Last week, I made a quick and mostly unpublicized visit to Washington, D.C. The reason for the visit? Simple. I had never been there before. That’s right, I had seen other national capitols, but not my own. We had a little money to spare, and Jen and I talked about sending me down for a couple of days. I started watching airfares, and one day about four weeks ago, I saw one that made my head spin.
JetBlue, as it turns out, has just inaugurated service between Boston’s Logan Airport and DC’s Reagan National. The carrier has been flying between Logan and Dulles for some time now, but only on 11/1 did JB start serving National–seven flights a day, seven days a week. And as JetBlue does, they advertised a special fare: $7 each way.
That’s not a typo. Seven dollars each way. Seventy dimes, seven hundred pennies, etc. So for $14 plus 21 bucks for taxes and fees, I had a round-trip to DC in my hands. (To put this into perspective, my train fare from Providence to Boston cost $7.75 each way. That’s right, I paid more to take the train to South Station than I did to fly to DC.) I kept the trip on the cheap by staying in the Hosteling International hostel on 11th near K St. Yeah, bunk beds, but also? $40 a night, and in a convenient location. For two nights, I won’t complain about bunk beds.
The trip was mostly touristy and mostly in central DC. I saw this …
… and I saw that …
… and this …
The next day, I went here …
… and I went here …
But these days, I can’t travel anywhere without sampling the local imbiberterias. I had alerted my friends Sean-Mike and Marshall, of DC’s superfamous Scofflaw’s Den, to my impending travels, and they agreed to meet Tuesday evening for dinner and drinks.
We started at PS 7′s, where I eventually lost track of my drinking. I met their bar star, Gina Chersevani, who is not only a great bartender but a real sweetheart as well. I started with the oddly named Gnome’s Water–gin, cucumber water, lemon juice, and lavender. Very refreshing and tasty. Then, the Boiler Room–Bourbon, lemon juice, and Allagash White Ale. Delicious. There’s something to these beer cocktails, I think. After that, details fade into the mist, in part because the light got dim and my camera was no longer of much use. I know I tried their delicious cider-bourbon punch. There was a Sazerac done up special for me. And we ended on shots of smoky, smoky mezcal.
We then repaired to the Passenger, and this is even more dim. I couldn’t shoot my drinks at all there, and I no longer had the hand-eye coordination to take notes, so instead, let me play up the vibe of the place. Tuesday evening, not most bars’ busiest night, and thus was also true of the Passenger. Nice sized crowd, though, and very mellow. We sat at the bar, me near a pillar covered in graffiti–much of which from visiting bartenders. I remember seeing Voisey and Meehan’s names there, and I think some wag had scrawled Gary Regan’s name next to a phone number that may or may not actually be his. The bartenders were chatty and attentive, letting me look at bottles I had never seen (High West whiskeys, for example, which aren’t distributed in Rhody or Mass.) and suggesting cocktails we might enjoy. Passenger’s co-owner Tom Brown was absent that evening, but his brother (and fellow co-owner) Derek was on hand, and he offered us a tour of the Columbia Room, which is closed on Tuesdays.
Jake Parrott arrived while we were at the Passenger, and after another round or two, we wound up at ChurchKey, a wonderful beer bar at 14th and Rhode Island. I started with a cask ale called Oliver’s The Darkness. I remember moving on from there to a sour beer, but alas, the name of said sour is lost to the fog of inebriation.
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