Poka Lola Social Club

Poka Lola Social Club sits inside The Maven Hotel at Dairy Block, the alley-and-arcade redevelopment between Wazee and Blake in Denver's Lower Downtown. The concept crosses art-deco cocktail-bar polish with turn-of-the-century American soda fountain nostalgia, which shows up in the room's tile, brass and counter seating and in the way the drinks are written. Live music runs on a regular schedule, an alley bar opens for warm-weather seating onto the Dairy Block passage, and the bar offers a Dealer's Choice service where guests hand the bartender a set of preferences and get a custom build back. Beverage manager Lexi Parker runs the programme seasonally, and past menus have leaned on produce that is unusual for a hotel bar: ube, lychee, snap peas, turmeric and pink peppercorn-infused bases among them. The Maven is a boutique hotel, and the bar functions as its ground-floor public room as well as a destination in its own right; service runs to 10pm early in the week and to midnight on Friday and Saturday.

What distinguishes the bar for non-drinkers is that the non-alcoholic list is a fixed section of the published menu with its own drinks, not a set of substitutions. Four are current, all built in-house. Water Your Garden ($12) combines La Borosa non-alcoholic agave spirit and Giffard non-alcoholic aperitif with herbes de Provence and lemon, an unusually savoury opener. Sandy Cheeks ($12) is the tropical option, house coconut cream with pineapple and lime. Walking on Sunshine ($12) runs strawberry, honey, mint and lemon. Rootin' Tootin' ($7) is the bar's own root beer, made from sarsaparilla, molasses, wintergreen and star anise, and priced closer to a soda than a cocktail. A separate N/A Classics line covers ginger beer, tonic and the standard sodas. Visit Denver's December 20, 2025 spirit-free guide grouped the bar under Downtown and noted the seasonally changing options; Westword's January 1, 2026 Dry January round-up covered a rotating January set including a Wrinkle in Thyme with white peach, thyme, cinnamon and white balsamic vinegar, and a Main Squeeze with orange, pineapple, vanilla and cream, alongside a half-price mocktail event. Prices are worth noting because they are unusually low for a downtown hotel bar: the built non-alcoholic cocktails are $12 against a spirited list that runs considerably higher, and the root beer is $7.