It was 2010 when I moved to Colorado. I had been involved with the poetry slam scene in my local area back in New England, so I naturally started attending the local poetry slams here in Denver, one of which takes place on Sunday nights at the Denver Mercury Café. The Mercury Café is a cultural institution, long being one of the most important venues for various local arts scenes,
one of the most welcoming spots in Denver for the LGBTQ+ community, and it has been the site of many of the most important moments of my poetry slam career.
In 2011, I became the venue slam champion for the year, and soon after that, I started running the slam as the co-slammaster alongside local author, activist, facilitator, and hip-hop artist Bianca Mikahn. Bianca and I ran the slam for a few years before handing it over to the next slammaster, who handed it over to the next, and the next, and it came back around to me for a very brief second time before I stepped down again. But even though I no longer run the slam, I have continued to come and compete in the slams for years. Just recently, I was lucky enough to host a slam again on the Mercury stage for the first time in years.
For most of those years that I’ve been coming to the slams, the Mercury was under the ownership and management of Marilyn Megenity, who founded the venue in 1975 and ran it until she sold it in 2021. As slammaster, I would meet with Marilyn from time to time, and there was no question that she was a brilliant woman and a fiery spirit. I won’t lie; she could be intimidating, and I would butt heads with her on issues sometimes. But I never doubted that she cared about that place and knew the importance of our poetry slam.
To be honest, I had a few nagging issues with the Mercury when Marilyn ran it. The long-standing policy of not accepting credit or debit cards, for example, was a huge hassle for so many years. And I always thought it to be a shame that Marilyn instituted a policy of no longer booking loud rock bands considering that, in the early days of the Mercury, they played host to such future legends as The Misfits. But the quirky, funky little café where it always looks like it’s somehow Christmas and Halloween at the same time year-round still meant a lot to me because of the support it had always offered the slam.
When Marilyn sold the Mercury Café in 2021 to entrepreneurs Danny Newman, Christy Kruzick, and Austin Gayer, some things absolutely improved. It’s so much more convenient to be able to use cards now, for one thing. But in the past several months, there have been a lot of sudden changes around the café. After someone alerted me to the Instagram account of the Mercury Café Workers’ Union, I discovered a conflict that’s been raging between the employees and the management for a while now.
Safety and Security
According to a member of the union organizing committee who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, one of the first disagreements between staff and management came about a year ago when the management, in response to safety concerns due to the Mercury Café’s location in the troubled Five Points neighborhood, hired off-duty police officers for security.
“Obviously, most of us aren’t comfortable with that,” says the union representative, “and we expressed that. We said, we do have safety concerns, but we would rather just do trainings and de-escalation (and) all that, and learn how to manage these issues, and possibly hire someone to be at the door … which would be cheaper than police because it’s about $90 an hour for the police to do that.”
Owner Danny Newman claims that the response to the off-duty officer from staff was closer to half in-favor and half against, but Newman admits that it might not have been the best idea to hire police. “It’s not really the Merc vibe or ethos to do that,” he admits.
The approximately $35,000 spent on an off-duty officer led to a new charge on all the Mercury tickets labeled “Safety and Security” which is still being charged to this day, a charge that some of the staff feel is a unfair and sneakily hidden from patrons. “In the last meeting, they told me that it is replenishing the cafe from when we spent $35,000 on police officers, which, again, was last summer,” explains the union representative. “So they’re still actively, secretly charging the patrons to replenish from a bad financial decision that they made that hurt their own business.” Newman did not deny that this charge exists on all tickets and confirmed that the money is being used to replenish the expense of hiring that police officer last year.
The representative of the union also mentioned to me that Newman had been involved in homeless sweeps in the area. Newman didn’t deny that, but said that the sweeps were done with the understanding that the unhoused people affected would be rehoused.
“My personal perspective is, I think it’s crazy, at a macro level, to be illegal to not have a house” Newman explains about his own position. “There was a really bad encampment about a block away where (there was) absolutely terrible trafficking that we would witness pretty regularly. A few of the businesses all came together in that neighborhood to take (Mayor Mike) Johnston at his newly-elected word of ‘We’re going to rehouse everyone that wants it.’ It was Triangle Bar, British Bulldog, Woods Boss, and us, and then a handful of 15-20 other local places in area, all came together. Our little blocks over there were the first—maybe the second, I think the governor’s mansion was the first and then our little neighborhood was the second—for the rehousing program. I can’t remember if it’s permanent or semi-permanent housing, but that was what the neighborhood and newly-elected Johnston were pushing for.”
