Upstairs Circus

Upstairs Circus LoDo is the original location of a concept its founder describes as DIY workshop meets bar, opened in 2010 by Kelly Johannsen at 1500 Wynkoop Street in Denver's historic Lower Downtown, a block from Union Station. The format is reservation-based and unusually structured for a bar: guests book a seat, choose from a rotating menu of more than twenty-five hands-on projects at check-in, and are given the materials and photo tutorials to work through them at their own pace, with staff available on demand. The project list spans leather working, wood working, jewellery making, art and home decor, and finished pieces go home with the guest. Drinks are served throughout rather than before or after, which is the whole point of the format: the bar exists to keep hands busy and conversation going for the two or three hours a project takes.

For non-drinkers this matters more than it might at a conventional bar, because the activity, not the alcohol, is the reason to be there, and the room is one of the few places downtown where an evening out has a built-in purpose that does not depend on drinking. The full bar pours craft cocktails, beer and wine alongside a named non-alcoholic section on the LoDo bar menu. The published Upstairs Circus bar menu carries a section headed Free Spirited and marked no alcohol, holding five drinks at $8 each: the Pineapple Palm Reader with pineapple, vanilla simple syrup and ginger beer; Berry Go Round with lemonade, grenadine, strawberry preserve and soda; Tumblin Peach Tea with tea, simple syrup and peach preserve; Lion Taming Limeade with soda, lime, mint simple syrup and cherry juice; and the Pepper Pantomime, a spicy margarita substitute of lime, ginger beer, pineapple and jalapeno. Athletic Brewing's Free Wave hazy IPA is the non-alcoholic beer, also $8. Do303's Denver and Boulder non-alcoholic guide still recommends a Snake Charmer of grapefruit juice, lime juice, simple syrup and tonic here; that drink is not on the published menu as of August 2026, so do not go expecting it. FOX31's Dry January listicle put the mocktails in the $7 to $8 range, which is roughly half what the cocktails cost. The concept has since expanded to Austin and Minneapolis and to a second Denver-area location, but the Wynkoop Street room remains the original and the largest of the project menus. The LoDo room is closed Mondays, opens at 3pm midweek and from late morning at weekends, and sessions are booked rather than walked into, so a group planning a sober night out can hold a table in advance without negotiating anything at the door.