Kombucha served with love
Part 2:
Opening THE ATRIUM
A Bar & Live Music Venue with a Fun Vibe
RALPH: Okay Hunter, let’s talk about THE ATRIUM Lounge now, which is the music venue located below The Alley Cat that you opened in 2020 with your business partner, Connor Williams. I sometimes refer to The Atrium as an art bar, but I’ve also called it a kombucha & sake bar. How would you describe it?
HUNTER: I see The Atrium as a holding space for creatives. It’s a music venue, a performance venue, a hub for artists, and a social place. Right now, I’m trying to cater to those folks who want to go out for a drink and listen to music or dance, but I also want it to be community oriented. To strike that balance, I think it starts with the music. That’s the big ingredient for me, and that involves finding musicians who are passionate about what they’re doing and love performing.
In many ways, what we’re doing at The Atrium is connected to the local house show scene, and my enjoyment of that over the years. A “house show”, for those who don’t know, is a DIY event that’s held at someone’s house or backyard which features live music and usually some visual art. Certain houses in town have become known for hosting house shows over the years, including Sunshine House, Hillcrest Hotel, and Over the Rainbow, which is literally an apartment over a breakfast joint called “Rainbow”. It’s pretty grassroots, but these places have managed to host some fairly big-name bands at times. It often happens spontaneously and organically because of the close degrees of separation between musicians, where someone knows a guy who knows a guy who’s in a popular band who’s passing through town and wants to play. So I’ve been making some in-roads with some of the better performers at these events to let them know that they have a space to play at The Atrium..
Located at 120 ½ W. Laurel St., Fort Collins
We keep our cover charges at The Atrium pretty low, and we also try to give 100% of our door charges back to the musicians. It’s a goodwill policy that’s obviously beneficial to them, but it also creates a nice feedback loop for us because if they draw a big crowd, we benefit from their community mixing with ours. There’s a surprisingly large number of good musicians in Fort Collins, and the number of places in town where those musicians can play is limited. So the fact that we’re a smaller, more intimate venue means that we don’t have the same barrier to entry as some of the larger venues in town, like The Aggie or Washington’s. We can definitely be a good foot in the door for a lot of bands.
We’ve been hosting an Open Mic Night every Tuesday from 7-11pm, and that’s been going extremely well. For well over a decade, we hosted Open Mics on Fridays at The Alley Cat upstairs, but we phased that out as things there became more studious in the evenings, and so we’ve carried that tradition downstairs to The Atrium. We usually have 15-20 musicians sign up on our Open Mic roster, which is a lot of music packed into a 4-hour time frame. Sometimes, too, a little crossover will occur where a couple of performers will discover each other’s music and they’ll sign up to play together the following week. I love it when that happens!
In terms of our drink menu, we initially established The Atrium as a non-alcoholic and low ABV (alcohol-by-volume) bar featuring zero-proof mock-tails, kombucha on tap, and sake cocktails. For those who aren’t familiar, sake (pronounced “sah-kee”) is a mildly-alcoholic Japanese beverage that’s made from fermented rice. It’s one of our most popular drinks, but on the weekend, people will often want a drink with a little more alcohol content. So we recently expanded our alcohol menu to include some wine and wine seltzers. Down the road, I might also feature some Japanese whiskey, like Hibiki Harmony, to accompany our sake offerings and provide something that’s a little more niche than your typical bar experience.
Sake cocktails
RALPH: I’m curious, did it feel risky when you committed to renting this space and starting this business?
HUNTER: Sure, it felt a bit risky. This space has been used for all sorts of things over the years, including storage. For a while, it was part of the hookah bar next door, Algiers, but they no longer needed the extra room, so we took it over. Connor and I definitely put a lot of work into this space in 2020. It was a great lock-down project for both of us. In those early months with the pandemic, I know a lot of people were thinking, “Oh no, what am I going to do with myself?”—but we had more than enough to focus on. We opened in May 2020, and with all the masking and seating requirements, it was definitely a weird time to be launching a bar. Plus, with my mask on, I couldn’t even smile at my customers.
Back then, I remember thinking, "Once this is over, I wonder how long it will take before we take for granted what a beautiful thing it is to spend time around each other freely."
