I like to think of myself as a pretty flexible, easygoing dude. There are only a handful of bars in the D.C. area that I generally refuse to patronize, and one of them is the Raven. The last time I was there (which, granted, was at least three years ago) I had such a miserable and lame time that I decided I wouldn’t go there again. For some reason, several of my friends decided to meet up there last night. Eventually I decided to join them, but not before I’d laid out the reasons for my dislike of the joint. To wit:
1 - I don't like dives. And the Raven isn't even a dive, but a faux-dive, which is pretentious.
2 - It's cash only, which is kind of lame. (Granted, the Black Cat is cash only, but it makes up for that in many, many ways.)
3 - The crowd there is largely composed of fauxhemians. They think they are non-conformists but they’re all wearing ironic Girl Scout T-shirts, black frame glasses and straight leg jeans. That’s pretentious.
4 – It’s a terrible place to meet, let alone see women. The crowd is always at least 80% dudes, and the girls who are there are with their boyfriends, and not terribly attractive anyway.
After my experience last night, I’ve decided that some of my stated reasons were less valid than others. (Let no one say I won’t admit it when I’m wrong.) The Raven has been open since the fifties, so it’s not a faux-dive. It’s just a dive. Your seating options are booths that your ass will sink into, or plastic folding chairs that appear to have been borrowed from an AA meeting in a church basement. The crowd last night was composed of normal cats, and not pretentious “hipsters.” Numbers 2 and 4 on the list did hold true last night, for the most part. There were several attractive women there, but they were among the group I had come to meet. I did, however, find three new reasons not to go there:
1 – They don’t serve Budweiser. (This is actually a problem at many bars in D.C.) I’m sorry, I thought this was America. This isn’t America? Last time I checked I lived in America. And if I can’t order a Bud in a bar in America, then obviously the terrorists have already won. Seriously though, Budweiser is my go-to beer when the bartender approaches me and I haven’t decided what to order. When I am told that Bud is unavailable, it throws me into a state of existential angst from which it is most difficult to escape.
2 – The barkeep was somewhat surly. Dude, I’m sorry if you’re having a bad evening. I’m sorry if you’re the only one working tonight. I’m sorry that you had to single-handedly eject a belligerent drunk. But it’s not my fault you brought me a Miller Lite when I ordered a Pabst. I’d prefer to have my drink served without the attitude, thank you very much.
3 – Most importantly, I saw two people there I didn’t want to see. I studiously avoided interacting with either of them. One is a fellow alumnus of William & Mary who said something very unkind to me the last time I spoke to him. The other was an odd bird who has never given me any reason to have a problem with her. She did, however, remind me of a particularly wack evening that occurred several years ago during and after a party in Mount Pleasant. Over the course of this evening, some wanker named Liam introduced himself by insulting me based on an assumption he’d formed due to my surname, then informed me it was fine with him if I had sex with his girlfriend, then asked me to lend him $2,000, despite the fact that he had just met me and had made a spectacularly poor first impression. Next he threatened to “kick [my] ass” when I refused to lend him any ducats. Later in the evening I was sexually assaulted by the hostess. As I say, this was not a fun night. So if people I don’t want to see hang out at a particular bar, that makes me not want to go that bar.
I was with a pretty neat group of people last night, so I had a good time at the Raven. But it also confirmed my opinion that that bar is lame. You won’t find me there in the future without one hell of a compelling reason.
After my experience last night, I’ve decided that some of my stated reasons were less valid than others. (Let no one say I won’t admit it when I’m wrong.) The Raven has been open since the fifties, so it’s not a faux-dive. It’s just a dive. Your seating options are booths that your ass will sink into, or plastic folding chairs that appear to have been borrowed from an AA meeting in a church basement. The crowd last night was composed of normal cats, and not pretentious “hipsters.” Numbers 2 and 4 on the list did hold true last night, for the most part. There were several attractive women there, but they were among the group I had come to meet. I did, however, find three new reasons not to go there:
1 – They don’t serve Budweiser. (This is actually a problem at many bars in D.C.) I’m sorry, I thought this was America. This isn’t America? Last time I checked I lived in America. And if I can’t order a Bud in a bar in America, then obviously the terrorists have already won. Seriously though, Budweiser is my go-to beer when the bartender approaches me and I haven’t decided what to order. When I am told that Bud is unavailable, it throws me into a state of existential angst from which it is most difficult to escape.
2 – The barkeep was somewhat surly. Dude, I’m sorry if you’re having a bad evening. I’m sorry if you’re the only one working tonight. I’m sorry that you had to single-handedly eject a belligerent drunk. But it’s not my fault you brought me a Miller Lite when I ordered a Pabst. I’d prefer to have my drink served without the attitude, thank you very much.
3 – Most importantly, I saw two people there I didn’t want to see. I studiously avoided interacting with either of them. One is a fellow alumnus of William & Mary who said something very unkind to me the last time I spoke to him. The other was an odd bird who has never given me any reason to have a problem with her. She did, however, remind me of a particularly wack evening that occurred several years ago during and after a party in Mount Pleasant. Over the course of this evening, some wanker named Liam introduced himself by insulting me based on an assumption he’d formed due to my surname, then informed me it was fine with him if I had sex with his girlfriend, then asked me to lend him $2,000, despite the fact that he had just met me and had made a spectacularly poor first impression. Next he threatened to “kick [my] ass” when I refused to lend him any ducats. Later in the evening I was sexually assaulted by the hostess. As I say, this was not a fun night. So if people I don’t want to see hang out at a particular bar, that makes me not want to go that bar.
I was with a pretty neat group of people last night, so I had a good time at the Raven. But it also confirmed my opinion that that bar is lame. You won’t find me there in the future without one hell of a compelling reason.
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