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- TERRY MICHAEL
Friday, August 03, 2007
AFTER LAMENTING THE decline of nightlife in this space 16 months ago, I am back to offer hope, to be found where Florida Avenue runs into 9th and U streets, N.W.
Named with verbally delicious gay jock irony, Nellie’s Sports Bar opened July 16 and seems to be a new anchor for the metro-sexual, multi-cultural corridor at the other end of Florida Avenue from Eric Hirshfield’s ever-popular 18th & U Duplex Diner.
The 17th, P and L street bars and clubs are in for some serious competition from general manager Daren Phillips and his crew.
Walk into Nellie’s, past security dudes who fulfill Chippendale and Abercrombie fantasies (are they real?), and you enter a space where both conversation and breathing are possible. The high ceilings, exposed brick, and mountain-climbing staircases lead up to an open air roof deck, making you feel athletic, even if you’ve never sweated in that Universal Gear T-shirt you paid too much for.
As for the food — jocks cannot exist on Guinness alone — I write having sampled only the very good mini-burger “Sliders” (great bread!). The bar’s web site offers a menu of “Small Plates and Big Baskets.” I’m no restaurant critic (you’re reading cultural commentary here) but the staff certainly makes the drinking and dining experience visually enjoyable.
They even have clean rest rooms, with doors on the stalls and locks on the doors — some of the simple things in life that other establishments seem to have sacrificed, in a noble effort to keep controlled substances from being abused in the same venues where users of the government-sanctioned drug (that would be alcohol) engage in open transactions with their bartenders.
AS YOU’D EXPECT from a sports bar, only a little music plays in the background, not the ear-banging noise that emanates from poor sound systems at many gay clubs, where you have to yell directly into someone’s face to be understood. The sports channel monitors seem to be for viewing only, or at least I couldn’t hear any volume. Which means — get ready for this — you must engage in actual conversation between sips of your Bud Lite and vodka cranberry! Yes, real human interaction, for which much of the online generation seems ill prepared.
Nellie’s follows another nightlife success in the same neighborhood, and a new dance club may be just months away from filling a void that occurred when Nation and Lizard Lounge shuttered operations in 2006.
Bob Mould and Rich Morel paved the way for a synergy of quality gay and gay-friendly nightlife in the Shaw-Cardozo area in which Nellie’s is located. Their monthly Blow Off parties at the 9:30 club, just north of the sports bar, offer the kind of intelligent dance music DJ Kostas provided for so many years at the old Sunday night Lizard Lounge.
IN PLANS UNVEILED publicly last week, Blow Off and Nellie’s will be complemented with a new dance venue planned by DJ and Tracks-Nation promoter Ed Bailey. The probable site is within 30 seconds walking distance from Nellie’s and 9:30. That is good news, especially if our community learns to take a step back from the frenetic, way too speedy pace at which it has been moving in recent years.
Gay and lesbian couples and singles who walk their dogs and tend gardens in the neighborhoods and suburbs of Washington, and who spend much more time at quiet dinner parties than noisy dance parties, will probably ask, why the hell is he making so much fuss about nightlife?
Good question. But the face of our community is often seen in these public spaces, and entrepreneurs who add quality and civility to the places we gather for entertainment should be encouraged.
Adorned with antique fixtures from the old Griffith Park and Baltimore Penn Station, and named for co-owner Doug Schantz’s great-grandmother, it appears that a venue with a Nellie past is ushering in a felicitous future for D.C. after dark.
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