DC Viking

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Love Shack

Miss Viking and I are moving in together. We will be cohabitating. Sharing space. Living in sin.

I was prepared to write a seven part series exposing the seamy underbelly of renting in the DC Metro Area. I haven’t been writing with regularity lately, so I was looking forward to a little continuity to keep me moving forward. Like I said, I was prepared to write this series, but events have conspired to eliminate my apartment search as a writing topic.

When I first moved to DC, I must have looked at 12 or 13 apartments and houses. The process was grueling. The geography of my new city was baffling to me, so I would drive around for hours, trying to navigate from one awkward roommate meet’n’greet to the next. By the end of the process I was so exhausted and disillusioned with the rental market and with humanity in general that I was ready to move into the first place that wouldn’t require me to sleep on a bunk below a violent felon. I was remarkably lucky that I wound up in a nice house with friendly roommates.

When Miss Viking accepted a job in Baltimore and we targeted Silver Spring as our likely municipality of residence, I expected a long and dispiriting process of house hunting that would test the bonds of our relationship. I figured this would be entertaining reading. Unfortunately (for you) we spent a grand total of 3 hours house hunting. We looked at two houses and a condo, fell in love with the last house we saw, and begged the leasing agent to hold it until June 1^st for us.

Miss Viking is convinced that we’re the ideal renters, and that is why the owner has agreed to keep the house open for a month until my lease is up. Unable to accept our good fortune that easily, I’ve become convinced that there is something more sinister at work here. This house must be the home to some evil spirit, or a vermin infestation, or possibly the neighborhood is some type of Scientology commune. I’m not sure which one would frighten me more. Rats can be exterminated, a demon can be exorcised, but there is no good way to get rid of religious zealots.

I’ll keep you updated; and if anyone knows a good exterminator, ghost buster, or Tom Cruise, let me know.

Labels: My 'The City'

Monday, January 21, 2008

One of the dull posts I promised

Georgetown. You know it. You loathe it. Or you do if you live in DC and you're anything like me.

For those of you that don't live in Our Nation's Capital, Georgetown is a self-important, extremely affluent, suburb-like neighborhood within the borders of DC proper. For my Minneapolis readers: Imagine that you took the least diverse and most snobbish sections of Minnetonka and Edina, smashed them together, kicked out the black people (both of them), and then installed picturesque row-houses and high end East Coast retail boutiques. You would be well on your way to having a reasonable facsimile of Georgetown. You'd need to find yourself a few self-important young republicans to populate the bars on the weekends and maybe a 'famous for D.C.' politician and/or pundit to spice up your trendy eateries, but those are minor details.

I don't spend much time in Georgetown. You can't get there via the Metro, so I rarely frequent the pubs. The shops are too expensive for a man of my modest income, and the parking is downright terrifying on the weekends. Georgetown is Washington, D.C. for people that don't actually like cities. Put another way, Times Square is to New York City as Georgetown is to Washington. You should probably see both the first time you make a trip to their respective cities, but nobody with any knowledge of either place goes there without a really good excuse.

There are two acceptable reasons for entering the homogeneous confines of G-Town.

1) There are a couple of really exceptional bars that have some of the best views of any beer garden in the city. The view of the rowing shells on the Potomac and the Kennedy center combine, along with your proximity to the infamous Watergate hotel, to help you almost forget about the colossal douche bags jabbering away at the table next to you.

2) Georgetown is one of the best neighborhoods in DC when it comes to good restaurants. Not much you can do about that. Gourmet cooking tends to stay as close as it can to wealthy neighborhoods.

From time to time Miss Viking and I like to pretend that we're respectable adults. This only occurs a few times a year, but one of the recurring triggers for these bouts of respectability is the bi-annual DC Restaurant Week. Twice a year the best chefs in the city open their doors to the unwashed masses. For $30 bucks a head, you are treated to a three course dinner in some of the nicer settings in American dining.

It's not unlike allowing the caddies their 15 minutes a summer in the country club pool, and Miss Viking and I never miss it. So this Saturday I ventured to Georgetown for dinner. We had 7:30 reservations at Agraria which, according to the website, is "owned by and sources the highest quality products from family farmers across the country." I have no idea what that means, but they had a picture of a combine and a barn near the hostess station. I didn't know you could be trendy and still call on the symbolism of the dying family farm, but they give it a shot at Agraria. I kept expecting to hear LCD Sound System do a cover of 'Our Country'.

