For the first time in more than 40 years, Boulder’s longtime bowling alley and bar—an institution in the town for decades—is no longer named Phil & Tim’s. And though he’ll still be a fixture in the establishment, Tim Yanzick is no longer the owner.
On Nov. 23, Dave Schell took ownership of the business and property with a vision to reopen the restaurant, reestablish a bowling league and make the new Dave’s 32 oz. Bar & Grill a gathering place for families as well as longtime bar patrons, all in a renovated space that pays homage to the legacy that Tim Yanzick and his brother, the late Phil Yanzick, built since buying the bar in 1979.
“We want to turn part of it into a sports bar, get it to where we have more gambling options, as in daytime fun stuff—bingo, keno—all that’s kind of down the road stuff. We’re hoping to get the bowling alley running so we can do league again,” Schell said in an interview in the bar on Tuesday. “We will have the kitchen up and running, but it’s going to be about a year. We do have a lot of new bar food options coming in the next couple weeks.”
Schell, 54, lives just outside Boulder. He grew up in Helena and owned Dave’s Fencing for 30 years before selling it about four years ago.
“After being semi-retired, I needed something else to do,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to bartend, because I like people and I like talking and visiting. Well, why don’t I just own the bar?”
Schell said he was already a customer at Phil & Tim’s when Yanzick mentioned to him that he was looking to sell. The two hammered out a deal and crafted a transition over the past four or five months, he said, and eventually closed on the sale last week.
Paying homage to the building’s history, the iconic lighted Phil & Tim’s sign on the front of the building will be relocated to the wall alongside the parking area behind the building, and “we still want to keep some of the memorabilia” inside the bar, Schell said.
Other things will change: Schell said he’ll be able to take payment by credit card (the bar is currently cash-only); he plans to bring in local bands to play; and he’s sprucing up the building inside and out. The pool table, poker table and gambling machines have been rearranged, and handcrafted high-top tables featuring railroad spikes and rails have replaced the booth seating between the entryway and the bar. Before the tables are finished, he said, he hopes to have local ranchers brand the tops.
“We’re trying to keep it so the locals will still want to come here, but yet we want to upgrade it and make it a fun bar like it used to be, for the whole family.”
He’s been working on the space most days for the past few months, he said. What he can’t do himself, he’s hiring local contractors to complete.
The business is now open 11 a.m. to close daily, and Schell himself is often behind the bar, particularly just after 11 a.m. and Monday through Wednesday.
“Everything” has been a challenge so far, he said, before clarifying that “there hasn’t been anything that I didn’t already foresee—I just wish I had been able to do more sooner.”
If he owns the bar as long as Yanzick did, he’ll have more than enough time.
In the bar on Tuesday, Yanzick recalled that his brother always told him he dreamed of owning a bar. While Yanzick was traveling in Boulder in the ’70s, he saw Karl’s Bar-Bowl-Cafe was for sale.
“And I called him on the phone and told him, ‘Phil, I found a bar, bowling alley and cafe, and the price is right.'”
The brothers bought the bar and Phil ran it until he died “on my 55th birthday 20 years ago, and I just turned 75. Cindy, his wife, ran it for seven years or so, and then I bought her out,” Tim Yanzick said. He owned and operated it himself for the next 14 years, and he said there wasn’t anything about it that he won’t miss.
“I’ll miss it all, there’s nothing I won’t. It’s been my life for 42 years, come Jan. 11. I’ve enjoyed it all,” he said. “The camaraderie, just association with all the good people in Boulder and the community, I’ve enjoyed them. Boulder’s a great community—neighbors look out after their neighbors, and that’s really helpful when it comes to a small community.”
Rattling off the names of more than a dozen bowling alleys that have disappeared from the region in the past few decades, he said this bowling alley’s longevity is because of the town and its people.
“Thanks to the people, it’s been a successful business, and it’s all about the people. If it hadn’t been for the people and the patrons, it never would’ve happened,” he said.
And although Phil & Tim’s is no more, he said, “I’m gonna be around.”
