The John Galt Coffee Co. is a good example; a coffee shop named for a character from an Ayn Rand novel, located inside a theater that also hosts a non-denominational church. On a rather dark and drizzly morning, it seems a bit dark, not a bit reminiscent of a Starbucks (thank goodness), but a place where somber or heartfelt discussions might be found under a bit of candlelight.

The face behind the coffee is cheery enough to brighten a day. Juiden Krause has been here since 6:45 a.m. to open at 7. Fortunately, home is close by.

“I usually get up at 5:45. Just enough time to get my face on,” Krause said.

Margie’s Java Joint is hoppin’ pretty good at a bit past 8, despite most of the student population being gone for the summer. 

“It usually starts poppin’ at 8:30, and it’s in full swing by 10,” said assistant manager Carson Skinner. His day began at 5 a.m., and he was at work getting the store ready to open at 6.

Like many of the younger workers here, Skinner also lives nearby, making those early mornings slightly easier.

Skinner is also a seasoned veteran at the barista business, used to the early morning grind. “I started at 16 and have been at it for eight years,” he said.

“It’s a harder job than it seems,” he said. “But I get to meet most of the people in the community, which I really enjoy.”

At 10:30 a.m. Aunt Helen’s Coffee is still hoppin’.  Baristas Peyton Mazea and Alyssa Leveau don’t seem to have a moment between orders.

Known as the early-morning meeting place for many downtown business people, it’s also known for the snarky remarks attributed to owner Aimee Hutson’s great aunt, who passed away at age 108 in 2020. In fact, some of the remarks are printed on the cups, for instance, “The difference between coffee and your opinion is, I asked for coffee.”

Co-owner Bob Hutson says his wife is responsible for most of the day-to-day operations, but today she’s off on a catering assignment, while he manages the shop.

“We really click about 9,” he said. “That’s when most of the business people get settled in, and say, ‘Let’s go get a cup of coffee.”

The couple actually met here in Greeley, both attending the University of Northern Colorado. They returned in 2016 and opened the shop the following year, and though the namesake of their establishments has passed, their enthusiasm has not, Aimee said in an email.

“Every day offers new and exciting opportunities which keeps us moving forward and continually re-inventing ourselves,” she said, noting that the location has everything to do with that.

“The vibe of downtown and the community! We are rapidly growing and have a very close business owner/operator support network, which keeps us engaged and thriving.”

It’s been a year, Bean said, and while some of that was crappy life stuff, the kind we all must face, there were other parts of it that were a result of her own frenetic personality. She bought some rental properties and moved to Greeley after spending 28 years in her Fort Collins home, and her old building, the Greeley Elevator in Downtown Greeley, always needs a repair, like a toddler tugging on her pant leg. 

Honestly, distilling, the core piece of her gin and vodka business, which she calls Syntax (get it?), was the easiest part of her life. She planned to do a bit of that Friday and climb Mount Paperwork before she opened in the afternoon. It’s a lot, as it always is, but Bean is grateful for her business. 

She’s been sad and depressed with the life stuff. Part of that was a breakup after seven years, but she also, just now, is getting over long COVID-19, which left her with debilitating joint pain that left her gasping in the morning and prevented her from self-soothing with her beloved outdoor activities. But her businesses, as usual, picked her up. She hosts drag shows once a month, and those pack the place. 

“Like really packs it,” Bean said and smiled. “That as much as anything helped drag me out of my own (stuff).”

Bean is getting back to hosting other events, such as comedy on the first and third Fridays, in addition to the drag show on the second Saturday night of every month. She’s also hosting trivia.

Her building looks great, after a years-long renovation, but even now, she gets people wandering in who wonder what business it is. This makes her feel bad about her marketing. 

“I need to be a lot better about it,” Bean said. 

She’s wondered at times about her business plan too, not just her marketing. It felt as if everyone she met with some business sense was telling her to scale up. But that, she said, would defeat the purpose of Syntax. 

“I had to do some self-reflection, and I realized I don’t want to take over the world,” said Bean, who is 48. “I don’t want to be the next New Belgium.”

What she wants is a place where she can have strange artwork and exotic plants and awesome projects to work on, even if a lot of those projects are taking care of her old building.

“We embrace our weird here,” she said. 

