Can I have some more chili please?

  Yes, I was planning to check out another club/live music venue but due to extensive studying and the shadow of finals looming over us all (not to mention the threat of the dreaded F grade), I was unable to go to any such place. Instead I decided to head towards Ben’s Chili Bowl (*gasp*). I can see you all getting excited right now.

  Yes, I know just about everyone and their mother and their cat has been to Ben’s Chili Bowl and reviewed it but I wanted to go somewhere that could be described as a ‘late-night hangout’ for people on U Street and it does fill the description.

my cat is craving some chili

  Ben’s Chili Bowl is rather famous around the city (and outside of it) and it was definitely one of the most heavily hyped restaurants between students at my university. I had always wanted to go there, yet never found the time or the opportunity to do so.

  It is certainly a place full of history as you can see when you take a look in the rooms that make up Ben’s Chili Bowl. It has been around since 1958 and it is one of the first black-owned businesses in the city. As I stepped in, I was thinking of all those famous people who visited this place before me: Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Martin Luther King Jr. and of course Obama himself.  (benschilibowl.com) It is truly exciting to visit a place such as this as it is somewhat legendary.

  At the time that I had gone there, the place was packed (going on a Saturday at 8pm was a big mistake). I realized immediately due to the diversity of the customers there, that Ben’s Chili Bowl is not directed towards a single demographic. It is the place with which U Street is identified.

  You see people of different size, color and age going in and out, consuming half-smokes with chili and a lavish side order of chili cheese fries (my stomach hurts as I write this). The whole neighborhood comes together here to enjoy a great meal at a small price with jazz and soul playing in the background. While most places on U Street are targeted at a certain demographic, at Ben’s Chili Bowl everyone is welcome. It definitely felt like a very homely place.

   Ben’s Chili Bowl has definitely been enjoying great success. Yet it has stayed true to itself and to its roots. I would definitely call it a sort-of landmark of African American culture in DC. It definitely reminded me of the first restaurant in Wicker Park described in Richard Lloyd’s “Neo-bohemia”, in that the people who work there are helping to make it into a “really interesting place”. While that restaurant emanated the funky, artistic vibe of the neighborhood, Ben’s emanates the cultural diversity of the neighborhood, its long jazz history and its continual evolution and growth

  In all honesty, I found the food to be a tad overrated and far too greasy for me (my Mediterranean upbringing is to blame for that). But it was definitely a satisfying meal. The service is also mediocre but I didn’t mind that much since it must be hard working there all day. I recommend playing spot-the-celebrity while enjoying the food as the walls are filled with pictures of celebrities who have visited Ben’s.

  It is definitely not just dinner or lunch or a late-night snack, a visit at Ben’s Chili Bowl is an experience due to its identity and its history. And this is perhaps true for many places in U Street, including the Black Cat and the Bohemian Caverns. Go to any of these places and you’ll find out new things about this street from each one. The hipster scene, the jazz scene and the black culture, all parts of the street’s past and future and they all somehow merge together in places like Ben’s Chili Bowl. In this street, there’s a place for everyone (even for a 21-year old from across the world!).

Bohemian Caverns and all that jazz

  My second venture into U Street was extremely different than the first. I had never heard of Bohemian Caverns before and I had no idea what it was. It figures though as I’ve never been a big jazz fan and Bohemian Caverns is very much a jazz club. The name got me really intrigued as I looked at it from outside and I wondered with anticipation what the inside would look like.

  When one of my friends told me where we were going, I was quick to make a Google search and found out that world-famous jazz musicians had played in this club such as Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Miles Davis and John Coltrane (and many more!). My excitement increased.

  That night, the event was Donald Harrison playing live with his band. Admittance to the event cost $25, which I wasn’t too happy about considering the fact that I have no income whatsoever, being a (lazy) college student. Regardless, I was excited for a night that would be a vast change from my regular Friday nights at Foggy Bottom.

  Walking down the stairs, the walls were designed like caverns. Colors were very blue and orange. Faces could be seen in the carved walls, and gleefully I thought it was reminiscent of gothic horror films (which I am completely obsessed with at this period of my life). The room is small with a bar, with tables and chairs surrounding the stage that encourages communication between the audience and the artist that is an important aspect of the jazz performance.

  The room was full of people who were receptive to the jazz band’s music. I especially enjoyed the fact that Donald Harrison conversed with the crowd, making jokes and entertaining, not just playing music. Five women were sitting at the table next to ours who continuously interacted with the musician, making up some of the funniest moments of the night. The atmosphere, the architecture and these interactions transformed the concert into an experience (and it is a pity that jazz’s popularity has been waning).

 This was a much different and more diverse crowd than the one at the Black Cat. As I looked around me, I saw that the majority of them were African American and much older, expectedly. They seemed to be people with more eclectic tastes, their love of jazz evident in their response to the music.

  I thought to myself at the end of the night that Bohemian Caverns was very much unlike the Black Cat in that it is a venue that is in touch with U Street’s jazz roots and through this it keeps the bohemia of U Street alive. 

  When the performance ended, I felt thoroughly satisfied and entertained. The event was well worth the cost, yet I thought that I would probably not see a jazz performance again, due to my lack of interest in the genre (I’m more of an indie rock and electronica fan myself).

    For now, I leave you with some videos from the performance at Bohemian Caverns (please excuse the shaky cam and poor lighting!).

