My favorite places in DC that are no more

First off, a proud admission.  I was BORN in Washington DC.  I have lived half my life in DC, though that includes all of the last 17 years.  It has of course changed a lot since a) I was born and b) since I moved back in 1996.  There are many places that, as I look back, made my life in DC.  Some are still around.  Many are no more.  After reviewing the places below, I realized most are bookstores, movie theaters, and pizza places, plus some other bars and restaurants.  If those ain't your thing, perhaps find some other idle reading.  Here I will give homage to places that were precious to me that are no more.  Those that died recently include pictures I found on the web.

My biggies - Some places when they disappeared left big holes in my life, only to be filled with liquor and second rate pizza.

Childe Harold  

My first legal drink in DC was at Childe Harold.  I spent evenings after working at Olsson's sitting at the bar with a burger and some beer.  I saw World Cup games, George Mason Final 4 games, St. Patrick's Day drunks, enjoyed evenings with friends, conversations with strangers, a long evening with the woman I would marry, all in the homey basement of Childe Harold.  I had one date with someone in the restaurant upstairs--when she ordered pate I should have realized I needed to run away.  So forget about upstairs.  The real place for me was the basement.

I am not of the generation that saw Bruce Springsteen or Emmy Lou Harris there (though when I saw her play at the Warner Theater in 2000, she mentioned her start at the Childe Harold and the sandwich that bore her name there (I think it had sprouts on it)).  So I don't remember the music at the bar.  The last couple years they had some music sometimes in the basement, but it wasn't very good.  It was everything else that made the place sing to me.  The bartender that bought us free drinks because we played The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" on the juke box.  The guys sitting at the bar some nights.  Talking for hours on my first date with Robin.  Running into a student I taught in Tennessee 13 years before.  The tables spread behind brick walls with windows had such a cozy private warmth that no place could match.  It is now an upscale restaurant that, being fair, we tried once.  It was nowhere near the same and haven't been back since.

Olsson's Books and Records in Dupont Circle

I had been going to Olsson's either in Georgetown or Dupont for years and years.  In 1999, I was trying to decide on a new career.  I had always enjoyed going to bookstores, so I decided I'd try working in one.  I applied and met with a couple managers, John, Muriel, and Werner.  They said that everyone there was a slacker to some degree, but tended to be somewhat smart too.  They needed someone who knew about classical music for customers looking for that genre.

They hired me as a part-time clerk.  For a couple years, I didn't even have to be a cashier, just an information and stocking clerk, answering questions, trying to find books or CD's they were looking for--"I think the book cover was blue" or "They played it on a commercial" or "I heard it on NPR once" were sometimes my only clues.  From that we had to guess the rest.  I even helped a former student get a job there.

I worked part-time there for 1999 to 2006, while I either lived or worked in NW DC.  In 2006 I took a new job in NE DC and was living in SE DC, so getting to Dupont was tricky, so I dropped off the list of regular staff. Most of my Christmas shopping for years was done there.  My bookshelves are full of Publisher's Drafts of books, my CD drawers full of listening station copy CDs.  I kept semi-current on recent rock music by working there.   I planned on working there part time when I retired.  When they closed in 2008, on my birthday, it was like someone took away Christmas. 

Key Theater
The Key Theater was my favorite place to see movies for decades.  I chose housing in DC based on proximity to the bus line to access the theater.  I saw countless movies over decades there.  A Woody Allen Festival (when he was still funny).  Marathon showings of Shoah (I saw both parts in one day (8-9 hours), an experience I still remember).  Jean de Flourette and Manon of the Spring double feature.  Now that I think about it, a whole lot of Gerald Depardieu movies there, before he got fat.  Many movies with friends, but mostly by myself, as it was hard to lure folk to some of the more obscure movies it featured.

The last week it was open, it screened some of the most popular movies it had shown over the years.  I went the night it showed Tampopo.  Somehow it seemed appropriate, as the driver drove his rig off into the sunset, with a soundtrack of elegiac Mahler.  For a while, DC had nothing to replace it.  The E Street Theater has done a good job providing eclectic movies, it does have good popcorn, and it is a lot more convenient because of its proximity to Metro Center.   But it does not have the quirky guy taking tickets at the door for years, the movie memorabilia store next door, Olsson's Books and Records across the street selling the soundtrack you HAVE to buy after seeing the movie.

Those are the biggies.  There are other places, once sacred to me, that are no longer.  I'm listing them by general location: Downtown, Georgetown, Upper Northwest, and my current haunt, Capitol Hill.  Downtown first.