That does mean she does her own paperwork and e-mails and scheduling, but it also means she can live through her business and not because of it. 

“I don’t want to be in charge of 100 people,” Bean said. “I like to get my hands dirty. That’s a lot of the joy.”

“We all start around 6 (a.m.), so we’re trying to get closed,” owner Achilles Barbos noted on a rainy day in June.

It’s a 70-year tradition here, Barbos said, that a Greek family has owned this diner featuring breakfast and lunch. A tradition that Barbos went well out of his way to keep.

Roasty’s went through a rather troubled time before Barbos bought the diner in 2022. Gone now are the bar is the back and a back door to the alley that he indicates led to much of that trouble.

“We kept the same employees,” he said, and notes that more than a few of them have worked at the restaurant for a prolonged amount of time. 

Almost as long as this location has been a Greek diner. 

The 920 Eighth Ave. building was originally constructed in the early 1900s, perhaps as early as 1906, and housed a number of varied businesses, including coffee shops and restaurants, until the Longs Peak Cafe opened in 1948. That cafe operated until 1970, when Paul Lepeniotis purchased the business, he changed the name to Roasty’s Steak House.

Bardos and his family were long-time customers, but more importantly, Lepeniotis gave him a personal loan to start EduMetrisis LLC. The assessment software is a tool Bardos honed in 31 years as a professor of school psychology at the University of Northern Colorado.

“I wanted to keep the name to honor Paul,”  Bardos said. He also wanted to restore the diner to the place where families are comfortable.

So, gone are the bar and pool tables, and opening in the back is a bakery that will feature some Greek traditions, such as baklava.

And at home is a great American tradition, the Greek diner.

Bardos and his family knew that the dream of bringing a piece of Greece to the Greeley community was exciting for Lepeniotis, and they want to keep that tradition going. They say it’s fulfilling and a fun way to start each day by welcoming regulars they’ve known throughout the years, the years when they, too, were customers.

Magic The Gathering, a card game partly responsible for keeping businesses such as The Nerd Store open, released a Lord of the Rings edition on Friday. Or Friday was actually a pre-release, meaning that if you were especially, um, nerdy, you could buy it before the plebs, probably by signing up for some newsletter. Parry called it the biggest tie-in in the card game’s history. If you’re a nerd, it doesn’t get much bigger than a love child between Magic The Gathering and Lord of the Rings. 

Alas, Parry is celebrating his 10th year as owner of The Nerd Store. He opened the store because, well, he’s a nerd: He calls himself the “evil overlord” of the store, which is a pretty nerdy thing to do. He opened it because his wife, Michelle, joked about how he needed a one-stop show for all his nerdy activities. When he woke up the next day, he had a business idea. 

We probably don’t even need to describe the store to you, but it’s full of comics, board and card games and lots of trinkets and toys that all geeks love. Pokémon Go has it marked as a special Pokestop, where players can not only get supplies for the VR game but also know it’s a place where they can play Pokémon. This is true: Parry still runs a public card game as a part of the slate he runs for his customers. He has a game every night, including, yes, one devoted to the OG, “Dungeons and Dragons.” 

But Parry was busy with orders and paperwork Friday, as he is every day. He is a store owner now and worries about things such as inventory and bills and balances. He has more panic attacks in a month, he said, than opportunities to play. Things are a lot more stable now than when he first opened and put in 100-hour work weeks running the counter and then doing paperwork, but he still doesn’t think he’s made it just yet. 

“I don’t know if you ever get to that point,” Parry said. “I’m one bad month away from the end.” 

Parry doesn’t even work the counter much anymore. This is good for his family, his business and his own mental health, but he didn’t think he’d be so disconnected from all the fun 10 years later. He relishes the days when he can talk to customers during his one shift a week up front. 

“I do enjoy seeing what’s working well,” Parry said. “This is something you work so hard on, and I miss that feedback. It’s still fun to get that positive feedback.”

Only a couple fans waited out front on Friday before the 11 a.m. opening, but there was a pre-release game that was packed, and fans were in the store all weekend. It was a good weekend. 

Before you start to see Parry as an Anakin Skywalker who’s now Darth Vader, well, he did play in that pre-release game. His kids had some “Magic” fun on Father’s Day with him. He was looking forward to an upcoming game convention. 

He hasn’t moved over to the Dark Side yet. Not completely anyway. 