So here we are, several years later, and it almost feels like we’re coming out of a collective fever dream as we resume our routines again. I haven’t forgotten where we were, though, and I’m definitely not taking it for granted. I don’t think local music has always been at this level in Fort Collins, and I think that’s partly due to all the hibernating and creative coping we went through with Covid. Most people couldn’t go to work for several months, and for artists and musicians, it was like, “Alright, I can either give up, or I can dive in headfirst.” I definitely see a creative renaissance happening in the local music scene, and I think part of it is fueled by gratitude—just feeling grateful that we can get together again, listen to music and have a good time.
RALPH: That makes sense. You know Hunter, I think one of the main assets and unique features of The Atrium is you. You seem to wear a variety of hats extremely well. You can design, construct, produce artwork, problem solve, run a business, network. Plus you get along with people so well. Do you see yourself that way?
HUNTER: Well thanks, I appreciate that. I certainly love people, and I would also say that I am a student of all those things you mentioned. I am a student of communication, management, building, marketing, and life in general. You know, we’re living in an age of unlimited access to information, and things like learning to weld or hook up a faucet are frequently just a matter of finding the right YouTube video. I’m definitely willing to admit that there’s a lot I don’t know, and that I have access to all these talented, capable individuals who can teach me things and help me to get where I want to go.
My business partner, Connor, is one of those people. He’s a “jack” when it comes to construction. He’s literally built houses, so he’s been able to take the lead on a lot of our building projects. I tend to enjoy the finished-carpentry projects, whereas Connor has more of those big-picture building skills. Plus he’s not afraid of feeling uncomfortable for a period of time in order to achieve a goal. When we were renovating this place, for example, we worked a lot of days in the snow and in difficult situations, and Connor stayed upbeat and incredibly productive the whole time. He’s also a very conscientious and capable person when it comes to the day-to-day operations of The Atrium, which allows me to dream a little more and focus on other things.
Co-Owner, Connor Williams
RALPH: You certainly seem to draw a lot of capable, creative people toward you. Have you noticed that?
HUNTER: Well, there are just so many talented people out there, it’s hard not to get excited by that.
Intricate art panel by Robert Klose
As far as creativity goes, I’ve always liked the idea that once you’ve honed a certain skill set, the world can open up to you in terms of what you can create. Take the work of Robert Klose for example—he’s the artist who produced the “projection-map” piece for us. Robert somehow figured out how to create these laser-cut wood panels that are illuminated and multi-layered, and his work is absolutely mind-blowing. I have no idea how he got there, but I know he must have gone through a lot of iterations before reaching this point in his work. I think that’s probably true of most artists—that they learn more from their failures than their successes.
When it comes to The Atrium, I’ve been able to find a lot of talented people with the skills and know-how that I’ve needed. With our sound system, for example, we hired these two unbelievable local guys, Andrew Waltman and Chris Fernald, and they basically set up the entire thing. I built the subwoofer, but even with that, Andrew said, “Hey, if you want to try building it yourself, you should check out this guy’s speaker plan.” Sean Papile is another person who’s been incredibly helpful. Sean is one of our bartenders, but he’s also a photographer and a welder, and together we built all the table bases for The Atrium. Well, I say we built it together, but most of it was Sean. There’s also Lindee Zimmer, who painted a beautiful female face in profile in gold-leaf on one of our walls; and Louisa Palmer, who painted our restroom mural; and Cole McCole, who sculpted a wonderful architectural piece for us out of wood. It’s funny, Cole said to me one day: “Hey man, what sort of wall space do you have?” So I sent him some dimensions with some initial ideas, and he just showed up one day with a finished piece and said, “Ok, I got it done.” It’s been great finding people like that—artists who want to join in and put their personal mark on the place.
RALPH: It definitely makes the space unique. So what would you say your main lesson or learning-curve has been with The Atrium?
HUNTER: Oh that’s easy—running the sound board. That’s been my steepest challenge for sure because it was completely new to me when I took it on. I’m discovering, though, that I really enjoy it. Most of the bigger venues in town have bigger budgets that allow for hiring a sound specialist—but in our case, it’s just me. We have a X-Air sound board by Behringer, and I had to learn how to set that up and control all the dials and levers so that it sounds well-balanced in the house and also through the stage monitors. The monitors are critical because they allow the musicians to hear themselves as well as each other. The guitarist, for instance, needs to hear what the bassist is doing, and the drummer needs to hear the vocalist. So figuring that out has been a process, and sometimes I’ve had to do it on the fly. At one of our Open Mics, for instance, this cool band named Heart Tribe decided to perform at the last minute, and they had a saxophone, keyboard, guitar, vocals, a cajón (which is similar to a box drum), and a full percussion set-up, including chimes. I managed to mic all that up quickly, and they played an amazing set—but yeah, when it comes to my learning curve with sound, a lot of it has been trial by fire.
