Hanging out at the Red and the Black

recommended beverage at this place:
No taps but a few good bottle options. I chose the Allagash.

I finally made it out to the H Street Corridor. Getting there wasn't bad. There's a good amount of street parking and supposedly a free shuttle on weekends that will pick you up from Union Station metro. This stretch of H Street, Northeast was the unfortunate site of the 1968 riots that razed this once bustling shopping district to the ground, and it has only just begun recovering now, nearly 40 years later. There are some bars, small restaurants, and a theatre speckled among the still boarded-up shops and run-down rowhouses. Just around the corner, though, on Linden Street, the rowhouses seemed restored and beautiful, a sign of the continued neighborhood revitalization.

The Red and the Black, located at 1212 H Street NE, is one of the several new bars to spring up in the past year in this area. I immediately loved it when I walked in. It seemed so similar to DC 9, on the U Street corridor, and it turns out both clubs have the same owner. The crowd was friendly and unpretentious. Girls were dressed anywhere from jeans and a t-shirt to swanky, yet everyone just seemed to comfortably fit in.

Upstairs, there's live music--my kind of place! I caught parts of two different acts and was impressed with both. Interestingly, it's difficult to put either of them into words. First up, The Young Sinclairs from Roanoke Virginia played a folk-rock set, with echoes of 60s rock influences in their sound--perhaps a little Peter, Paul & Mary. Yet their sound was progressive and even a bit punk-inspired. Really rockin' set. Next up was Hand-Fed Babies, who consist of two guys, Sean Peoples and Hugh McElroy. It's loungy experimental music, at times quite unusual, yet mesmerizing. Using a synthesizer and sampling, they create an ethereal sound coupled with McElroy's haunting vocals.

Quite the experience!