“So much more of it is the economics of the business,” Parry said, “but there’s still some room for fandom.”

Just after 11 a.m. on a Friday morning in June, a vintage crossing signal sprung to life inside the Colorado Model Railroad Museum at 680 10th St.

A group of youngsters knew exactly what the sound meant: A real, life-sized train was about to pass through along the active railroad track just outside the museum. The kids sprinted to the exit, jostling for position to be the first to spot the oncoming locomotive. A minute later, after a horn blast and wave from the conductor, the train passed by on its journey toward points south — perhaps Denver or Santa Fe or Amarillo — and the giddy group filed back into the museum to continue their exploration of the hundreds of tiny locomotives, boxcars and cabooses chugging along thousands of feet of track that meander through a meticulously crafted world designed to evoke the Oregon, California and Eastern Railway routes of the 1970s. 

“Everytime that railroad sign signal goes off, we know there’s a train outside that they can go out and watch,” museum assistant director Amy Duggan said. “We’ve got real trains outside of our doors and miniature trains inside our doors.”

Greeley, strategically situated along the Union Pacific line between Cheyenne and Denver, is a city that grew up around its railroad depot — its early economic fortune dependent on being able to transport Weld County’s agricultural and manufactured goods to market in other cities along the rail line.

“It’s why we’re here,” Duggan said, suggesting that Greeley would be a much different place without its rich railroad history. So it’s no coincidence that downtown’s 10th Street would be home to a 10,000-square-foot, one-of-kind museum that caters to lovers of the locomotive. 

The Colorado Model Railroad Museum, which opened in 2009, is the brainchild of David Trussell, former publisher of the Greeley Tribune newspaper and lifelong train enthusiast. It took Trussell and a group of about 100 volunteers — fellow railroad fanatics, of course — more than five years and more than 27,000 man-hours of labor to build out the space and hand-craft the thousands of miniature landscapes, buildings, people and animals that surround the tracks. 

“This is a unique museum in Greeley, and the largest in the United States with this type of layout,” Duggan said. “… It’s magical. You walk in the door and you leave the other world behind you. Come in here and it’s a miniature wonderland where you can lose yourself.” 

No one is too old or too young to love trains, said Duggan, who kept a watchful eye on her toddler grandson Mack while touring guests around the museum. “Yesterday, we had 120 middle schoolers who had a wonderful time here. We have seniors who love railroads, grandparents who bring their grandkids. It’s a magic place for everybody. …Everyone who comes in here is joyful and happy. It’s just a great place to spend a couple of hours on a day when you’re in Greeley.”

Fourteen-year-old Jordan Brown, a conductor’s cap perched on his head and a camera around his neck, is a familiar face at the museum. “It’s fun for everyone, cool volunteers,” he said. “It’s a good place to chill when you’re bored.”

While Brown is an equal-opportunity enthusiast of trains of all sizes, his favorites are the life-sized rigs that regularly chug past the museum. “I love the bigger trains outside, but I come in here (to the museum) in the meantime while I wait.”

What Brown loves about trains — aside from everything — is “how loud they are, the people who run them, the different colors of the cars.”

While most visitors are content to simply observe the sights and sounds inside the museum, volunteers with enough experience under their belts can take a more hands-on approach, conducting their own personal model trains, painstakingly assembled in home garages or workshops, along the museum’s tracks. 

“It’s an absolute privilege when our folks bring their own trains,” Duggan said. “We love it when they do.”

Bob Barzdukas, a retired public school teacher and volunteer who was serving as Friday’s day museum manager, was giving tours while his homemade train — a custom rig complete with a miniature figure of Harry Truman on campaign waving to voters from the model’s caboose — made loops around the tracks. A lifelong rider of the rails, spending time at the Colorado Model Railroad Museum allows Barzdukas to reflect on happy memories from the countless train journeys he’s taken over the decades. 

From the space age to the electric vehicle era, modes of transportation have evolved throughout Barzdukas’ life. His goal — one shared by the museum’s founders and volunteers — is to pass his knowledge and passion of the humbly historical, yet ever-important train to the next generation of locomotive lovers.

