The Empty Bottle greets you with a sweet stench—stale beer, sweat, and long nights filled with questionable decisions—the kind only a rock sanctuary tucked beyond a hulking front door and a faded Old Style sign could produce. It’s a rock club of a different era. The kind propped up by smoke-stained walls and old band fliers, by mystery shots for three bucks and filthy, claustrophobic bathrooms that narrate nights from years past. Thousands of bands have rolled through these parts. Legendary ones: Wilco, the Flaming Lips, LCD Soundsystem, the White Stripes. But that’s not why you come. You come to Western and Cortez to drink, thrash, laugh, and find your way in the world. You come because it’s where you grew up and now because it’s where you feel young. You come because as everything in your life moves forward, nights at the Bottle stand still.