Circle Theater

This requires some history.  Decades ago, there were a few local movie theater chains in DC area.  Roth was common in Maryland while KB and Circle were the common ones in DC (I don't care about what was common in Virginia).  The Circle chain eventually bought out the KB chain and even tried producing movies, though Raising Arizona was the only one worth seeing.  Anyway, their major theater was on Pennsylvania Avenue, just east of Washington Circle.  It was a repertory house, each movie playing a couple days.  By the early 80s, it was falling apart a little inside, paint chipping, carpet tearing, seats a little rickety.

But it didn't matter, because you would want to watch every movie that played there.  They were in that range between arty and blockbuster.  The schedule would come out every couple of months, and you would schedule your movies with friends.  Let's see Apocalypse Now on the 13th, Return of Martin Guerre on the 18th, Casablanca on the 23rd, etc.  You could buy ticket books and bring them to the theater for discounted tickets.  I still remember driving down one day in the mid 80s, parking a couple blocks away, walking up to the theater, and seeing the closed sign.  It closed down all of a sudden.  I felt like the little kid that came up to Shoeless Joe Jackson, "Say it isn't so.  Say it isn't so."  They said you could use the unused ticket books at the other theaters.  One of the buildings of the World Bank Empire is in its place today.

I still have a few tickets in a ticket book.

Stoneys on L Street

I didn't go there a lot.  Only a year or two.  But I knew it was home the night the staff took down the liquor license because they didn't like some of the people there one night and wanted them to leave.  It had been a watering hole for Washington Post pressmen in the days the Post was still printed in town.  It was a relic of old Washington.  It was cash only, and the nearest ATM was blocks away at the time.  The staff were some older guys, black and white, taking your order on one of those pads with lines that say CHECK on top.  It had a lethal grilled cheese, which other restaurants have sought to replicate, but you need a decades old grill to make that taste.

I was sad it closed but was elated when it reopened on P Street.  We went and tried it.  A cute young girl came up and took our order on a wireless device.  The food came.  We ate.  We had a drink.  Robin said "This isn't your parent's Stoney's" and we left and never came back.

Hannibal's Cafe
A short-lived coffee chain in DC, with locations sprinkled around town. My spot was a location in Connecticut Ave, south of Dupont Circle.  The space was funky, a few tables, some chairs, some stools by the counter that ran along the window.  The ceilings were bare (now all the rage), and the coffee was served in veritable life rafts full of tasty brew.  Whenever I had a day off from teaching, whether a weekday or a weekend, I hopped on a bus with book and journal and sat there for hours, reading, writing, watching the girls go by.  The chain went out of business before 2000.

Giorgio's
Old fashioned Gyro and Pizza place on 20th Street, south of Dupont Circle.  DC has gone foodie--small portions of overpriced food in bland blocky restaurants cooked by chefs looking for a TV contract served by hot servers.  This was the antithesis of that.  A couple of rather unattractive unshaven guys in aprons making mounds of delicious gyros, pizzas, and the like.  I would buy lunch there while on a weekend shift at Olssons, bring back the leftovers, and have food for the rest of the weekend.  Nice healthy places sprouted up nearby in the last years of the store, but I alway sought out Giogios.

1800 Cafe

 A little breakfast lunch spot just off Connecticut Ave on N Sstreet.  I did a lot of business in banks in the Farragut area for schools I worked for and sing for services at St. Matthew's Cathedral, and I would go there to have breakfast beforehand sometimes.  It had a rarity, a little round counter by the grill, where the short order cook would bring you food on a plate and you could leave him a tip.  It was inexpensive but tasty.

Dupont Circle Theaters
There were a couple great movie theaters in the Dupont Area, the KB Janus  and Circle Dupont.  Ok, sometimes one of the Janus theaters smelled like clorox, and there was that column in the middle of the theater, and the rooms screening the movies were not very big, but both places showed great movies.  People would come into Olsson's after seeing a movie at one of them looking for the book or soundtrack of the movies showing.  Yes, yes, the E Street theater shows the same kinds of movies, with better popcorn, big screens, and even alcoholic drinks.  But I liked the old places, as I saw lots of wonderful movies there. 

The Old Air and Space Museum
Long ago, the most popular attraction in DC was housed in an old Quonset hut.  I will not describe it, as a guy has a great description of it on his website.  Some of its exhibits live on in the new museum, but you didn't feel overwhelmed by the space or the mobs of people.  But we had to showcase our might in warplanes and space, so the new monument to the military industrial complex had to be built.