Guzman typically arrives at 9:30 or 9:45 to sweep, dust, switch on lights at various reading nooks scattered around the store, turn on music to “get the vibe going,” ensure that shelves “weren’t too destroyed from the day before” and generally prepare for a day of customers exploring the thousands of used books that line the shelves.

“I suppose every day is a little different,” Guzman said as he settled in behind the counter at 827 10th St. 

On this Friday, Guzman arrived a bit early, at 8:45. After all, there were poison dart frogs to feed.

That’s right, poison dart frogs.

In addition to cozy reading nooks, The Midnight Oil includes animals in displays around the store, including “four poison dart frogs, one albino boa, two tarantulas, two mantises and one jumping spider.”

“I was here earlier to make sure to feed the animals, turn their lights on, get their water going and their situation up and running,” Guzman said, as he settled in behind the counter.

Guzman is well-versed in getting situations up and running. He first launched The Midnight Oil at 916 Eighth Ave., in October 2021, building on his and his uncle’s status as “lifelong readers.”

“We started collecting books around 2020 or so, and we realized that Greeley hadn’t had a bookstore for about six years. And so between our personal libraries and garage sales, estate sales, thrifting, we decided that if we can build up this collection, we can hopefully start a really good used-bookstore in Greeley,” Guzman said.

The Midnight Oil proved a hit with customers, enabling Guzman to relocate the store to its location at 827 10th St., the former King’s Clocks location.

“Within less than a year, we grew fast enough and had enough support in the community that we had to actually upgrade spaces to what we’re doing now,” he said. “So prior to this building, we were across the street and had a space that was about 700 square feet. And now we’re just a little over 4,000 square feet.”

The Midnight Oil opened with 5,000 or 6,000 books, Guzman said, enough that he could fulfill an idea that he had when viewing the pillars that support the ceiling and roof.

“We have these support beams that support the building, and we were trying to figure out if we can do some type of display around them,” Guzman said.

“The one thing that we have in bulk is our books. We have a lot of them. So at this point, we have been open for six months or so, and we could start to tell what was selling and what wasn’t selling. If we had 20 copies of a specific book, we knew that we could use those extras for artistic purposes.”

Those “artistic purposes” are now evident, with towers of books surrounding the pillars, extending 15 feet high, with each tower including about 600 books and taking 15 hours to build.

The Midnight Oil also includes a banned-books section, children’s books and a section featuring local authors. It also has launched a books-to-film series in partnership with The Kress Cinema, with purchases including a book and entry to a movie.

As the day progresses, Guzman and his staff will answer customers’ questions, ring up purchases, tidy shelves and fulfill online orders.

And, of course, make sure that the poison dart frogs are well-fed.

“We met each other through craft shows and other experiences,” said Sally Otto. “We had a dream to create a space for creatives like ourselves, and we also wanted to have a do-it-yourself studio so vendors could teach classes.”

The result is Makers Mercantile and Studio, which opened June 8 as what Otto called “the new kid on the block,” and those classes began in July, Otto said.

Corbin Swain, who owns the approximately 2,000-square-foot space that had sat empty for some time, tried to sell it for about a year but took it off the market in March, she said. “It became available for lease, and we jumped on it because it’s one of the best locations in downtown Greeley.”

The store now shows off the works of more than 70 handcrafting artisans, who can pay monthly rent to use any space from a shelf to a full booth and set up their inventory for sale. Items for sale run the gamut from home furnishings and decor to pottery, jewelry, soaps, lotions, jams, jellies, salsas and pickles. The store had to get a cottage food license to sell the edible items.

Makers Mercantile gets a 15% commission on each sale, and the vendor keeps the rest, Otto said.

Entrepreneurs age 18 and younger get free spaces. “We have 12 of those,” Otto said, adding that the items made and sold by the teens include jewelry, tumblers, dog collars, hair accessories and paint-poured art and frames.

Each of the five owners has a specialty. For Otto, it’s macrame, upcycled furniture and home decor. For Mike Herbst, it’s lamps made from vintage items such as sewing machines and skateboards. For Jen Frein, it’s hand-stamped greeting cards and coasters. For Deb O’Dell, it’s garden wands, scrap-wood owls and “napkinized” decor on wood, paper or cloth. And for Jessica Marshall, it’s digital and print invitations, party decor, logos, brochures and yard art.

“What we really want is for vendors to learn about business and expanding their business,” Otto said. “Maybe then they’ll want a website and take it to a full business on their own.

