Has any other lousy restaurant generated as much print for closing, both through blogs and through dead trees, as The Brickskeller? With all the words, you’d have though Michel Richard was retiring and taking Carole Greenwood, Ris Lacoste, Will Artley and three overpriced cupcake shops out with him. I suppose it’s a natural response. The food scene in D.C. is full of people who like to eat and feel compelled to write about it as though we all give a crap. But the large amount of tribute pieces and resulting comments demonstrate a certain grudging love and palpable vitriol towards the place that belied its lousy chow. “It’s a legendary bar!” was counterpointed with “they were always out of the beer you wanted!” has become the modern DC beer wonk’s “tastes great, less filling!” of a previous generation. Resulting cheers of “It showed Americans real beer!” and “Where else could you get beer from Angola?” were equally jeered with “the place has been outclassed by newer places like Rustico and Churchkey” and “they had the surliest waitstaff on the planet.”
Of course, like so many other things in DC, both sides are ultimately right. Certainly The Brickskeller was not as clean or as professional as the newer beer-centric places in the region. And it was amazing that in an era in which a humble blogger can sit at his desk and and query what’s the current number one single in Romania – Americandrim by Puya featuring Connect-R at the moment – that the Brickskeller’s staff never had a clue as to what beers were in stock at any given time. But the joint really was a hell of a beer bar – as recently as 15 years ago, many other bars in the area considered Killian’s Irish Red an import (from exotic, foreign Colorado?) and few places could offer an alcoholic taste of home for foreign staffers stationed at a nearby Embassy Row outpost. To be fair, The Brickskeller was not a place you went to eat with a song in your heart and a skip in your gait, but at least it was cheap crappy food.
53 years in business is not something to discount. The Brickskeller was founded in 1957 in what was truly a different city. Ike was starting his second term as President. Wham-O started making Frisbees. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik I. A young couple in Arlington named the Courics celebrated the birth of their daughter, Katie. The Beltway was still in the planning stages; the race riots that ruined neighborhoods were still a decade away. Ben’s Chili Bowl was still another year away from opening. Tyson’s Corner was basically an orchard. Ballston was better known as Parkington. My father was attending grade school in Kensington, and my mother was in elementary school in Pennsylvania, a few years before she moved with my grandmother to Arlington.
A few short years later, a young legal secretary would meet the assistant manager of the Hot Shoppes on Wisconsin Avenue, and they went to The Brickskeller. The secretary had done some promotional modeling photos for The Top of The Bricks, a club that had a run above The Brickskeller. The model/secretary wasn’t much of a drinker, but the coffee shop manager wanted to drink something that wasn’t quite as caffeinated as Hot Shoppes’ brew. 25 years later, this young couple’s offspring entered The Brickskeller for the first time while doing promotional work for Harpoon Brewery, not knowing that his parents had drank their fool asses silly in the same place 26 years earlier. A harmless phone call from the son to his mother a few days later revealed the potential link to drunken debauchery at The Brickskeller and the son’s very existence.
So, I want to say “thank you” to The Bricks for introducing me to Rogue’s Smoke Ale, the world of strawberry lambics, and the concept of ordering three beers at a time since the first two were probably out. Thanks for turning an ordinary happy hour with some friends in 2006 into a meeting with an Australian gent who did combat photography in Africa and made that Dos Equis’campaign about the Most Interesting Man in the World look like a Midwestern PTA club president. Thanks for the mouse who ran across a fellow patron’s foot last year, causing a world-class spit-take. And, I guess I should thank you for your possible role in my eventual conception.
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The Brickskeller got 19 of a potential 38 Whammies! Whammies! were earned for the groundbreaking concept in this `burg, the “come as you are” attitude, and for giving my mom a job back in the 1960s. Whammies! were deducted for never having an accurate beer list, mediocre food, and for making me see a picture of my mom in a mini-skirt with a then-young-and-very-eligible bachelor Maury Povich. That’s a mental image that no amount of beer can ever erase.
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WRITER’S NOTE – I originally wrote this piece a few weeks ago, but held out posting it because I was trying to find the old ad that featured my mom. My aunt used to have the old postcard, but couldn’t find it when I inquired. My mom doesn’t have a copy of it, just the memories of being young, carefree, and dancing with a guy who would curse us with years of cringe-worthy television. I did update the current #1 single in Romania, so, um, there’s that.