Since this post is ostensibly about dinner I should probably say something about the food. It was acceptable for what we paid, which was more than we should have for a Restaurant Week meal (more on that in the next paragraph). The mussels were very good and so was the pumpkin pie cheesecake. Everything else was only acceptable for the price, assuming that we had paid full price. Miss Viking's rockfish was pretty tasty, but the portion was very small. My desert was uninspiring. If you're going to price out your chocolate cake at more than it costs for me to see a movie, it should be better than average.

My main problem is that when I'm eating at these upper crust places during Restaurant Week, I always forget that while the meal may be coming to me at a reduced price, the booze is not. Miss Viking and I have before dinner cocktails, several glasses of wine with dinner, and some port or Irish coffee with dessert, and somehow I'm still mystified by my $180 check. Mental note; just because I'm only spending $60 on food that should cost well over $100 doesn't mean that I have to buy the 20 year old Port. No matter how good it tastes.

Labels: My 'The City'

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Making Spoons

I've been digging on the new Spoon album, "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga". Sure, the title could probably use some help, but the songs are nice. The album is good on first listen, bordering on great if you give it some time sink in.

"The Underdog" is the first single, and primary songwriter/lead singer Britt Daniels described it in an Onion AV Club interview as a Van Morrison song. I like it because I don't hear many good pop/rock songs that use horns without giving me the impression that band put the horn line into the song just so they could have a song with horns.

You should watch the video too, if for no other reason than I need someone to explain to me how the song relates to the video.

Bonus Material:

This story is probably familiar to any DC readers, but I had to throw it in for my friends back home in Minneapolis. People like this exist where I live.

Labels: My 'The City', tunes

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

I don't think that's David Letterman on the phone

I’m not one to spend my time scouring blogs and posting nasty comments about what somebody has taken the time to write down, and I happen to believe that there are major issues with our immigration policy that need to be addressed, but I ran across this post this evening and couldn’t in good conscience let it pass. This is an actual Top 10 list of the reasons illegal aliens are a threat to the American way of life that someone posted. I thought the blogger was joking until I got down to about reason number seven. My comments are in italics. Enjoy.

10. Proliferation of foreign flags being flown in US and in some cases
American flags being burned.

Um..huh? I didn’t realize that someone flying another flag was a threat to the U.S. We’ve managed to survive Pearl Harbor, a Civil War and American Idol. I don’t think someone with a Brazil sticker on their 83’ Civic is going to be the thing that finally topples the Republic. And most people entering the country illegally are here because America is nicer than their own country. I don’t see a lot of people getting totally pissed about the improvement in their way of life and torching the flag, but heating oil prices were pretty high last winter, so maybe there was an epidemic I missed.

09. Sacrificed goats and various other animals due to rituals being performed in Adams Morgan, etc.

There must be epidemic of goat slaughtering going on in the Morgan that I didn’t know about. That’s two epidemics I was unaware of. Maybe the immigrants needed something to cook over their pile of burning American flags. If you want to avoid this kind of barbarity while visiting Adams Morgan in the future my advice would be to skip Heaven and Hell on the weekend.

08. Ethnic fiedoms and enclaves being established in certain neighborhoods and speaking native languages and refusing to learn English.

I’m guessing that he meant to write fiefdom here. When insulting people for not knowing the language it’s a good idea to give spellcheck a quick click before hitting publish.

07. Identity theft mainly involving social security numbers.

Ok, this may be a problem, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that most identity theft is perpetrated with the goal of buying a lot of crap that you haven’t paid for. Wait a minute…how can illegals afford so many goats and flags? I’m ordering a credit report right now.

06. Demeaning the institution of marriage to obtain US citizenship fraudulantly.

Sorry. The gays are already doing this. You’re stealing talking points here. Unless you’re referring to gay immigrants you have to come up with a new reason number 6.

05. Degradation of what it means to be a patriotic American and earn citizenship legally.

Point well taken. All patriotic Americans must earn their citizenship legally. Except for those Americans that were born here after we stole the country from the Indians. They don’t have to be patriotic.

04. The ability of Mexico, Latin America and other countries to ignore their responsibility to improve their economies and way of life for their poor.

