Familiar Face - Michael Brennan

Talk about an interesting life. Michael Brennan has done it all – from being a "ski bum" and working in a sawmill in Telluride, to living in London during the Beatles era, to having assisted as a Yale-educated physician's assistant at 7,500 open heart surgeries at the biggest medical facility in Maine for 25 years.

He is now a Niwot Familiar Face as a bartender for the past two years at The Wheel House.

This is a story you couldn't make up. "Pure luck," he said of his fascinating life. "It was being in the right place at the right time. I had a lot of wonderful opportunities come my way."

A jovial and fascinating man, Brennan, who prefers being called Michael, was sitting outside talking one day at the Garden Gate Cafe in Cottonwood Square wearing a Red Sox baseball cap on his head. He is vivacious and looks unmistakable with a long, white, walrus mustache and a pink-and-white patterned shirt.

Brennan is a lot of fun and seems to have the perfect personality to be a bartender – a people person for sure. As for the mustache, "I started it 53 years ago," he explained.

He was born in Lancaster, Penn. and had what he described as a "scattered childhood." His father was a "big-time advertising executive" and the family moved around a lot, living on the west coast for a long time and also in London. He also spent the summer between his junior and senior year in high school on the Greek island of Santorini.

"I graduated from high school in 1970 and attended Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania," he said. He described it as "a hotbed of student activism" against the Vietnam War, for civil rights and for women's rights. This was the beginning of the hippie generation and Brennan said he became "part of the crowd," even though, "My paternal grandfather was the District Attorney of San Francisco."

So how did Brennan go from assisting for 35 years in 7,500 cardiac surgeries in Portland, Maine to moving to Niwot in 2021 and becoming a bartender at The Wheel House? Good question.

"I love being a bartender," he said. "The people you meet and the stories you hear. Fantastic."

Having lived in Saco, Maine and worked as a physician's assistant in Portland for 35 years, Brennan said that two years ago his life was changing. He and his wife had recently divorced. He was retiring from Maine Medical Center, and Colorado, where his grown children lived and where he had had so much fun as a young man, was beckoning to him.

In 2021, "sight unseen," he bought a condominium in Niwot in a development called Countryside near Cottonwood Square. He said he was eager to move on from the 10-acre "gentleman's farm" where he kept horses on the Maine coast. He had lived there with his family, which included three children, since 1988.

Having had such a peripatetic childhood, moving seemed like no big deal, he explained, and after arriving here in April, 2021 – at the height of the Covid lockdown -- he began to get involved in the Niwot community. He has two grown daughters in Colorado. One is getting married in two weeks, and one lives in Littleton. "No grandbabies yet," he said.

As for his move from Maine to Niwot, he called it "pure luck." He said, "I feel like I'm at the right place at the right time."

Brennan started going to The Wheel House when he first moved here to hang out and play trivia and have a couple of beers and meet other local residents.

He said one of the first people he met in Niwot was the owner of The Wheel House and in August of 2021, Eric Bergeson told Brennan he was looking to hire a bartender. "He told me it was easy and the recipe for cocktails was pinned to the counter and so, on a whim, I decided to take the job."

Brennan works at the bar three nights a week – on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. He said he loves "the vibe" and his new career "gives some structure" to his week. When he's not serving beers and cocktails and meeting new folks and getting together with his family, he takes Tai Chi classes and rides his bike four times a week, usually a total each week of 75 to 100 miles. He had a hip replacement four years ago and also rides an exercise bike at home, so there is never a dull moment in Bartender Mike's new life.

"I love being a bartender," he concluded. "What I didn't know was what a gem of a community [Niwot is]. I feel like it's an oasis of happiness like the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz."