The Merc: past and present

Patrick Dethlefs remembers the feel of one of his favorite shows. The packed room, the small but responsive crowd, the delicious meal he was served — a rarity in the world of live music.

It was “a completely unique experience,” the Denver-based singer-songwriter recalls. “Everyone was paying attention and really into it.”

The year was 2012, and the stage was a cozy corner of the Jamestown Mercantile, a small but beloved restaurant and venue for performers in a town of about 300. 

Dethlefs has returned to the Merc, as locals call it, at least once a year since then, and every time he’s released an album. What keeps him coming back are the same qualities he remembers from that early appearance: great food, a highly engaged audience and the DIY vibe.

“My friends will throw these festivals in the summer: a bunch of bands get together, cook food and help one another out,” he says. “It kinda feels like that’s what they’re doing all the time.”

The community hub has thrived on its culture of mutual aid for decades, becoming an essential destination for diners and musicians. Now, the Merc is leaning on its network one more time, to hopefully purchase the turn-of-the-century building before the owner lists it for sale. A group leading the effort to Save the Merc has until May 2027 to raise $1.5 million and preserve the restaurant and performance space in perpetuity.

“What’s lost if the Merc is lost is not only a business that feeds the town and helps the town come together,” says Karen Auvinen, a former resident of Jamestown and ex-employee of the Mercantile. “It’s 130 years of history.”

‘Community living room’

The Jamestown Mercantile was built as a general store to serve the booming mining town sometime between 1892 and 1906, according to various media reports and historical records at the Carnegie Library for Local History. Over the years, the building has been home to a skating rink and a dance hall, video rental stand, coffee counter and dry goods store.

It was for many decades Jamestown’s post office: Whoever owned the general store also served as postmaster in the town. A proposal to move the post office out of the Merc in the late 1960s drew fierce opposition from residents, delaying the transition for two decades.

In times of fire and flood, the Mercantile has also become a community shelter and command center. Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) met there after the 2013 floods that decimated the town but spared the historic building. Displaced residents would dedicate hours each week to travel the circuitous route into town and spend a few moments gathered at the Merc.

“I remember one night we had a huge April snowstorm, and all the power was out,” Auvinen recalls. “We put on a play that night. People just walked down from their homes, and we had lights via generator. We went to the Merc afterward, and everyone sat around and celebrated the play.”

“We like to call it our community living room,” says Rainbow Shultz, current owner and operator of the restaurant. “Just like any living room in any house, it serves a variety of purposes. That’s where you go when you hear there’s an emergency. It’s the place we go to communicate. Be it the new family’s baby shower, or certainly plenty of funerals. It just becomes the place we gather.”

Shultz is spearheading the Save the Merc campaign, which has raised $44,011 to date. Given the building’s age and historic landmark status, it can’t be redeveloped. But it could be put to a different use, displacing the restaurant and residents of the six apartments above it.

“Our fear is that either someone buys it and turns it into high-end condos,” Shultz says, “or someone buys it and has a different vision for a place that’s more expensive, or you have to eat your meal and hurry up and get out because they’re trying to turn tables — a place where the bottom line happens.”

The bottom line at the Merc today, Shultz says, is community. “People would not bat an eye at coming for six hours and not doing anything but having some water. It’s our shared space.”

‘Great, good space’

Shultz and other Jamestowners have formed a nonprofit to buy the Mercantile property, which includes two buildings and the apartments. A governing board would manage the property.

Nonprofit governance would formalize “what’s been happening energetically for decades” at the Merc, Shultz says: “to have the community own the space.” 

Auvinen echoes that sentiment: “Everybody in Jamestown feels like the Merc belongs to them.” 

The nonprofit is called The Jamestown Home for Wayward Artists, Pirates, and the Somewhat Feral, a nod to the unofficial Merc moniker and former cafe owner Susie Ryan.

Susie’s menu was a “hand-drawn, handwritten,” recalls Auvinen. “And it said ‘Jamestown Merc, Home of the Somewhat Feral.’”

