For St. Louis drinkers, a reality sets in between your 21st birthday and your dirt nap—there’s really only one 24-hour party around these parts. And it’s taking place on a giant slab of concrete in the tiny hamlet of Sauget, Ill. Ladies and gentlemen, if we need to introduce this legendary place by name, it’s this: Pop’s.
More than a few of us have “wound up” at Pop’s. Sometimes we don’t remember driving there, other times we don’t remember driving home. Based on the crowds, though, most of us know how to find our way, whether by GPS, natural homing instincts, or pure dumb luck. Located just a few miles from the Arch, across from Sauget’s teeming industrial heart, Pop’s still has that roadhouse feel, but with a lot friendlier attitude than you might expect.
As an example, go in there on any busy night, well after the headlining bands have played. What you’ve got is a mix of young and old, black and white, the working class and the divas and more lovers than fighters, really. Very few nightclubs, the ultimate melting pots, can lay claim to a real, no-BS mix of all St. Louis. And Pop’s passes that test with flying colors. The dance floor’s a blend of every local subgenre, dancing to wacked-out mash-ups, top-40 hits and no small amount of classic rock. To see an off-duty server from neighboring PT’s, still in her signature striped top, dancing in the middle of the floor with a cowboy hatted fella in a wheelchair, well... at Pop’s, you see it and you believe it.
This past Saturday morning, that exact scene was one of dozens taking place inside Pop’s, at the very moment that the sunrise was lighting up the infamous Sauget parking lot. With darkness still clinging at 5:45 a.m., that lot was a crazy-quilt of human conditions. Happy couples were walking hand-in-hand out of The Oz, on their way to some serious baby-makin’. Unhappy couples, argued over... well, a little of everything. Public urination was a matter of course. (Sauget cops seem to always be around. Except when they’re not.) And at least a dozen people stood alongside Pop’s outdoor food cart, snacking on a variety of grilled and fried treats, whether their meal qualified as early breakfast or late dinner or something else entirely. The soundtrack came from inside, and the boom of Pop’s low end bass wasn’t just heard out there, it was felt.
Inside, as expected, the scene was remarkably upbeat. Even as the night’s cover band was breaking down gear, after multiple, hour-long sets, the DJ had the floor moving. The gathering of a couple hundred people drank and danced and stood around and drank and hit on one another and weaved through the tables unsteadily and rapped while standing at the urinals, drink in hand. Bored in one section of the room? Walk 50 feet in another direction and the something else was there, begging for your attention.
No doubt, the service industry was out in force. It’s somehow odd to see one person you know in a place like Pop’s at daybreak. But when you see three, you start to put their commonalities together and, sure enough, all three work at bars. Pop’s is the often the last-last stop, or the one just prior to the last-last, which might be a Missouri bar, opening at 6 a.m., like Hammerstone’s or the Cat’s Meow.
We were content, though, to let the sun guide us over the river and to healthier pursuits than another round-and-shot. To each their own.
Outside, walking to the vehicle at the official sun-up of 6:05 a.m., it was wild to see the transformation that only 20 minutes brought. About 100 people stood outside of Penthouse, having shut down that club. A patron was being “escorted” out of the side door of the Oz. Others were just sorta moving, slowly, to vehicles or were calling one another on cell phones, simultaneously waving their arms to establish contact.
At 5:45 a.m., only 20-minutes before, all that was taking place in the dark. At 6:05 a.m., life in this corner of the world had taken on a different hue. It was light. It was morning. It was time to go, to tell share some stories with a friend over a bagel and a black tea and a laugh.