I happen to agree with this one. Crap. On the bright side, these countries are just following the example set by the U.S. with regards to our poor. Except for Latin America. That isn't a country.

03. Gang-related violence and the corresponding costs to jail felons.

Like we wouldn’t have this problem without immigration issues. I saw “Boyz in the Hood” twice man, I know what’s going on in Compton.

02. Costs associated with the healthcare, and social services. etc, required for the uninsured and unemployed.

Again with scapegoating of illegal immigrants for the way we’re screwing up our own country. Cause the immigrants are the reason we spend more money than any other country for middle of the pack health care. Project much?

01. Terrorism (remember Sept 11th).

Stealing talking points again here. Set aside the fact that the 9/11 report stated that the attackers snuck in through legal loopholes, everyone knows that Saddam is the one responsible. Doy.

Labels: Exhibit A in the case for my damnation, My 'The City', rant

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Dems win Senate: What it means for me

Everybody is talking about the election and what the Democrats taking congress means for the country. Donald “Uncle Remus” Rumsfeld and his unknown knowns has been shown the door. Bush the Elder has already sent in one of his guys from the glory days of Iran-Contra to impose a little realpolitik on the Pentagon. So good stuff there, but the political landscape for the next two years is not radically different than what we would have had with a GOP congress. Don’t get me wrong, I did a little victory dance when AP announced that Webb had shown Mister Maccacca where he could put his good ole’ boy act, but not much is really going to change. Republicans are so afraid of sharing ideological ground with Dubya at this point that they were going to force him to change course on Iraq anyway, and Bush doesn’t have the political capital to do much more right now than clear brush in Crawford. So the GOP was going to hide under their collective desks for two years anyway and not do anything to antagonize the voters.

The Democrats will come in and make a show of bipartisanship. They’ll pass a few bills with GOP support. They won’t be able to get anything controversial past Bush, and they’ll be walking on eggshells. They realize that the voters have them on a pretty short leash. Once you get the electorate awake, you have to be careful what you do while they are still paying attention. So in the end, slightly better for the good guys, but no major accomplishments that the Democrats will be able to point to at the end of the day. And as long as there is someone keeping an eye on George, making sure he doesn’t have Ted Kennedy strapped to a water-board in Cheney’s basement or something like that, I’m cool with not fixing Social Security for a couple of years. Just don’t break anything worse than it already is and I’m happy.

The real change to come out of this election will be an improvement of the local bar scene. I know this sounds like a stretch, but bear with me. Roughly 35 Republican elected officials are going home to Jesusland. I don’t know too much about how these staffs are comprised but let’s assume that each of these 35 Republicans has 5 senior staff. Each of these 5 senior staffers has 5 or so assistant senior staffers and each of these underlings has 5 or so assistant-to-the-assistants, interns, admins and assorted political leaches hanging around, wasting my oxygen. So that’s 35 X 5 X 5 X 5 or 4,375 fewer Republicans. Since I have no idea what I’m talking about, let’s also assume that holding leadership of the House and Senate, along with the individual committees of these august bodies requires the services another 300 or so Republicans that will now have to hit the road. I know zip about lobbying but I’m going to assume that losing 35 seats and the majority in both the House and the Senate is going to reduce the demand for conservative-type lobbyists, also known as fuck-sticks. Let’s say that each elected official can support 5 fuck-sticks, which means that DC is now 175 fuck-sticks lighter. The mistresses and wives will probably go home too. Knock off another 50. By my completely arbitrary and almost certainly inaccurate calculations, 4,900 Republicans will be leaving the city come the end of the lame-duck session. Running a search for bars in DC on AOL’s Cityguide produces a list of 285 bars of varying quality and repute. I’ll grant you that most of the people I’m describing here would never hang out someplace like the Velvet Lounge or DC9. In fact most of them probably drink in Bethesda, but I’m making a statistically tenuous argument here and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let something like the facts stand in my way. 4,900 assholes. 285 bars. That’s 17.2 fewer assholes per bar.

What does this all mean for me? It means that on the average night out I’m much less likely to run into some self important blowhard that keeps spilling his Dewar’s and water on me. I really hate that. First of all, respect my personal space. Second of all, who orders a Dewer’s at Madam’s Organ?