Georgetown is next.

Olsson's Books and Records in Georgetown

Like no doubt thousands of others, this was my respite from the maddening crowd.  Whether before or after a movie at the Key Theater across the street, or on a long evening ramble or day wandering the streets, the book shelves brought promise of transport to the world of imagination and the music playing a reminder of a less cacophonous world.  I was working at another Olsson's when it closed and we were all assured that the other stores would be ok.  Within 6 years, they all closed.

Biograph Theater 

Like the Key Theater and the Circle Theater, the Biograph catered to tastes eclectic in DC.  Buying the token that you placed in the turnstyle to enter was part of the quirky ritual there.  It played a broader variety than the Key, which usually played first-run movies.  This was where you could see the peculiar and the classic.  I moved back to DC in 1996, and was looking for a place to stay when I saw it was closing.   I came for one of the last showings, a retrospective on the Langley Punks, a beer-drinking group of film makers with titles like "It Came From Marlow Heights" and such, with scenes of a guy eating a bag of Little Tavern Hamburgers and turning into a monster in the parking lot.

Second Story Books in Georgetown
I love all books, but I love cheap books even more.  Olsson's locations provided my new books, but for decades, Second Story Books has been one of my favorite places in DC for used books. They still have two locations, one off Dupont Circle and the other in a warehouse on Parklawn Road in Rockville (you have to experience it, trust me), but they used to have one off Wisconsin Avenue, with a big maroon banner guiding the way.  Once inside, it's a dream house, like your whole house consisted of rooms filled with bookshelves full of good books.  You can still trade in books at the remaining locations, where they have your name on a high tech index card in a shoe box, with scrawls of credits and debits to your balance.

Cappuccino Pizza
Bizarre little place, used to grab a slice before rehearsals and performances in Georgetown.  Okay it wasn't superb, but with some oregano, parmesan, and hot peppers, it wasn't bad, plus it was, for Georgetown, affordable.  Lots of interesting folk worked there.  Usually Russians, but one night I was in there wearing a jacket I bought in Katmandu and the woman behind the counter asked where I got the coat, as it looked like clothes from her country.  I asked where that was and she replied "Mongolia."

Georgetown was a place I dashed down to for a movie, book, or rehearsal or performance at one of the extremely WASPY churches that abound there (I even sang for George W. Bush's assistant's wedding down there and, horror, had to shake W's hand and pose for a photo with him afterwards.  Don Rumsfeld was a parishioner).  I lived much of my time in DC in Upper NW, between Wisconsin and Connecticut Avenues.  My favorite places there were much like elsewhere, books, movies, and pizza places, with a couple exceptions.

Armand's Wisconsin Avenue

Armand's was an institution in NW DC.  People sat on its porch on spring and summer evenings for decades before the sidewalk dining experience became the rage.  A lunch buffet of pizza and salad if well-executed could eliminate the need to eat any other food for at least a day or two (the trick was not to eat the edge of the crust or the salad until you were nearly full, also don't drink a lot).  Yes, there are other locations still around town, but this was the place that created the Armand's feeling: you're outside, sitting with friends, full of pizza and beer on warm summer evening, and all feels right in the world.

Used Bookstore by the Avalon Theater
Don't remember the name of it.  It was run by a friend of my friend Florence's husband, Rick.  I think his name was Carlos.  Wire rimmed glasses, long full pony-tail, salt and pepper hair, very abusive about bad books.  The quintessential used book store proprietor.  What was singular about the place was the collection of music books.  Real books about music, not just biographies of bands or brand name composers, but books about conducting, music theory, musical periods.  There was of course, lots of other great stuff.  He eventually stopped the street retail trade and started selling online.

Outer Circle Theater

Walking distance from group houses I lived in, I saw lots of movies here.  Movies featuring Emma Thompson were so common here I called it the Emma Thomson Theater.  I remember when a Chinese movie, To Live, was shown, the South Asian staff would announce "Tickets To Live" form here and I found myself giggling at the thought for weeks.  They would play the soundtrack to Cinema Paradiso inside the theaters between films.  A great theater.


Calliope Books
Cleveland Park still has two things I love, the Uptown and Nanny O'Brians, but it also had a splendid bookstore next door to the Uptown for decades.  There were always many good bookstores in Dupont and Georgetown, but it was the only real bookstore north of the Taft Bridge for a long time.  It probably made most of its business from folk browsing while killing time before seeing a movie at the Uptown.  But the selection on the tables was always fine.  It died when a couple years after Borders opened up in Maryland, luring folk from Chevy Chase away from the local bookstore.

