Seventh Street in Shaw may not traditionally be known for a holiday air. A little help from North Pole workers (and others) has converted Derek Brown’s Mockingbird Hill into Miracle on Seventh Street, now until December 24. Brightly festooned with unique ornaments (dinosaurs!) and more tinsel than can be found at Santa’s Workshop, the slim space more or less explodes in wintertime spirit. Each evening features a different festive happy hour or theme, from Monday’s craft-making to Friday’s naughty Bad Santa photos – and even a nod to our Jewish friends on Wednesdays, when Chanukah takes over, and the party includes Manischewitz punch pong. In fact, check out the back room, where an enormous dreidel chandelier graces the ceiling. Next to an entire ham.
Owner Derek Brown borrowed the idea from a bar friend in New York, and ran with it. “The basic idea,” he told us, was that “the holidays – and holiday drinking – should be fun. This is all about making cheer for the community.”
And cheer it has. The drink menu is, logically, 12 cocktails long. And yes, number 8 is Chanukah-themed, a boozy take on a traditional egg cream. A year’s worth of thought went into the complex drink menu. “We built it off of classic Christmas spirit, full of flavors of things we love, from candy cane to eggnog. We have a Chanukah drink, of course, to be as inclusive as possible.” An exercise in alcohol-based nostalgia, now in a Santa mug.
-ESC