17.2 per bar. That’s a lot of jerks that will be quickly removed from my life. Those three girls at the end of the bar, wearing pearls over their sweaters and talking about how feminists are ruining it for everyone and making it much tougher to get a guy to buy dinner? Gone. The dude next to me giving frat boys everywhere a bad name while he tries to decide which of the three girls at the end of the bar will be most impressed by that fact that he gets coffee for Rick Santorum? History. Mike Dewine? Totally gone, and thank god, because he always blows his cigarette ashes all over the place when he gets hammered. That’s just plain inconsiderate.

4,900. 17.2 per bar. Expelled. Re-located. I know that they’ll be replaced by similarly self-important Democrats, and while I find them only slightly less distasteful on a personal level, I tend to agree with their politics. Also, their women are a lot better looking and are a lot less likely to remind me of Katherine Harris.

Labels: I'm a drunkard, My 'The City', politics

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Reading Balzac, Knocking back Prozac

There are times when you need to get out of the city, when the overwhelming crush of sharing a small piece of swampland with so many human beings grinds down your sense of perspective. Bear in mind, I’m a city boy and an urban dweller by nature. Walking through a crowd of pedestrians on their way to work, the dubious smell of vendor hotdogs, the noise a city makes during lunch hour; these are all things that make me glad I live in a place that allows me to rub elbows with people I don’t know.

But there are times I find myself wishing that all these idiots would just go away. I’ve come to the conclusion that sitting in traffic triggers these feelings. I’ll be rotting in a traffic jam, and I realize that I’ve spent the last 5 minutes devising suitable and horrific punishments for minor traffic infractions. Rubber-necking? That’ll get you thrown in the stocks, naked, on the corner of U Street and 14^th. Tail-gating? Your car now has a governor prohibiting you from traveling at more than 15 miles per hour. And if you don’t get out of the left lane when I come speeding up behind you on the beltway? I’m sorry sir; you’re going to be serving as the District’s ‘special’ Sunday parking officer in Logan Circle. Just remember, Jesus wants people to double park.

When my Zen abandons me, and I start harboring images of large women from Kansas getting chewed alive by serrated metal stairs while standing on the left side of the escalator, I realize that it’s probably time to get out of the city for a weekend. Luckily, Miss Viking lives in Southwest VA for grad school right now, in the mountains around Blacksburg.

The whole distance relationship thing has numerous drawbacks; wear on my car, weeks between amorous contact, high gas prices, not being able to share events that occur during between Sunday and Friday, weeks between amorous contact, traveling west on I-66 on a Friday night, and I go weeks between amorous contact. Did I mention I sometimes go 14 to 21 days without getting any? It’s true. But the upshot of Miss Viking living 4 hours away is that it provides the opportunity to get away from humanity for a couple of days.

I could feel it starting to happen last week. Maybe it was all the extra people on the Mall for the Cherry Blossoms a few weeks ago. Or it could have been the spring cold that curtailed my stress relief at the gym. Whatever the cause, I could feel a minor case of misanthropic dystopia coming on. Time to get out of dodge.

A weekend at a very big house in the country was just what the doctor ordered. A heavy dose of margaritas followed by a series of Jack Daniels taken orally. Mix in an afternoon spent outside reading Umberto Eco’s new book while watching the neighbor kids fly kites, and I forgot all about those silly fantasies involving a two-thousand pound ACME cartoon weight and the BMW Mini-Cooper that took two parking spaces last week.

I feel much better now; ready to be a productive member of urban society again. I owe it all to the majesty and wonder of the Blue Ridge Mountains and copious amounts of alcohol. Seeing my girlfriend for the first time in 11 days, 5 hours and 13 minutes might have something to do with it too, but I’m not sure if it’s a correlation or causation kinda thing.

Labels: My 'The City', rant

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Mayor for 3 to 5

What an amazing and screwed up city I live in. Marion Barry has once again tested positive for drug use. The same Marion Barry that failed to report half a million dollars of income to the IRS over the last few years. The same Marion Barry that was convicted of cocaine possession in 1990, when he was set up by ‘the bitch’. The same Marion Barry that has incidents like these dotting his record. How did this guy manage to keep stepping on his own dick so publicly? Why did people keep giving him the chance? Those aren’t rhetorical questions. I’m really asking.

It’s not like the personal and legal troubles were the only things to raise red flags regarding The Mayor for Life. It’s well known that he and his cronies managed to mismanage DC and its finances so heinously that partial financial control of the city was given to the federal government and DC home rule was set back at least 10 years. Yet he was given another chance on the City Council.