It was thanks to Ryan that the Merc became known for its food — though the establishment’s history with food is long and storied. In the very earliest days of the Mercantile, miners would buy pies there: Shultz still has the file cabinet with their original tabs, charged to the store.

The Mercantile sold coffee and cold drinks through the 1980s, according to newspaper reports. Under Ryan, full meal service made the Merc a Sunday morning destination.

“The line would be out the door with people waiting,” recalls Auvinen, who worked at the Merc throughout the 1990s. “You couldn’t really get a seat.”

Ryan’s ex husband, Joey Howlett, procured a liquor license in 1997 after taking over the business. He also brought in musicians one night a week to perform for diners. Demand quickly exceeded capacity, so one night became two. Then a brunch performance was added, and an open mic night.

“There were so many musicians who wanted to play, we were turning down four of [every] five acts,” says Shultz, who handled booking under Howlett’s ownership. Today, even with performances four times a week, “we can still only accommodate half the people who reach out to us to play.”

With sit-down meals and live music, the Merc began resembling the space people know and love today. Shultz elevated the food with fresh, locally sourced ingredients: Musician and Boulderite Gregory Alan Isakov sells the restaurant vegetables from his six-acre Starling Farm.

Shultz calls cooking her art. She and the Merc team won this year’s CineChef People’s Choice Award at Boulder International Film Festival.

The food at the Merc is “a whole other level” under Shultz, Auvinen says, but her ownership has brought positive change far beyond cooking. “She’s done all kinds of innovative things to engage the community on every level. It’s not just people who go in there to eat or drink. She’s been visionary.”

Shultz accepts the praise with grace, and credits her predecessor.

Howlett “taught me so much about how a business can really be there for the community and can be this ‘great, good place,’ he would always call it,” Shultz says. “It’s become a place where there’s almost always music in the air.”

Magic in the walls

Even with the barrage of acts, the Merc still makes room for new performers and up-and-comers. 

“You can’t make it big until you’ve had a spot at the Merc,” Shultz says. “We tease artists [that] they better stop in and not be cursed by that. It’s a magical little building.”

When Dethlefs was just starting out, he cold-called the restaurant and got a spot. It was the start of a 14-year relationship that’s still going strong: His most recent Merc gig was in mid-May.

“As long as they keep saying yes, I’ll keep coming back,” he says. “It’s really important to have spaces like this. So many music venues are owned by bigger promoters. Keeping these smaller spaces where it does feel more community oriented … without that, everything gets pretty sterile and like a copy paste of the other thing.”

The Merc’s makeshift stage is open to more than just musicians. Auvinen has hosted karaoke, game nights, movie nights. Her favorite memory is a poetry night she hosted when the crowd persuaded a group of local barflies to perform.

“We used to call these guys the bachelors — they were kinda always there,” she says. “One night, I got every single one of those guys to read a poem. One guy went up and recited a Robert Service poem from heart. Another guy read a poem in French. I handed this guy named Kent Weeks a book of [Charles] Bukowski poems. When he came across the word ‘vagina,’ he said ‘vageen.’ He had this gruff, grizzly voice: It was just like the funniest thing, the way he read it. It was really cool to see a different side of these guys.”

“It really is the heart of Jamestown. Everyone who lives there knows that, and everyone who visits there knows that,” Auvinen concludes. “I can’t imagine that town without it.”

These days, the love generated within the walls of the restaurant is pouring back into saving it.  Isakov is donating $1 from summer and fall ticket sales — with the exception of September’s sold-out Red Rocks shows with the Colorado Symphony —  to the Save the Merc campaign, and donations of all sizes are flowing in from around the world.

“We just got a donation from someone in Australia for $2, and a donation for $15,000 from someone I haven’t personally met,” Shultz says. 

Even with the large and pledged donations, there’s still a long way to go. Save the Merc has raised just 2.9% of its overall goal. Shultz faith isn’t shaken by the monumental task ahead of her.

“I don’t know where the money is, but I think it’s going to find its way to us,” she says. “One way or another, this place is going to be saved.”