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.
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.
posted by t-o-n at 7:21 PM
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