The Union is Founded The Mercury Café Union started their
Instagram account in July of 2023, stating:
“We have been and are currently dealing with extremely unstable hours and pay, which make our lives difficult to predict. We feel that many long time employees are being given lower preference in scheduling and fewer shifts in a way that is making our continued employment at the Mercury Cafe untenable. Many of us do not have health insurance, putting us at risk of poverty or homelessness if we are seriously injured or sick. We feel disregarded, burnt out, and pushed out of jobs we enjoy and love.”
Newman says that the cut hours were due to the café struggling with money. “Last year, we had to make the tough call to downsize everything, and basically just focus on bare bones just to keep everything going. It kind of worked. And it was not a forever solution, but it kind of kept us afloat.”
Newman says that, while he sympathizes with the union, he’s just not in a position to meet all of their demands. “We’re doing our best as a tiny, money-losing operation to stick around. And so, as much as I 100% agree with the essence of a lot of the stuff that the union is wanting—I wish we could have all of these amazing perks and benefits and things like that—the absolute reality is that we need to exist before we can do that. And so that’s a lot of the confusion and the frustration, I think, on both sides where they want a lot of things that are literally impossible because we can’t even keep the doors open.”
According to the union representative, management’s policy in dealing with the union has been to stall negotiations and retaliate against union members. “So our election was in August,” they tell me, “and we weren’t able to schedule our first bargaining session until February, and we have about one bargaining session a month. The second meeting that was scheduled, Danny, the day of, canceled it and had to schedule for another month out.” Newman denies that, saying that the one session he had to reschedule was scheduled for two days later.
Besides stalling, the union rep says that management show no interest in actually negotiating, coming to meetings unprepared and arguing over trivial matters. “They never do the things that they say they’ll do between meetings. They just always say we’ll think about this; we’ll talk about this later, and they don’t. We just get to the next meeting, and multiple meetings have almost been repeats of the whole previous meeting because they just act like they don’t remember anything that was said or done in the previous meeting.”
Some of the more trivial points that the union says management focuses on included having the union logo on the front of their agreement, and successorship of the contract, which refers whether or not the next owners of the Mercury have to be bound by the same contract. Successorship of the contract is not actually something that can be negotiated, though, because the National Labor Relations Board’s successorship doctrine requires new owners to recognize previous agreements with management.
“We’ve had conversations about all the different components,” says Newman. “They put something on there, and we just said it doesn’t really make sense to put a union logo on something that’s the Mercury Café’s. And so that one (we) had a discussion about, but certainly wasn’t any more or less talked about (than) anything else.”
The representative of the union also said that disciplinary action seems to be taken against staff members of the union who attend bargaining sessions with Newman. “The day of our election, right after the election, Danny fired one of them in person in front of everyone, which, by the way, most discipline has been done in front of people.” Newman says that he did not recall any public firings.
Uptown and Humboldt Takes Over the Kitchen
In July 2023, longtime head chef Jeff Massingill retired, leaving the Mercury with no food service for a short time. The first attempt at a solution came with their Culinary Ventures program, which the website said aimed “to provide a space for aspiring chefs, culinary enthusiasts, and seasoned veterans to explore and showcase their culinary talents.” Following that, a group called Gringos Tacos took over the kitchen, but neither the Culinary Ventures program nor Gringos Tacos really seemed to work as a solution.
The solution came when a local restaurant, Uptown and Humboldt, leased out the kitchen and became the new food service for the café. “I privately leased the kitchen because the kitchen was not working,” says chef Gio Diaz, who wanted to emphasize that he is not technically a Mercury employee. “Sadly, financially, they were just going through a lot of changes. Danny was just like, I really need some help. I was able to bring in the business and really turn it around data-wise, seeing like, Hey, this is why this is not working. This food menu items are not working. This labor cost is not working. This food cost is not working.”
The introduction of an outside business taking over the kitchen meant that Uptown and Humboldt brought their own kitchen staff with them, which meant fewer hours for Mercury staff. It also meant other complications of having two companies operating under the same roof.
“When Uptown and Humboldt … came in,” explains the representative of the union, “they told us that, since the kitchen is part of the food sales, baristas (who were taking food orders at the time) will be sharing tips with the kitchen, including dishwashers. And then we kept asking what that percentage is, and they kept not telling us. They’d use vague words, like ‘a percentage.’ We need to know what to expect, and they just never told us. From someone who directly watched (general manager) Alisha, she said that … she just decides in the moment how much of the tips to share and where it goes. So it’s not a set system. And then I, a few weeks ago, asked the kitchen crew if they’re getting tips, and they said no.”
Newman denied that the tips are split up arbitrarily, saying that there is a spreadsheet with all the percentages on it, and as far as the kitchen getting their portion of the tips, Newman says, “I would 100% guarantee that they received them.”