Video #1

Video #2

Black Cat Vol.2: As the night progresses

  Looking at it from the outside, the front of the Black Cat is simple and intriguing with a design of a cat against a black background (taking up two stories) interspersed with yellow bricks. Due to this, the venue makes itself known to the passer-bys. It gives off a sort-of artsy vibe, a vibe that the owners probably wanted in order to attract a more alternative crowd.

  As we went inside, I realized that the venue consisted of different rooms with various purposes. The Red Room was particularly relaxing, with a bar, a jukebox, billiards, pinball and seating booth (it actually reminded me of my favorite bar/club back home). It is certainly one of the best places to go with friends to have a solid night out. While the drinks were slightly more expensive than I thought they would be ($12 for a watered-down vodka with Red Bull), the noise and the music (the jukebox mostly has classic and indie rock aka awesome music!) made the Red Room into a very satisfying experience.

  The people around me, drinking and conversing loudly, ranged between early twenties to early thirties and they seemed more or less to be the alternative (i.e. hipster) crowd that I had imagined before going in.

   But our plans were not to remain in the Red Room for the rest of the night. There was a 90’s pop dance party going on in the Backstage and that was exactly what we were here for. The Backstage is a very small room with dark lighting and minimal decorations. Its size surprised me, as I had no knowledge of the bigger stage upstairs. Nevertheless, the room was just about full and the party was just getting started (and what a party it was!).

  Unlike the Red Room, the crowd here mainly consisted of college students and had a much more mainstream club feel. The music, while incorporating many 90’s pop/rock/dance hits, finally strayed away from this concept to the current repertoire. I felt that the two rooms were starkly different due to the fact that they provided two distinctive atmospheres for two distinctive mindsets. Perhaps the contrasting features between them show its development from a more underground music venue to a more mainstream nightclub.

  Nevertheless, it was a really fun and exciting outing. I was also very tired by the end of it; after three hours of dancing and drinking, it was only natural. The Black Cat is definitely a venue that I would gladly visit again in my next three years at college.

Black Cat Vol.1: First impressions and fierce encounters

                                   The three of us at the metro.
      At this point, I’d like to confess that for the whole of the first semester of my freshman year, I did not venture out into U Street. I guess I was too entranced with the happenings at the Foggy Bottom campus and adjusting to college life was harder than I thought it would be.

    It was not until March that I made my way into U Street, when a couple of my friends decided that we should visit the Black Cat. The Black Cat opened its doors as a concert venue in 1993 to cater to the underground music scene. (www.blackcatdc.com) It then moved to a larger space in 2001, three doors down from its original location.

     As we got off the metro stop and started walking towards our destination, I couldn’t help but feel mesmerized at my surroundings. The street was packed with people with a purpose (and a bunch of girls with higher heels than they can walk in) ; it was after all a Saturday night. The street that unfolded before my eyes was one very different to Foggy Bottom; the people rushing up and down the sidewalks were not just college students. It was a whole different side of DC that I didn’t think existed.

    The clubs and restaurants looked to have more character from the outside than any such location close to campus and I was surprised by the diversity of the people around me, in terms of age and culture. These combined into creating an atmosphere bustling with energy and life.

     However, we did not arrive at the Black Cat on time and it was the fault of the two fairly intoxicated girls who were accompanying me. We got sidetracked by a small, smelly dog and his owner: a 30-something black woman who goes by the name of Heather Fierce. It was a lucky occurrence though, due to the fact that she lived on this street for 10 years.

     She was wearing a red bandana on her head, a sleeveless black t-shirt and sweatpants. While the girls were petting her dog, she was telling us all about her life, her home (Brooklyn) and the street. She remarked on how much the street had changed and become more modern and busy; she called it ‘the place to be’ in DC. She emphasized the love of the place and how she liked seeing it so busy.

      Before I had a chance to chat with her more, she had to continue walking her dog and the girls were screaming at me to move on (a word of advice: don’t fight with drunken girls on any occasion). Regardless, it was definitely a fierce encounter.

(U) + Me

Before I came to the USA, and more specifically to Washington DC to go into college, I had little to no idea what to expect of the city itself. I had only visited DC twice before, when I was too young to really care about anything other than McDonalds and amusement parks. 

                  Arriving in September, as a young man of 20 just out of the army, my outlook and my interests had greatly changed since my previous visits. The only thing I knew is that I would be living in a city much larger than any town on the small island in the Mediterranean where I resided for the first twenty years of my life. 

       And so as I reached Foggy Bottom, I felt myself surrounded by boring, almost identical buildings that were far too serious for my taste. I was sure that this city had more to show than that.

       Soon, I started hearing all about U Street, its nightlife, its restaurants, and its people. U Street, in the past, was where the largest African-American community was built, where Duke Ellington lived during his childhood and where the 1968 DC riots took place following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The former was perhaps instrumental in U Street’s rise as a vital cultural and entertainment in DC; the latter caused its downfall. 

During its decline, U Street became the epicenter of drug trafficking and in turn, became a hangout for drug addicts. It was in the 1990s that the street started to develop again and became a center of entertainment and culture in the district.

        The most important aspect of U Street is perhaps its cultural diversity. You realize this as soon as you have a look up and down the street. The different colors of people, the different languages they speak, the different restaurants that exist (from grungy and cheap to classy and expensive) and the different nightclubs with all kinds of music (from jazz to 80’s pop to more modern fare). All these are the characteristics of a place that could be considered widely attractive, a place where cultures, talents and dreams fuse together.

         Exploring this street, I couldn’t help but wonder: what are the reasons behind the popularity of U Street? Is each restaurant/nightclub attractive to everyone? If not, then what kind of people is each place trying to attract?