It wasn’t a tourist magnet like, say, the Alamo (now the No Name Saloon). Most visitors walked right past its understated entrance. Yet for a few years in the last century, the Down Under was THE local gathering place for Parkites of all persuasions.
The Down Under “was like everybody’s living room. It was where all the locals went,” former bartender Karen Arenskov recalled in a 1990 interview with The Park Record. “It was great for somebody new coming to town because you met everybody there.”
When she started bartending, it didn’t matter that she didn’t know the ingredients for every drink because the regulars would tell her.
In 1976, Lloyd Stevens and Richard Ringwood, owners of the Claimjumper (formerly the New Park) Hotel, turned the basement space into a private club, allowing them to serve liquor by the drink to club “members”. (Forgive me for skipping over Utah’s weird liquor laws here. That’s a whole other story.) The new club, which had the same food menu as the upstairs restaurant, would be called “Down Under the Claimjumper”.
“A surprising number of people are finding the food so superb that the establishment has developed a large group of regulars in no time at all,” The Park Record reported in March 1976.
It had indeed. Before long the Down Under – as it came to be known – could have rivaled the fictional “Cheers” bar for its devoted cast of characters.
It has been more than 40 years since Karen Arenskov mixed a drink at the Down Under. Her last name is now Warren and she went on to a career in the computer industry. But she still thinks of those years as the best time of her life. So does fellow bartender Debbie Hansen, who credits her Down Under experience with launching a 50-year career in the food-service business, managing restaurants in Park City and Reno, Nevada.
“It was much better than, like, a ‘Cheers’ bar, because we were just all family,” Debbie recalled during a recent Zoom conversation with me and Karen. “It wasn’t even work.”
Credit: Park City Historical Society & Museum, Myles Rademan Collection
The two old friends were known then as the Kamikaze Queens, a nickname that Karen traces to the preferred drink of the members of the Park City and ParkWest Ski Patrols.
“They were crazy guys, just crazy,” she said. “They would have gone to all the other bars first, but they’d end up at the [Claim]Jumper at, like, midnight. And then they … would order 40 kamikazes at last call. … A lot of people ordered two drinks at last call to have so they could sit there. But there’d be, like, five or six of them and they’d order 40!”
On top of that, she said, they would also order kamikazes for the bartenders. “So I think that’s where [the nickname] started.” (She said those were the days before drinking on the job was forbidden.)
Not only can Karen and Debbie recite the names of the regulars from those years, they can also tell you what they drank. Richard Scott? Scotch and soda. David Fleisher? Vodka soda. Jerry Hanley? Scotch and water. Ernie “The Bread Man” Scow? Budweiser.
“At four o’clock we would open the bar and we would see our regular guests come in,” Debbie said. “And by the time they got to the bar we’d have their drinks sitting at the bar. We never had to ask anybody what they were drinking.”
If a visitor stumbled in wearing a tie, he only did it once. “One of the girls would just go up and go, ‘Hi,’ and snip the bottom of the tie off,” Karen said. “We had ties [hanging] down from all the Christmas lights” (which stayed up year-round).
Debbie said there was enough business to keep three bartenders busy until last call, and then some. “Even though we had our posted closing time, we never really closed,” she laughed.
“It was the knock-three-times [code] on the door after we threw everybody out,” Karen explained. “If you knew the right knock we’d let you back in.”
Debbie and Karen would tell the guests, “Your secret’s safe with us.” But let’s just say there are things they are willing to divulge. Look for more in next week’s Way We Were.