But the representative of the union alleges that there have been further irregularities with paychecks that have always been chalked up to honest mistakes, such as when the baristas were transferred to a new system and the wages were entered incorrectly, or a time when an employee was allegedly given a check that bounced.
Newman says that, when the wages were entered incorrectly in the system, he promptly fixed the error as soon as it was brought to his attention. As for the bounced check, Newman says that there was a situation where an employee’s bank refused a check from the Mercury, but says that it was not a bounced check. “On our side, it cleared the bank. We don’t have any other details, and we have offered to go to the bank with that employee (to) figure out what’s going on.”
Uptown and Humboldt Takes Over the Barista Position
With Uptown and Humboldt running the kitchen, they gradually took over the coffee counter as well about six months later. “The margins were not there,” says Diaz. “Goods were not where they needed to be, flavor-wise, so people were just not buying it. The service was not all that great, and it showed in the way that people were tipping. I took over the cafe, and made a lot of changes, and now (I’m) finally making it work right.”
With Uptown and Humboldt taking over the coffee bar, the Mercury staff was notified that hours would, again, be cut, according to a post on the Mercury Café Union Instagram page where they shared the group texts sent from general manager Alisha. The union claims that it took Newman over a day to answer employee’s questions about whether or not they still had jobs, and finally got a response that “Nobody is being let go but nobody is being scheduled. Until the Merc can support the payroll for the counter position.”
According to the post on the union Instagram, one employee pointed out that making such unilateral decisions without negotiating with the union was illegal, and that employee was then removed from the scheduling app and the message deleted.
Newman did not address the silencing of the employee, but he did deny that he made a unilateral move without consulting the union, saying that he brought up the possibility of this at one of the union bargaining sessions. “We had a meeting approximately six weeks ago, and I told everybody at that meeting, I said, before we jump into union talks, it’s really important to talk through this: We are out of money. We are not going to be able to keep everyone on the on the schedule. And this is literally what I said, I said please, if you guys have any ideas of how we can avoid doing that, please let me know, I don’t want to make any unilateral decisions here.”
In the messages posted online, employees asked why they couldn’t simply be transferred to the Uptown and Humboldt payroll and continue to do their jobs, which they argued was easier than training new crew. No real response was given for this in the group text thread other than, “We can’t speak for Gio.”
The representative of the union argued that using Gio and his team instead of the Mercury staff was a way to avoid giving hours to union employees. “I think they think, if they have someone under the Uptown and Humboldt payroll, then they’re not covered by the union. And our union rep said they’re going to be looking in to see if we actually can cover them as well, since we’re all operating under one roof.”
But both Newman and Chef Diaz denied that this was the reason behind the Uptown and Humboldt team taking over the barista position. Newman says that, since the barista position also takes the orders for the kitchen, it just made sense for the kitchen and the barista position to be run by the same team.
“It makes way more sense for the operator, who’s actually running the food and all that stuff, to just handle it all. So that is what we ended up going back to on that front. And so, the food portion is the biggest component of that. And having them be able to talk about their menu, it was the important piece to everyone there.”
Where to Go From Here
“I know the new owners have had a lot of personal problems since they bought the Mercury and health issues and other problems,” says Marilyn Megenity as I talk to her about the issues with the café she founded but no longer owns. “And I don’t think they realized how much leadership the Mercury needs … I am a worker’s advocate all the way, and I love all the people I’ve ever worked with. I feel like I have nieces and nephews around the world after 45 years, or 46 years, of working with young people. And it’s heartbreaking that this situation is at the Mercury. In the past, the young people I worked with loved, loved, loved working there. The artwork that is all over the Mercury on the tables and the walls and the outside murals that was done by people who work there, and it was done with love.”
Members of the community have reached out to show their support of the union, and some have stated online that they intend to boycott the café. But the union wants to make it clear that they are not asking for a boycott at this time, partially because of their respect for the history of the Mercury and not wanting to see the long-running community hub close, and partially in response to a request from Megenity not to boycott her beloved cafe café. If you’re looking for a way to support the union, the union representative says the best way is “emailing or going in person and talking to the staff and management and really just sharing the information.”
The day before I was preparing to post this story, I received a message from my source in the union organizing committee and was told that the management had a meeting with members of the union on Sunday and agreed to cooperate with the union moving forward. Still, there have been hopeful moments before that have led to dashed hopes and further conflicts. For the sake of the Mercury, and the entire Denver arts community, we can only hope that this first sign of hope will give way to a solution that results in a positive outcome for the workers and the continued preservation of one of Denver’s greatest artistic institutions.
To keep up with what’s going on with the union, you can follow them on Instagram Photo courtesy of OFM 
By Julie River
