— remembers roaming the Golden Triangle neighborhood one day in the late 1990s. He noticed that the 99 West Ninth Avenue location appeared to be preparing to open for some kind of business.
But as fast as the swing revival went up, it came down, Swank recalls, and the club was suddenly scrambling for a different path forward. It had been doing salsa nights on Thursdays, which maintained fairly steady attendance. In 1999, the club's name was changed to La Rumba as it became a Latin dance club. Swank says they weren’t sure whether they would draw enough of a crowd to stay open, but they were pleasantly surprised.
Although the club started off and found its success from salsa nights, it hosts a wide range of Latin music. Salsa can be a blanket term to describe the dance music that comes out of Latin America and the Caribbean, but more precisely, it’s. For its anniversary celebrations, La Rumba will also have bachata and merengue music from the Dominican Republic, cumbia from Colombia, and reggaetón from Puerto Rico.
Swank says La Rumba draws a diverse crowd, and that’s what makes it special in a town like Denver, which can feel not quite demographically varied at times. Sunday nights tend to bring out the “serious, serious dancers," he says,"the really serious dancers who are really great,” and La Rumba’s dress code seems to help draw out that community.