Homeboy, you never shut up!

I talk too much. I'm aware of this.....It's been a problem for years. It got me in trouble last week at work. It got me in trouble with the lovely girlfriend last weekend. And I guess that now I have to eat some crow here on my rarely-visited blog.

It looks like Cleveland Park's "other" Irish bar bar, Nanny O'Brien's, is not actually closing...despite my requiem a few weeks ago.

You can't really blame me. Ask yourself, faithful reader, have YOU been in Nanny's in the past year? How about the past two or three years?

Oh, sure, you had some good times there at some point, probably before you discovered Adams Morgan and the Dinseyfied wonderfullness that is now Logan Circle. But, lately, come on....you know and I know that there were few reasons to visit Nanny's. The Guinness was overpriced, the barbacks weren't all that friendly if you weren't FOB, and the clientèle could be rowdy in a not-very-charming kind of way.

And the place smelled like piss and vomit...even more so since the smoking ban ceased to mask the odor of humanjuice (and this, in fact, might make it the very most authentic Irish bar in D.C., but that's besides the point....of course, the Irish Times completely reeks of all manner of ungodly odors, but that sure don't make it an authentic anything but an authentic shithole).

Still, everyone has a good memory or two of Nanny's. Like when my buddy John passed out there wearing this god damned tight-ass Star Wars tee shirt he was a little too proud of...only to regurgitate all that Guinness in a cab on 16th Street an hour later.

(Did I write about that before???? Sorry....)

So, with wonderful memories like that tattooed on my soul, you can understand why I wanted to be the first to celebrate the place when I saw the writing on the wall. Shit, I walk past Nanny's twice a day, and the message couldn't have been clearer if there was a container of oxygen and a dialysis machine out front: This bar was on the way out....

The happy hour crowd is rarely more than six people. The plumbing system is hopelessly fucked up, and has been since I was about 26. The kitchen hasn't been operational for months. Over the Fall, the hours changed, closing down on Sundays, then opening back up only for NFL games (WTF?!?!?!). Sometimes the damned place just inexplicably went lights out in the middle of the week.

Sounds like a dying bar to me.

Anyway, last week with it being Fat Tuesday and all, I decided to stop in for a Black and Tan on the way home from work. Thought it would be an honorable and noble gesture, since I couldn't honestly see the place surviving past the 40 days leading up to Easter.

I found, behind the bar, a fresh-faced early-30-something, good looking hipster dude. Now Nanny's has a reputation for keeping their bar staffs for a long time -- sometimes a bit after their expiration dates. So immediately my radar was up.

I settle in, order my beer, and start flipping through a copy of blender that was stuffed into the bottom of my man-purse. (Blender....Man purse.....I'm such a fucking poseur).

About half way through my beer, two suit-jacket-and-open-collar Republican-type boys walk through the door. They strike up a conversation with the bartender, talking business, and I hear the words "Bedrock Management."

Immediately, its very clear that Nanny's has a future. A different one, but a new future indeed.

Here's the deal....as much as I understand it, Bedrock started a bunch of pretty darned good bars back in the late 90's.....Now, I could be a little off here -- maybe they bought out some of these bars and maybe they set them all up from scratch -- but I know that six or seven years ago, Bedrock Billiards, Buffalo Billiards, the Continental and Arlington's Carpool were all under their umbrella. Looking over their Web site, I now see that Atomic Billiards and Aroma are also part of the family.

Now, don't get me wrong....I've had good times in each of these bars (except Carpool, where I got into a pretty serious fight with my future sister in law back around 2002).

Still, it's a little odd to me to find out they're all under the same ownership....it seems on some level that independent businesses aren't quite as independent as I'd thought. Nanny's always struck me at the epitome of independent.....(but I suppose I could just be mistaking Brian Gaffney's alcoholic lust for life as independence, when in actuality, may have been a little closer to inept management over the past year or two...or three).

(Sorry, Brian. I love ya, and truth be told, listening to you and random waitresses of your choosing sing "Fairy Tale of New York" on a Saturday night in December will always be a favorite Christmas time memory. I'm sorry to know that you don't have the keys to Nanny's anymore; I really am. But those days are over, I guess).

Anyway, I mulled over the thought of Nanny's going corporate as I signaled the good looking bartender boy that I's take another black and tan.