“We are just excited to be a part of downtown Greeley and all the changes happening.”

Reclined in a plush chair, a petite young woman sat with her slender arm outstretched — a delicate, artistic butterfly design was being inked into the skin just below the inside of her elbow. The artist expertly wielding the tattoo gun from which the feminine, winged image emerged was Steven Ortega, a grizzly bear of man in his late 30s who goes by the fittingly ironic moniker “Tiny” and has a scalp that serves as a canvas for several large tattoos — none appear at first glance to be butterflies — that extend down the sides of his head and under his baggy red T-shirt. The size of his frame was equalled only by his outsized presence, filling the tight quarters of the studio.

LifeStyle Ink, which Ortega has operated for the better part of a decade on a busy stretch of Ninth Street, is itself something of a contrast with its surroundings, emitting a rough and tumble, no-f***s-given energy from the center of a downtown district where commercial revitalization efforts in recent years have resulted in a more-cosmopolitan — some might even whisper “gentrifying” — flavor in the main plazas. 

With a soundtrack of hip-hop thumping through the studio’s speakers, Ortega, between strokes of his tattoo gun, said the downtown business community is close knit, welcoming and supportive.

“I get along pretty good with everybody around here, man,” he said. “We all just keep the peace — don’t want any drama.”

Like downtowns everywhere, the COVID-19 era brought challenges to Ninth Street. But, thankfully, setbacks have been followed by comebacks.

“When the pandemic hit, a lot of businesses closed down,” said Ortega, whose tattoo specialties include script lettering and designs inspired by his Chicano heritage. “But I’m still here. Business is good.”

His prime location at 817 Ninth St. helps attract not only clients, but also aspiring tattoo professionals who seek out Ortega’s expertise and mentorship. For other tattoo lovers, the studio is simply a laid-back place to chill and talk shop for an afternoon.

LifeStyle’s high-visibility position inside a downtown storefront — which it shares with an affiliated barber shop and piercing operation — “brings in a lot more different kinds of people, a lot of people with different kinds of talent,” Ortega said. “I really like where this location’s at.” 

One such up and comer drawn into LifeStyle’s orbit is Michael Castillo, an apprentice who was closely observing Oretega’s technique and attention to detail while inking the client’s butterfly tattoo. 

“His work is amazing,” said Castillo, proudly showing off a recently completed but still healing, Ortega-crafted tattoo of a stylized woman’s face.

Castillo lifted his shirt to reveal several more of his favorite tattoos, along with a deep surgical scar bisecting his torso.

“I got in a motorcycle accident — hit by a drunk driver. But I’m still here!” he said with a grateful chuckle.

Ortega and Castillo met when the latter was working at Walmart. The pair got to chatting about tattoos, and Ortega invited his future apprentice to stop by the shop. 

“We built our relationship over the years, and now he’s letting me get my shot,” Castillo said.

The apprenticeship program at LifeStyle Ink is demanding, yet structurally pretty informal, said Castillo, who has long been drawn to the energy and unique culture of tattoo shops. 

“It’s up to this guy right here,” Castillo, gesturing in the direction of his mentor Ortega, said of the timeline for his eventual promotion from apprentice. “When he looks at my work and he’s like, ‘You know what? You’re ready to be doing it professionally,’ — then I’ll be ready.”

Castillo views the tattoo world as a potential safehaven for artistically inclined young people who may have taken a step or two down the wrong path. 

“I’ve always messed around with art. I started with tagging (graffiti/street art) back in California,” Castillo said. “Got into a little bit of trouble, but I’ve turned that into a good thing.”

Ortega — who said he has “always loved to draw” — shared a similar, if more dramatic, story of his journey into tattooing. 

“I used to run with gangs, bro, when I was younger,” he said. “I was involved with that life for a lot of years — had a tragic accident and got shot, almost got killed. That opened my eyes and let me know that there’s more to life than the streets.”

Tattooing “gave me a way out,” Ortega said. “So I took my talent and just ran with it.”

“This is a type of library that I’ve never seen before,” High Plains Library District executive director Matthew Hortt said, that’s meant to be more “experiential” and less passive than libraries of the past.

LINC visitors can learn woodworking and record podcasts (or maybe start a podcast about woodworking!), learn the basics of robotics and fabricate components to build one using a 3D printer.

