Back to School Coffee, coffee, everywhere: A short list of study-friendly coffeehouses

Coffee is the go-to drink to get you through extended study sessions and morning classes. (Forget Red Bull—it’s too tempting to slip a little vodka in there.) Good ol’ reliable joe is the ideal wingman for your brain: Stay awake. Conquer the exams. Get the grades. Plus it’s easy to find coffeehouses around town and near campus that are open at all hours. Here’s a short list of our favorite late-night/early morning haunts.

BOULDER
Espresso Roma Café (1101 13th St., 303-442-5011)
It’s not Rome, but it is close to campus and it has a patio. Espresso is open bright and early during the week, so you can mooch its wi-fi and down as many free coffee refills as you can before class. Bring your own cup and the baristas will even knock 25 cents off your order.

The Laughing Goat at Norlin Library (1720 Pleasant St., 303-492-8705, CU-Boulder campus)
Late-night study sessions are conducive to delirium. (Maybe the legend of how coffee was discovered has less to do with overly caffeinated, dancing goats and more to do with goat herder Kaldi hallucinating after pulling an all-nighter.) With extended hours during exams week, you just might go crazy at The Laughing Goat. But with the stand being in such close proximity to so many books, perhaps a 4.0 grade average is achievable through osmosis?

Folsom Street Coffee Company (1795 Folsom St., 303-440-8808)
Folsom Street Coffee boasts to be “Boulder’s only true eco-friendly coffeehouse.” In a city as green as Boulder, this means winning Eco-Cycle awards and using 100 percent wind power. Bonus: Folsom opens crazy-early at 6 a.m. every day, and there’s a satellite location in the Muenzinger building on the CU-Boulder campus.

DENVER
Paris On The Platte (1553 Platte St., 303-455-2451)
Talk to just about anybody who’s attended school in Denver, and chances are, they have memories of having their eyelids pried open during a late-night cram session by a Crowbar (the infamous Paris quad espresso beverage with steamed half-and-half and a cocoa dusting). This witching hour tradition is well worth continuing at Denver’s oldest coffeehouse, which stays open until 3 a.m. on weekends and 1 a.m. on weeknights.

The Bardo Coffee House (238 S. Broadway, 303-629-8331)
Who knows why this place even closes? Bardo opens at 6 a.m. every day and doesn’t close on the weekends until 4 a.m. Helping you survive a semester of due dates, the spot is equipped with free wi-fi, couch space for group meet-ups, and baked goods from City Bakery and Buffalo Doughboy.

Kaladi Brothers Coffee (1730 E. Evans Ave., 720-570-2166)
This is coffee and academia’s connubial fountainhead of edification. If you want to hang/brown-nose with noted DU professors, this is their rumored haunt. Kaladi even opens an hour earlier on Mondays (at 6 a.m.) for early-bird intellectuals who can’t wait to start the week.