Thick as Thieves

Thick as Thieves occupies the second floor at 620 West Idaho Street in downtown Boise, part of a building that also houses Bar Please! a level above — two distinct bars, same address, same hours, which makes the block unusually efficient for an evening out.

Its alcohol-free list runs to three named drinks: Queen Pine, the Thieves Root Beer Float and the Northside. The Northside is a recognisable cocktail name, a mint-and-citrus build in the Southside family, so the zero-proof version sits in the same tradition as the alcoholic list.

The root beer float deserves attention because it declines to play the substitution game. Most alcohol-free menus are built on imitation — a Negroni without the Campari, a margarita without the tequila — and the drink is measured against something absent. A root beer float is not pretending to be anything. It is simply a good thing to drink, served in a bar, at night, with no apology attached. For a lot of non-drinkers that framing is more comfortable than a drink whose whole identity is what it lacks, and there is a small but real pleasure in ordering something the table might envy rather than tolerate.

The hours are strong: 4pm to midnight through the week, to 1am on Friday and Saturday, and open Sundays until 10pm. Combined with Red Feather a couple of blocks away and Bar Please! directly upstairs, this corner of downtown gives a non-drinker three properly stocked options within a few minutes on foot — which for a city of Boise's size is a genuinely good showing, and largely the product of three years of Temperance Trail groundwork. It is worth naming that causation directly: Boise punches above its size here because one shop decided to organise a scene rather than simply supply it.