AURORA | For 60 years, the Plainsman Bar was a staple on Aurora’s bar scene.
Located in the Hoffman Heights shopping center, the country-western bar served as a gathering place for one of Aurora’s iconic neighborhoods, and along the way, morphed into a sort of community center, fostering a home away from home for some of the most-loyal barflies to ever raise a glass.
Last week, the party ended.
The Plainsman closed it’s doors with last call April 25.
But before the Plainsman’s last pint was poured, dozens of loyal patrons and members of the Plainsman family gathered around its weathered bar and in the comfy booths for one last get together. After a few beers, some tears, and more hugs than anyone could count, the Aurora landmark closed its doors for good.
With the bar’s end, the regulars know they lost more than a place to tip a few beers after work, or somewhere to cut loose with more than a few at the end of a long week.
“Down-to-earth neighborhood bars are diminishing, they’re tough to find,” said Kathy Braun, as she and a few close friends downed their last Bud Lights at the Plainsman.
Braun, 64, has been coming to the Plainsman regularly for the past five years, which makes her a relative rookie by the bar’s standards. Plenty of customers had been coming there since the 1960s, some since the 1950s.
There was never anything fancy about the Plainsman, Braun said, just a welcoming environment. Nobody got dressed up when they headed there, but even if they did, the other patrons wouldn’t have cared. Braun said that laid back, working man’s feel made the Plainsman a comfortable place to meet friends, order a beer and have a conversation.
Others were a bit more blunt when it came to what made the Plainsman special.
“There were no yuppies and no punks,” said Bob Phillips, 78. “It’s always been a good crowd.”
Phillips was a regular at the Plainsman from the 1950s until it closed last week. First he started coming there because he lived in Hoffman Heights and the bar was close by, but even after he moved further south to Heather Gardens, he still made the trek back to the Plainsman when he could.
The consensus on the bar’s last night was that finding a new watering hole would be tough. In a sea of chain restaurants, neighborhood taverns like the Plainsman are a dying breed.
“You just don’t have that type of bar anymore, you really don’t. You hate to see something like this go away,” said J.C. Macgill, 63.
Macgill first stepped foot in the Plainsman as an elementary school trick or treater in the 1950s. The friendly folks nursing their drinks gave the kids a few quarters, and they were on their way.
In the 1970s, once he was legal, Macgill returned, and has been a fixture at the bar since.
“It was a good neighborhood bar, lot of friendly people,” he said. “It was just an icon.”
Macgill remembers the days during the National Western Stock Show when visitors packed the Plainsman. Those visitors knew then what the regulars know now: There weren’t many better bars in the area.
While the regulars are uncommonly loyal to the bar, Macgill said the bar reciprocated. For years, Macgill and his late friend, Thomas “Coop” Lane, were among the very few patrons who preferred Rolling Rock beer. And even though it was never popular among the other customers, Macgill said the bar always made sure to have a few of the green bottles on hand for him and Coop.
“They’d see you walk in, and they’d put your drink right where you usually sit,” he said. “You just don’t find these anymore.”
Lucy Mathews, 72, said the bar was more than just a place to grab a beer. It was a “family bar,” where people made lasting friendships.
“You know people’s kids, you know their grandkids, you are involved in each other’s lives at one point or another, both the good and bad. We are losing that and it’s sad. It’s really sad,” she said. “And it wasn’t the drinking, it was the people.”
Jay La Croix, the bar’s owner, said he wants people to remember the tight-knit community that sprung up over the years at the Plainsman.
“It was their watering hole, the Plainsman belonged to them in spirit, in heart,” he said the day after the bar closed. “And I’m really terribly sorry for the fact that we had to close it.”
La Croix said he didn’t want to close the bar, but the property owners wanted him to close for a few months so they could reinforce the roof. Losing a few months of revenue just wasn’t feasible, he said.
“I just can’t afford to stay in business,” he said.
Business took a pretty serious hit when the state enacted a smoking ban in 2006, he said. Many longtime customers who liked a smoke with their beer opted to stay home rather than drink in a bar where they can’t light up.
Some of the bar’s longtime regulars — and some of La Croix’s best customers — also passed away in recent years, which proved to be tough on business. But La Croix said he felt things were getting better in recent months.
“I think we would have been alright, it was starting to build,” he said.
As he packed up the bar last week, La Croix, who owned the bar from 1975 to 1979 and again from 1993 to now, lamented the bar’s fate.
“It’s terrible, I hate the thought,” he said.
But for those loyal customers last week, the biggest question wasn’t “Why is the bar closing?” The bigger question was, what next?
Even as they set out to find another favorite watering hole, members of the Plainsman family know well that it takes a while to build the kind of community the Plainsman had.
Frank Duran, 71, had been a regular at the Plainsman for 14 years. As he sipped his drink at the corner of the bar last week, it wasn’t the end of an Aurora icon that made him sad. It was the end of a community that he and the other regulars were a part of.
“As I leave here tonight, I don’t know how many of these people I’ll see again,” he said. “That’s the sad thing.”
My Parents went there. I worked In all area’s of the Bar and meet the most wonderful man Kevin there. 13yrs later we are still going strong. Wishing all my Friends and Old Co-Workers the best.