Maggie's Pizza
Few will remember this pizza place.  It was next door to Armand's on Wisconsin Ave in 70s and 80s.  It had a happy hour with 99 cent martinis and occasional slices of pizza.  Chatted with a guy there who was a bartender at Au Pied du Cuchon in Georgetown the week after the Russian spy escaped from there.  The restaurant had a Taco Pizza, taco meat, cheese with tomato and lettuce sprinkled on top after came out of the oven.  Divine.  I had a small world experience involving Maggie's when I lived in Ohio.  I shared a cool gallery apartment in Coventry, a neighborhood in Cleveland Heights, with a law school student who, while in DC for a semester while an undergrad, had been a waitress at Maggie's.

Armands Walk up Window on Wisconsin Avenue

From 1984 to sometime in the 2000's I had hundreds of slices there.  Whether a slice before seeing a movie at the KB Cinema up the street, after grocery shopping at Rodman's, or on long rambling Friday or Saturday night walks from my group house on Windom Place in the 80s or Morrison Street in the 90s, this was my favorite snack.  Invariably a slice of pepperoni and a slice of sausage, and, yes, I could wait if one was still in the oven.  The photo to the left is what replaced it.

Rex's Liquor
Ok, almost everything I've listed has been a bookstore or movie theater, plus a few bars.  A liquor store?  Well this place just south of the district line on Wisconsin Avenue was special, because guys would come up to you in Red cotton suit jackets and ask what you needed.  They had all sorts of stuff, expensive as well as cheap.  They even had their own house brand of the principal liquors (I can vouch for a couple of them).  Young punks would come in (the drinking age was still under 21 in those days) as well as little old ladies who carried themselves as deposed Russian nobility.  The staff treated everyone the same.

G.C. Murphy on Wisconsin Ave

Ok, I do patronize retail other than bookstores and liquor stores.  This vestige of the past was across the street from my apartment for several years.  As rents went up in DC, it became to buy anything in DC that was simple and not a designer creation.  G.C. Murphy was the exception.  You could buy any basic need there.  Plus there was a bonus in the basement.  The owners had extra space so the rented out parts of the basement to assorted businesses.  A key shop.  A shoe repair place.  A Persian Carpet shop.  A little office/fax/mail store.  After wandering India and Israel, it felt like I had my own little souk across the street.  It was a casualty almost ten years ago in the drive to make a world class grocery store out of the Giant Food next door.  To date, construction has not begun because the neighbors keep complaining about the building plans, one of the few neighborhoods where the neighbors can defeat the developers.

We live on Capitol Hill.  In the past 8 years, the neighborhood has been changing, losing the arty flavor and developing into, as one of the guys at the Duron paint store said, with disgust, "another Georgetown."  Some of the casualties in the battle of the high rent establishments include the following:

Marty's
If anyplace other than Mr Henry's (it had better not close) could be called a neighborhood place, this was it.  Black, white, young, old, marine, cop, crazy local sports fan, family having a bite, they were all here.  The food was tasty--my favorite was a bar-b-que beef sandwich served on a bed of potato chips.  We became aware of its impending doom while talking one night to a sleazy developer at a Vietnamese place that also closed.
  

Starfish Cafe
New Orleans cuisine is not upscale enough for the neighborhood, alas, but when it was ok, this was the place.  Yummy po'boys, an amazing blackened salmon and shrimp salad, and Trappy's hot sauce (when they stopped using it, I had to order a case of it online.  Do you know how long it takes to use up a case of hot sauce?).  Cool paintings on the brick wall, a crew of super wait staff and bartenders.


Old Hawk n Dove

Much ink has been spilled (probably should be "Many electrons have been formatted," as who the hell reads stuff on paper anymore, including this?) over the changing restaurant and bar culture of DC, particularly in Capitol Hill area.  The case of the Hawk n Dove is a poignant one, as it is the rare case where the name of the old institution was taken up by the usurper (I may be revealing my opinion on the change).

Anyway, the old one was a cozy place with lots of rooms and alcoves, one with a fireplace, a couple old bars of various sizes.  The food varied in quality, but, IT WAS A BAR.  I first started going there 17 years ago, when I was singing at St. Peter's Church.  I'd go there before singing Christmas Eve services and have an Irish Coffee or two.  Christmas Eves were strange for me for a while and this was the perfect place to go.  For a while I sang at another church across town (it's called the Washington National Cathedral, perhaps you've heard of it?) but after I left I sang at St. Pete's for a few years for the major feasts.  My wife Robin and I would go there those evenings and hang out with people.  After singing or going performances on the Hill, I liked to go there afterwards.

