I’m a little sentimental this week. It’s my last week of writing for Cheap Thrills, a blog that was a long time in the making and that I’ve written for daily for well over a year. (Well, almost daily. Remember the dreaded swine flu?)

Drinking represents various milestones. We get beers to console, to celebrate, to mark the passage of one part of our lives to another. So, in honor of me passing the torch, I thought I’d say goodbye with a happy hour at a recently discovered watering hole on South Broadway.

The Open Tap & Grill, I’ve discovered after a few visits, has a range of clientele. Sometimes it’s folks resting their legs after a long motorcycle ride. Sometimes it’s packed with post-college youth seeing their favorite band.

But my favorite time to go is Sunday afternoons, when I relax on the patio with friends and we reflect. And when beers are two-for-one, it gives us even more time to deliberate. With new career opportunities (higher-learning institutions are trusting me to teach college music courses), I’ve spent more than my fair share of time sipping cold ones in the sunshine and considering what the next year of my life should look like.

Sunday afternoons at Open Tap have proved therapeutic. The quiet front patio is serenaded by bands practicing for upcoming shows. The starting and stopping of the music has been the soundtrack in an unexpected place that allows me to step out of life and rehearse my own next steps.

Happy hour is seven days a week, from 3 to 6 p.m., and Sunday through Thursday from 11 p.m. to close: $1 off drafts, wells, and wine; $11 pitchers of micro beer; $7 pitchers of Coors Light and PBR; $2 off appetizers; and two-for-one draft beer of the day.

1446 S. Broadway, 303-282-1446