We are surrounded by so many good musicians in northern Colorado, and we’ve had the good fortune of hosting a lot of them at The Atrium. That list includes: Veronica May and the Magnetics, Ash Redhorse and The Midnight Suns, Shadow Work, Co-Stanza, The Crooked Rugs, Muck Luck, and so many more. A few months ago, we had 3 out of the 4 members of The Fretliners in here, and they joined up with a couple members of this bigger band called Wood Belly, and man did they put on a show! Yeah, we’re definitely finding our niche in Fort Collins, so that when people come out to The Atrium, we know they’re going to leave feeling a lot better than when they came in.
Performance by “Dream Cast”
RALPH: Awww, that’s great—that puts a nice closing on this section. Thanks so much for meeting with me, Hunter. Before we wrap this up, though, I wonder if I could get your take on the the world in general. It’s a big topic, I know, but how’s the future of our planet and humanity looking to you these days?
HUNTER: I think it’s going to be really good, actually. Bad things are always happening—there’s no escaping that—but there are always good people around who are trying to do the right thing and change things for the better. In terms of my own day-to-day life, I tend to see myself as a “sphere of influence” person. That is to say, I try to focus on the things around me that I have control over and can change, and that focus begins with myself. I can be my own worst enemy, of course, especially when it comes to bad habits or all the things I know I should be doing. That’s one reason I meditate. There’s just such a difference between the days when I don’t meditate and the days that begin with a sit. I love a good 2 pm meditation, too, and sometimes I’ll opt for that if I have to rush out of the house in the morning. But generally, I try to start my day with a little stretching followed by 10-15 minutes of quiet time, and then some focused meditation. It really helps to clear out the remnant junk from the previous day.
The unconscious mind is extremely powerful and influential. Whether it’s something good you’re looking forward to or a bad outcome that you’re dreading, your thoughts and emotions have the power to make that happen. Clearly, I try not to give my fears and negative thoughts too much emphasis, but that’s not always easy to control, especially when it comes to unconscious drives. Again, this is where meditation comes in. There’s a lot of research on this, but from my own experience, I just know that I become a lot more optimistic and less hasty in my judgments when I’m meditating regularly. Plus, my mind doesn’t get hijacked and carried away by crap that doesn’t really matter. Yeah, that stuff almost disappears entirely.
One of the most powerful things I’ve learned in recent years is that you have to take care of yourself first. For me, that self-care takes the form of long bike rides and regular meditation sessions. I sit every day, I don’t compromise on that, and I’ve actually been late to a few meetings because of that commitment. Some people might see that as selfish or irresponsible, but I believe my level of productivity increases and my whole outlook on life improves when I sit on a regular basis. Some practitioners will tell you that you don’t really receive the benefits of meditation until you’re at least an hour into your practice, but I have a hard time with that position because I see the benefit in sitting just 15 minutes a day. There was a time when I couldn’t imagine sitting every day, and now, it’s hard to imagine ever going back to a life where I don’t prioritize 10-15 minutes of quiet time per day. It feels like a lifelong journey that will keep getting better and better as time goes on.
Large kaleidoscope window
behind The Atrium stage
One big thing that I think we all lose track of in our busy modern world is gratitude. I know it’s not the same for everyone, especially if you look at the state of the world today, but there are always things in our daily life that we can appreciate. I’m certainly no pro at it, but I’ve recently been thinking about all the people in my life that I am grateful for. In fact, I called my mom a few weeks ago just to tell her thank you for all the good work she does in the world that goes unnoticed. It totally made her day! Yeah, I think it’s almost impossible to say thank you to too many people or be grateful for too many things.
The energy of gratitude is inexhaustible, and it can happen in the simplest of ways. For example, I have this door man at The Atrium who says nice comments to practically every person who comes in the door. He’ll say things like, “Ahhh, it’s great to see you” or “Wow man, you’re looking sharp tonight.” He literally fills their buckets as they enter. People need that sort of thing. They need to be recognized for the good things they do and the great qualities they have. I think that’s a natural extension of gratitude, too—to let people know how much you enjoy and appreciate them. Yeah, my door man is a pretty special guy. I need to make sure he knows that.
Hunter (left) enjoys a Japanese tea ceremony in the Nevada desert at Burning Man, 2017