“That’s where I see, and the district sees, libraries shifting to. There will be plenty of books, but there will be more than books,” Hortt said. “We want to make this a destination where you come to learn, where you come to expand your horizons.”

The district views its mission as helping to “create the space and resources” for people to grow personally and professionally, an especially critical function for members of the community who have faced “barriers to higher education,” Hortt said.

Not only can the library help build valuable professional skills, “we will get you connected with the right people to accelerate what you’re doing,” he said.

The LINC, of course, isn’t exclusively focused on boring, grown-up stuff such as workforce development — the facility is brimming with fun, interactive and educational experiences for Greeley’s younger generations. 

“What really gets me excited is the access and opportunities for kids, which is a deficiency for us in all of Greeley,” Greeley Downtown Development Authority executive director Bianca Fisher said.

Kid-centric features include a paper airplane proving ground, a cloud blaster that spouts vaporous puffs into the air and an age-appropriate maker space.

“One of things we wanted to do is not leave children out,” Hortt said, so LINC staffers are working with the Denver Children’s Museum to develop a robust program of hands-on fun and educational experiences. “I think those are going to be really exciting.”

The LINC also has space for meetings, conferences and other events.
“We’ve built in as much flexibility as we could so it can change and evolve,” Hortt said.

Unlike many other family-outing activities such as the movies, a trip to the LINC won’t cost an arm and a leg.

“It’s a public amenity; you’re not having to spend $20 a person to do something,” Fisher said.

The downtown area has been without a major library presence in the years since the old central branch was redeveloped as part of the construction of the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel.

“This is a project we’ve been waiting for for literally years,” Fisher said, that “is going to really serve as an anchor” for the northern edge of downtown.

“There’s so much more activity that’s happening in the Eighth and Ninth streets area,” and the LINC is expected to build on the momentum in the neighborhood.

It will be a testament to the progress that downtown Greeley has made in recent years as the district has grown rapidly with new businesses, new developments and more residents. The hope is that it also serves as a spark that brings more commercial and residential development to downtown, Hortt said.

“A lot of the investments already made in the downtown area will draw people here,” Hortt said. “I think we are going to be a part of that catalyst.”

Such is the life of a baker.

Chana’s music was his way of kicking back. Sort of.

The phone rang and a customer wanted to order a cake. 

While Chana’s day began nearly eight hours earlier, the bakery opened at 9:30 a.m. A French-speaking customer — from South Dakota — chatted with the baker shortly after opening.

“There are more people here who speak French than anywhere else,” Chana said.

He consented to an interview with BizWest but asked to reschedule until after 2 p.m. He was too busy in the morning to think clearly about the questions, he said.

Chef Chana, as customers call him, has been in his spot along 16th Street for seven years. He saw the growth happening in Greeley and Northern Colorado and knew it would be a good place to practice his craft.

A Paris-trained baker, his origins were in Morocco where his grandmother nurtured his passion. “I was born to do this job,” he said. “I may only get an hour of sleep sometimes. … I would rather be in the bakery than on the beach.” 

He professes to have no favorite confection but said he does like baking bread. The size of his shop makes bread baking more of a challenge because it requires more space. “I would love to have a wood oven and make old fashioned bread. The next level for downtown Greeley would be to have a wood oven,” he said.

Bread requires more precision, he said. With pastries, “I don’t have to use a scale but I have to be disciplined so I use it.” Bread requires precise measurements.

“I love to make bread when there’s moisture in the air,” he said, referencing the several days of rainfall that had soaked Northern Colorado. Baking in a dry climate is more difficult. He said some recipes that might perform well in New York do less well in Colorado. “That’s why New York bagels are famous. They can’t be made here,” he said.

He also finds baking at altitude to be a challenge — one that he has mastered. Baking times are longer at altitude, he said.

He bakes “because people want something good. It makes me happy.” While acknowledging mistakes, disappointments are rare. 

Chana will spend the rest of the afternoon taking special orders, cleaning the kitchen and preparing for the next day. His bakery is closed Mondays and Tuesdays — “That helps me with balance,” he said. He also said that on holidays and special days such as Father’s Day, his inventory will sell out early, and he’ll lock up early.

Of course, there’s always that cake order to get underway.