of around here. But maybe there’s something else beautiful and unique about No One?

“There is going to be a lot of live music. A lot of different kinds of music,” the Camera reports. “(A) piano will be moved into the bar and piano players will be brought in on occasion.”

A bar with a lot of live music! Thank goodness. It’s long plagued me that there was nowhere in this town to enjoy a cold drink and live music, besides Absinthe House, T-Zero, Conor’s, Mountain Sun, Pearl Street Pub, or the No-Name Bar.

So maybe No One isn’t the only one with live music. Don’t worry, though. I’m sure that the music that shows up at No One will definitely be a welcome departure from the blues/bluegrass/Americana/jam band/bar rock/reggae standards that we usually find at those places. I mean, they’re going to have a piano. (Bramble and Hare.)

Just because Boulder can sustain another top-shelf specialty niche bar, doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to. I’m sure that Mike Larkin, General Manager of the Boulderado, and the rest of the investors have business-planned this idea upside down and inside out. They’ve run the numbers, seen the potential profit margins, and are probably making the obvious, economics-driven leap. I get that.

But in a town that worries nearly constantly about losing its middle class, furiously ponders its homogeneity, is unable to fathom why so many of its college students get recklessly drunk at house parties; yet simultaneously prides itself on a culture of inclusion, community, and unique spaces, what social advantage could there possibly be in shuttering one of the few all-accepting watering holes in the town?

After this, we’re left with The Downer. And… um… Dark Horse? While I can think of plenty of spaces that are divey or cheap or universally welcoming, I’m hard pressed to think of any more that encompass all three of these traits, and I can’t think of any bar in town that did it better than Catacombs.

And so, another one bites the dust, dear Boulder. . I’ll see you at The Downer (fun fact: even The Downer has local microbrews), I suppose.

M’ris Berlin lives in Boulder.