High Society DC: A Night With a Fake ID

After a few days of solo 'success' with my ID at various happy hours near my job, which consisted mostly of hearing one depressing Barry Breadwinner life story after another, Friday arrived and it seemed like the right time to get out there with my contemporaries. In the summer, every Friday in DC comes with a free jazz show at the sculpture garden near Capital Hill, where a thousand or so yuppies gather to erase their memories of the week with sangria and chardonnay. I hadn't checked it out yet during my time in DC so The old, Middle Eastern liquor clerk grinned as he looked at my ID but gave it back and asked if I got carded a lot. Because I look young. "Yeah, I'm used to it." I left with a few tall-boys and a half liter of Jack and skated down past the White House to commiserate with my fellow American worker.

Sitting under a tree on my skateboard amongst the plaid blankets and my khaki brethren, reading my book in the thick sunset and letting that wonderful first buzz of the weekend wash over me, I must have looked like a loser in need of some company because the group sitting in front of me gave me the old come 'ere little fella' and welcomed me to their crew. Abbey, a chirpy Italian mid-20s paralegal, didn't spare any time to ask all about me and by the end of my Jack and their spritzers I had a few new friends. Although they blended in well with their picnic baskets and business casual uniforms, they were a pretty cool group of people who actually thought they didn't mix well with the stiff jazz show attendees and were causing a scene (see apologetic drunk). They believed this so much in fact that they thought it wise to bail out to a bar where Abbey worked in Adams Morgan, the clubbing district. I'd never ventured to Adams Morgan as it is notorious for intense ID enforcement but Abbey assured me if I knew her, I wouldn't have a problem.

So my friend Melissa and I, who had met up with us by that point, emerged from the garden, where the jazz had seemed more like an afterthought, and set out for the mecca of DC nightlife. As we walked up 18th St. into the heart of AM, that familiar grip of uncertainty took hold of me, my ID feeling more like a ski mask and crobar in my back pocket. Abbey was already inside so we were on our own. After passing endless clubs overflowing with greased-up 30somethings, when we arrived at our stop, Peyote, I was relieved to see a small underground entrance, no line and a bouncer who looked like he'd been hired for the night. I might has well have shown him my library card. He barely caught the open bottle of wine leaning out of Melissa's purse (which he saved for us). While I never would've tried to go there without a decent fake in the first place, it was somewhat frustrating to know that I could've spent a few of those lonely July nights at a karaoke dive bar in the most central part of AM without a problem.

The scene inside was awesome, a karaoke camaraderie I hadn't even seen during my glory days as a karaoke roadie. Singing a song to a crowded bar can make the foxiest of women attainable and the most haggard of men rock stars. It's a disturbing and beautiful phenomenon that was in full effect this night as the crowd, from high school hipsters to balding business men, gave their choral renditions of everything from George Michael to Sublime. Abbey hooked some free drinks and when we were over karaoke we explored the two other bars up the stairwell from Peyote where we subsequently got our dance on. It was dank.

When it seemed time to leave the bar the alcohol punched a little hole in my memory and dropped me skating to a park for blunts with my new ghetto fabulous comrade, Ebrahim Mila Ali Brown. He talked about (and skillfully acted out) his frustration with segregation in DC and the fact that there's no right way to approach a girl anymore without doing something wrong. We happened to run into some old friends from his neighborhood... the girls ranted about characters from Laguna Beach with Melissa while the guys burned and pissed on Ebrahim's red neck scarf for being red, which Ebrahim seemed to graciously understand: "If you have a thing for burning that particular color, man, shit, by all means." Finding ourselves hungry after a lengthy flat ground skate we walked back down to Jumbo Slice. You'd think people working at a pizza place would at least know the English word for 'cheese' but it took about fifteen minutes to get the three orders in front of me. I managed to get some reluctant service when a fight broke out and I was able to corner a 'cashier' before he could join everyone else in the street. Although the night ended with the worst (and largest) slice of pizza I've ever been offered, Adams Morgan delivered and I guess I have my shitty ID (and Abbey) to thank.

Unless you want to spend your night not dancing with girls or convincing a Retardlican that the crux of your argument is not that Halliburton is run by Satan and Saddam/at a Georgetown party, Adams Morgan seems to be a good option. Damn, even jazz on the mall's a good thing to do in DC. But if you want to get domed and skate with a guy like Ebrahim (you do), DC is definitely not the best place to do it.