Quarry House
Silver Spring’s historic dive bar, the Quarry House, is dead. What it used to be, that is. The old Quarry House. It’s taken me six years or so to come to grips with this.
Silver Spring’s historic dive bar, the Quarry House, is dead. What it used to be, that is. The old Quarry House. It’s taken me six years or so to come to grips with this.
I set out to review The Nest, a slightly off the beaten path yuppie hangout in Bethesda, MD, but then I found myself with the same problem as when I tried to review Fire Station One in Silver Spring. The Nest, while obviously a great date spot if you’re into that noisy herd of transplants […]
It’s time to answer the question that, I’m sure, is foremost in everyone’s mind: Where can I get a beer in Union Station at 8:30am? And I don’t mean buying one at the liquor store, or getting one down at the weird pizza joint in the gladiator pit food court and drinking in a corner […]
The thing I miss the most about Bethesda, MD, is the somewhat downtrodden have/have-not divide of the 80’s and early 90’s. Before it became a glittering jewel in the Galactic Empire’s crown. People make fun of me when I rant about gentrification but, seriously, retards, look around you. Most days, I feel like I woke […]
I wanted to be open-minded. I wanted to embrace Fire Station 1, Silver Spring’s newest bar. I wanted to write a good bar review. So I hit them Friday night, two hours after they opened their doors for the first time. From a marketing perspective, good bar reviews at GS are poison. I write a […]
After nine years, I’m sad to report that the so-called “NoMa” section of Capitol Hill really sucks when it comes to drinking. I’m talking about the Mass Ave stretch…and beyond! NoMa being the wholly imaginary neighborhood “North of Mass Ave” which is Union Station and the dismal former-ghetto rolling down past the bus station to […]
I think I’ve figured out what’s wrong with my town. I’ve watched it grow up from scary urban wasteland to gentrified post-suburban neo-yuppie masturbation sock, and there’s just a little something that’s off. A sort of sanitized soullessness that breeds boredom and frustration. And hookers can fix that. Wouldn’t it be nice to walk down […]
For this final part in my randomly selected tour of Irish bars in DC, I’ll continue along the Red Line to Gallery Place, and finally Cleveland Park.
There’s an oddity in Wheaton, MD: A Scottish-themed bar. Though the theme is about as far as it goes. The only thing Scottish about the food is that all the dishes have names like “The Nessie Fish and Chips” and so on.
I’m routinely hard on the faux-Irish pub phenomenon that so consumes the American bar culture. It’s one of those things where, when confronted by the legion of faux-Irish pub apologists, I always end up pitching into an argument. Largely because they, those mad zealots, insist that certain pubs in the DC area are “authentic” Irish […]