It was our Irish Coffee place.  First, it was a good spot to stop on the way home after walking up Hill of Capitol Hill and rest with a beverage.  It also had served the green stuff on top of the whipped cream (a little thing, but nevertheless essential).

Anyway the picture above is what it looked like before the takeover and makeover.   The picture at right is the place today.  Which place do you want to go?  There is only one good answer.

Market Inn

This was an amazing place.  Sorta dark, with round red-leather booths that you expect to see the Rat Pack hanging out in, hitting on broads.  Bar area covered with paintings of nudes, where for Sunday brunch a couple guys would play jazz on piano and bass, with a regular cheering them on who had been Miss New Jersey in 1961.  Staff had been there decades, hired by the current owner's father or grandfather.  Photos signed by long gone sports stars of DC.  We went there only a few years before it closed on Dec 31, 2008, fifty years after it opened.  Oh, yes, the food was great, super crab cakes, salmon, desserts, martinis (are martinis food?), cole slaw (the sign of a great place).  I bid on a some photos that were on their walls and have them on the walls at home.  One person bid on a booth, plates, lamps, everything to build their shrine to the Market Inn in their basement.

Station Bar at Union Station
Little place to have a drink before hopping on the train, seeing a movie in the movie theaters downstairs, or getting married the next day.  Yes, I had my bachelor party there (with a couple female friends) the night before I went to the courthouse in Rockville, MD to get married (didn't want to bother with syphilis test required in DC.  Was afraid to find out, and if I had it, it would be too late for Robin to bail out.).  Went over to the flower shop to get her a bouquet for the next day.  It was a basic little bar for a few or a lot of drinks, reasonable, booths.  It was replaced by a Chipotle.

Thai Roma

An Italian and Thai restaurant on Capitol Hill.  I remember the spot when it was an Italian restaurant named Toscaninni's (just liked the name because it shared the conductor's name).  Lots of small rooms, which was common in Capitol Hill establishments until the rage for vast spaces with semi-open kitchens.  The only food I like watching being made is pizza.  As a vegetarian now, I have no interest in watching meat being cooked, though the smell is still nice.  Anyway, for a long time I think Thai Roma was the only Thai food on the Hill.  They would serve very spicy food if you wanted it (it was my way of not sharing my dinner with others by making mine extra spicy).  Plus it had a small bar to the side with quirky old alcoholics.  It has been replaced by an open spacious French place.

Every place I've listed so far has been in DC proper.  But some great things have evaporated from Maryland as well.  As I've lived most of my adult life in other states or DC itself, I don't have much of a history with Maryland businesses, but a couple stand out.

Hobby and Arts in Wheaton Plaza
This goes back in time to the 60s and 70s.  Before video games, geeky boys who could not play sports worth a damn had to have something to do before they discovered masturbation.  Building models was it.  Model building was very widespread, mainstream.  There were hobby stores everywhere.  During those days, if you walked into a People's or Dart Drug or Drug Fair (the local chains before CVS, Rite Aid, etc.), there would be, along with other toys, models of cars, planes, ships, along with some paint and glue.  My family tended to go to Wheaton Plaza for most shopping trips (it had Montgomery Ward and Woodies).  And Hobby and Arts was where I bought my models, my toy soldiers, my paints, all that stuff.  The places were full of kids then.  When you walk into a hobby store now, the customers are usually older guys who gave up ever having sex when they were 17.

Tick Tock Liquors
Another liquor store?  Wait, it still exists?  What's going on?  Now it still exists in a renovated new space, but I speak of the old Tick Tock.  It was in a building, well, more like a house with some haphazard additions, uneven floor, a pickle barrel with suggestive photo of a woman beckoning you to have a pickle.  Hand-written prices which tended to be low as a there was a steady stream of customers (it was at the intersection of Riggs Road and University Boulevard, not too far from the University of Maryland campus--perhaps that had something to do with it?). 

Pizza Oven
There are a lot of pizza places above, so I should list the place that started the love affair with the perfect food.  It was in Silver Spring, Maryland, and my dad would occasionally pick up a pizza.  It was sorta similar to Ledo's pizza, baked in a rectangle (it was years before I had a round pizza).  I still remember the box had a picture of a man made of pizzas, round pizza head and rectangular pizza body with a pizza spatula in his hands.

Ok, I need to publish this before another favorite place goes by the wayside.