"Benrock Management, huh?" I offered.

"Yep," he answered. "I guess I came as part of the deal."

"Interesting," I said. "I know they had a really successful string of bars back around 2000/ 2001, right?"

The rudeness of this statement didn't really occur to me until it came out of my mouth. By that time, though, it was too late.

"We've never lost one," the bartender shot back, turning back to other customers.

Well, then, I guess I'll be looking forward to those new urinals.

Cheers.

Ooh that dress so scandalous

Ok, I've got half a dozen blog entries just lined up and ready to go....er, I mean, half done and totally incomplete.

And they were going to be good - film and record and restaurant reviews, this whole series about how tough it was to date in D.C. back when I was single, and just a great chronicle of all the things I've fucked up lately. I really did have some plans for this blog at one time.....but I got kinda distracted.

Anyway, thought I'd dash one off before my next business trip....Getting back to the whole "life in D.C. isn't really all that bad" theme that was originally going to guide this old online diary thing.

So, on Saturday, the lady and I were planning on hitting M'Dawg, the new hot dog joint on 18th Street, which it appears will never actually open. And, no, you won't lure me into some Ben's vs. M'Dawg debate (though I know that's a lie, and that I, like several other losers online in D.C. won't miss the opportunity to do so at some point, and that at that time, I won't fail to remind everyone I can that I was going to Ben's long before white people knew it was an acceptable thing to do....or, at least a few years before white sorority girls from Massachusetts named Lindsey knew it was viable late-night dining option....

Oh, shit, FINE, I first went to Ben's ten or twelve years ago, ok? Lots of people were there before me, but I still like to think that I'm superior to most of the cracker-ass white kids on U Street, these days, ok? Yes, I am just that insecure).

Where the fuck was I?

Oh, yes, we were going to check out M'Dawg, but it wasn't open yet. We ended up back at Amsterdam Falafel for the ten millionth time, knowing full well that whatever the secret ingredient it is that makes the falafels better than just about anywhere else I've been, also gives me the wind something fierce. (And by fierce, I mean "more horrifying that staying up late to watch "The Fog" on channel five when you were eight years old, then being so scared that you woke your parents up, knowing full well that they'd punish you for staying up past bedtime and watching films you weren't supposed to watch, but it was too damn scary to be alone in the dark after watching that shit. I mean, we're talking about some nasty, driving-with-the-windows-down-in-the-middle-of-February farts).

So, while my girlfriend and I were standing on 18th Street, debating what we were going to do for lunch, I glanced inside the Spy Lounge for no good reason.....I really don't know why. I've only been in the Spy Lounge once, and it was a very short stay that ended with a lot of vomit and my carrying My Pal Pete
into a cab and back to my old beloved Newark Street apartment, where, upon waking early the following morning, very disoriented and confused (as he had never been to my apartment and didn't remember being transported there the evening before), Pete decided that the best course of action would be to grab my copy of Angela Bowie's "Backstage Passes", strip naked, and take a nice hot bath in my filthy tub.

All of that would have been fine if I'd thought to look for him when I first roused the next morning. Of course, I'd forgotten all about the evening before, forgotten that I had failed to meet any young ladies that night because Pete had gotten wasted and gotten himself 86'd from the Spy Lounge for throwing up on three separate levels of the club.

So, instead of looking for Pete and making sure he hadn't pulled a John Bonham in the middle of the night, I instead did my usual Saturday morning routine, which involved heading to the bathroom for a pee.

You can imagine the rest...weenie out, hungover and unshaven, there I stood in front of a naked and very wet Pete, who had been reading all about David Bowie's beautiful gay 1970's pre-Iman sex for god knows how long. All that erotica and both of our penises exposed, I'm sure you know what happened next.

We kind of screamed a little.

So, that's my spy lounge story....Wait what was I getting at?

Oh, yeah, I peeked in the Spy Lounge, and some photographer had rented it out for the day for a totally killer King Magazine style photo shoot. Leggy black women in thongs, posing in front of 18th Street.

And, so here we are again, proving who D.C. still rules. Sexy black girls, vomit, homoerotic experiences with former bandmates, good falafels and bad farts.

Goddamn it, this town rules.