He is still tremendously popular in Southeast DC’s Ward 8. The tone of the man on the street reactions in the papers this morning was not one of anger. They feel sorry for the guy. They empathize with him. I’ve never understood the allure of wanting to elect the candidate that you can most relate to on a personal level. This goes for Marion Barry as well as George Bush. I want my leaders to be better than me. I want them smarter and more experienced. I don’t want to have a beer with them. I sure as hell don’t want them smoking crack with some broken down hooker in a cheap motel room. I want them to be so damn sharp that I would be intimidated by their intellect. Most people don’t see things that way. The sheep want to be comforted by the fact that their elected officials, while wealthier and more famous, are just as stupid as they are.

Ward 8 elected Barry as their councilman to give a big middle finger to the rest of a city that is growing and prospering while they are not. While I can respect their sense of anger and disenfranchisement, I can’t respect their judgment. The single finger salute is not the way to tell the rest of the city that you would like a piece of the prosperity pie. Going out and getting some slick, calculating representative like Adrian Fenty would go a lot further towards that end.

Labels: My 'The City', politics

Monday, January 09, 2006

Older. Wiser? Drunker!

What would you have if you held a dance party and nobody could dance? You’d have DC9 on a Friday night, the final destination of my birthday fiesta this weekend.

I’m a big fan of the Liberation Dance Party they throw on Fridays. It’s energetic without being packed, the drinks aren’t totally overpriced, and the DJ spins a great mix of music that you wouldn’t normally hear in a place that is expecting people to dance. I never knew that you could shake it to The Arcade Fire. Apparently it’s not only possible, but extremely entertaining; both for myself and for the young women sitting in the booth by the dance floor. Not for the same reasons though.

That’s OK though, because here’s the thing, somebody forgot to invite the cool kids. Other than one or two members of the fairer sex that were moving just well enough to avoid embarrassment, I didn’t see one person that I would describe as a good dancer. Because nobody can dance, everyone does. This is good for me. Actually getting me on the dance floor requires an amount of liquor that precludes being able to dance for shite.

This goes without saying on U Street, but there was nary a popped collar in the joint. (Do people still do that? I haven’t been to Georgetown in a while so I may be a little out of the loop.) There doesn’t seem to be a bar ‘uniform’, either. I saw the requisite T-shirt, jeans, and Chucks. I saw someone that looked like they came straight from their office X-mas party. It says something about the atmosphere of the bar that I didn’t think either was dressed improperly.

Maybe I have a skewed perspective because it was my birthday and I had a few too many two buck Schlitz’s at The Velvet Lounge before we made it to DC9, but I dig the vibe of on a Friday. Everyone seemed to understand rule number one of the drinking code, you go to the bar to have fun.

In contrast, I was at the 18th Street Lounge last weekend. Physically, it’s a great space. Early in the evening it’s a great place to chill, but by the end of the night I found myself wanting to throttle someone. Call me misanthropic, but the place was packed with wall-to-wall assholes. The bar was four deep, and everyone was boxing out and throwing elbows like it was the Final Four. Relax a bit people. There is plenty of booze for everyone. Wait patiently, know what you are going to drink when you get to the bartender, and be polite. It will make your drink ordering experience much more pleasant. It also helps if you don’t pay for your apple-tinis with a card and ask the bartender to close your tab right away.

There wasn’t much standing room to be had anywhere, so you had to do the ‘moving-sideways-through-the-crowd’ dance all night, which happens. If you go to a bar, occasionally it’s going to be a little over crowded. I understand that nobody likes to be jostled, but if you’re standing in the middle of the doorway some people are going to need to get past you. Tossing a hip at every person that needs to move past you to use the bathroom does not mean you are the alpha in the bar. It means you have a small penis.

Right. So a good time was had by all at DC9. The hangover didn’t rise above a low throb, and I didn’t do too much damage to the bank account. I did gain a painful reminder of a universal truth that should be ignored only at great peril. When your evening beverage census consists of Schlitz, Jaegermeister, and bourbon, you should not make a 3AM run to rotten Ronald’s for a quarter-pounder and chicken McNuggets.

Labels: I'm a drunkard, My 'The City'

Friday, November 18, 2005

40 points for Grandma

I don't drive in the city very often. It's usually unnecessary for me. Why would I go through the hassle of hopping in my car, fighting traffic, and then circling for 20 minutes trying to find a parking spot when I can just take the metro? I'm still new enough to the city that semi-reliable public transportation that does not have to involve a rickety city bus is still a happy novelty to me, and I’m lucky enough to work and live near a metro stop.

When I do drive, I'm sometimes mystified by the lack of regard the drivers in my neighborhood seem to have for the pedestrians that are about. Maybe it's because I live in DC Lite, and so many of the drivers are coming in from Maryland for a quick errand? Maybe trying to run over pedestrians is normal for DC drivers? Is there some competeition I'm not aware of that awards points based on number of pedestrians pegged, double for little kids and the elderly? I'm as swift a driver as the next guy that isn't Dale Earnhardt Jr., but I'm not going to mow down little Tommy on his was to private school either.

I only mention this phenomenon because today a very impatient man in a very large SUV was intent on testing the impact resistance of his grill, using pedestrian commuters as his test subjects. This morning I drove to work, and being the good hearted and magnanimous person that I am, agreed to drop my roommate at the metro on my way. After letting him off, I was making a left hand turn onto Wisconsin Ave. I had the green arrow, but the crosswalk was occupied by pedestrians. The SUV immediately to my rear showed his impatience by giving a little tap of the horn. I myself will use this tactic if someone has spaced out and isn't going through a light. Since I was well aware of the status of the turn signal, I pointed out my window to the pedestrians in the crosswalk, thinking this would explain the predicament we both faced. It did not. He gave me a good 2 second blast of his horn to which responded with the universal symbol of grace and composure, an extended middle finger.

Not smart, I know. Miss Viking has already lectured me on this. "Don't flip people off in traffic. Didn't you hear about the guy whose dog was pulled from his car when he did that?!?" I hadn’t, I have no idea what that means, but rest assured I have already had my senselessness pointed out to me.

The walkway clears. I pull through the intersection and stop at the next red light. The man in the SUV is so incensed that he barely misses rear-ending me as he barrels up to the light. At this point I consider that the single finger salute may not have been the brightest idea. So I attempt to explain myself further, to make clear to my new friend that I didn't stop at the red light in an attempt to cause an accident and also that I am apologetic for our recent misunderstanding. I point out my window towards the red light. This does not clarify the situation. He backs his car off my tailpipe, and pulls into the lane next to me, hurling epithets at me through two layers of glass. In an attempt to make myself look like a childish idiot in addition to a sarcastic bastard, I mimic pedestrians walking with one hand while pointing to the crosswalk behind me with the other.

At this point his window goes down. Obligingly, I roll mine down. From his point of view I am apparently a, "Bitch-Motherfucker" and, "I had the turn arrow". When I explain that there were people in the crosswalk he informs me that, "They had a Don't Walk sign!" After enlightening me on the finer points of the rules of the road, he pulls away leaving me to ponder how many points I missed out on by not smashing headlong into the crosswalk.

It had to be at least 250. I’m pretty sure I saw a guy with a seeing-eye dog.

Labels: Exhibit A in the case for my damnation, My 'The City'

Friday, October 28, 2005

Drunk Mustache Guy Doesn't Live Here Anymore

The bar stools are empty. Final, sad drops of beer fall from disconnected taps. Bathroom floors go unsoiled by urine. The Malt Shop has closed its doors.

If you have never had the pleasure of patronizing the fine establishment on the corner of Wisconsin and Brandywine, you have missed out on one of life's rare and smelly experiences. For years it has existed in a section of northwest DC that could easily pass for suburban Bethesda. Unspoiled by the entrenched gentrification of the surrounding neighborhood, but spoiled in so many good ways, this bar was an outpost of cheap, drunken debauchery in an area that sorely needed it.

My roommates and I tried to drop by last week for a few beers and a game of darts, only to find that the Malt Shop had moved next door. In the process they've merged with the seafood restaurant that used to be located downstairs, and apparently gone respectable. They've cleaned up their act. There are no shabby dartboards to be seen. The bar is well lighted and odor free. Men in suits walk about the smoke free room without fear of being accosted or of getting vomit on their Brooks Brother's tie.

It is a sad day for beer soaked idiots everywhere.