David on the Brickskeller

"I was born at home at the corner of Rodman and Connecticut Avenue in 1950. People talk about being a native born Washingtonian, it doesn't get much more native than that. I played music professionally and lived on the road for about six years, but have been here otherwise. I guess I just can't figure out how to get out of here. 

"My wife's grandfather started the Brickskeller in 1957. He was French and a Cordon Bleu certified chef. In the 1940's, he was a chef at Napoleon's, which was Washington's best restaurant at the time. He wanted to open his own place and leased a space over by the Mayflower Hotel and opened the restaurant Blackstones. Eventually, he bought this space and opened the Brickskeller  in 1957. There were a lot of good restaurants at the time, so he wanted to make his stand out. At the time, places had good wine lists, but no one had a good beer list. This place opened with around 50 different beers available. We probably had the most beers in the world then, and we have tried to keep that up. 

"There were a million bars called the Ratskeller at the time, especially around colleges. Ratskeller is a German word meaning a bar below street level that serves beer. He didn't want to have another ratskeller, but he liked the sufiix. The place was built of brick, so he combined the two words. The original menu of this place had Alaskan king crab legs for $1.75 and a pitcher of beer for $.85. Those prices are still good, if you pay in 1957 silver dimes. 

"This bar has gone through many variations. In the 1970's, this was the largest dart bar in the country. The problem with darts is that the place was jam packed, but the bartenders were sitting on their asses because no one was drinking. They didn't want to screw up their game. The place also has an interesting music history. Emmylou Harris, Mama Cass, and Jose Feliciano played here. Jim Morrison used to hang out here when he lived in Virginia. 

"During the bicentennial, someone dared the owners to have a beer from every state. Missouri, at the time, was a dry state, so they didn't succeed, but it planted the seed to expand the beer list. They bought a truck and sent it around the states to get beer from all over, including Alaska. We had about 400 beers when I came here in 1982, half of which were cans because can collecting had been popular in the 70's. I saw that the future of the industry was in better quality bottled beer. In the first year I was here, I increased the number of beers to 850. At one point, we had it up to 1,300 beers. Now, we have a little over 1,000. I like having the opportunity to present the world of beer to people who want to experience it. 

"Since opening, this place is remarkably unchanged. People come in who haven't been here in 40 years and say, 'This place looks exactly the same.' I say, 'We probably swept a couple times." 

The Brickskeller is located at 1523 22nd Street NW.

Derek on the Greatest Profession on the Planet

"Me and my brother, my father, my grandmother, and my great-grandfather are all from Washington, D.C. My family has a strong connection to the city, but, like many families, we eventually migrated out of the city to the suburbs. I grew up in Maryland and spent most of my childhood there. I grew up in the hard-core scene in D.C., which is funny to think about now that I own a bar. 

"As a teenager, I moved to Charleston, South Carolina, with my father. There is where I started to stray away from the idealistic, straight edge 14 year old and started drinking and partying with kids in high school. As soon as I could, I left South Carolina and came back to D.C. I had no plans or designs of being a wine-and-spirits professional at the time, but I got a job waiting tables at Rocky's in Adams Morgan, which is where Evolve is now. 

"At the time, I was somewhat aimless. I know this is going to come off as a little harsh, but a lot of people in the restaurant industry are aimless, which is a nice way of saying losers. It is an easy way to make cash and support substance-abuse issues. I considered myself one of those losers. Fortunately, I didn't have substance abuse issues, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. Eventually, one of the bartenders left and Rocky asked if I knew how to bartend. I said, 'Yes,' but I really had no idea. She could sense my hesitation and asked me to make her a rum punch on the spot. I grabbed every rum on the rail and threw in some juice and sour mix and garnished it with every piece of fruit I could find. Amazingly, she said it was good and that is how I got my first job bartending. After that, I fell in love with it and knew that it was the job that I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I think that bartending is the greatest profession on the planet. Sometimes it is hard because people can abuse alcohol. There have been instances when I had to cut off people who were my grandparents' age. As much as I lionize drinking culture, I recognize the need for moderation. 

"After Rocky's closed, I went to work at a number of different places and then studied to be a sommelier. In the end, I didn't love being a sommelier as much as I loved being a bartender. While I was still a sommelier, some friends and I started a speakeasy during our days off. Eventually, I came back into bartending when I got involved with The Gibson and eventually opened The Passengerwith my brother, Tom, and Paul Ruppert. When we opened this place, we wanted a bar that was of the District. We were tired of the mentality that D.C. is not good enough, so we thought there was no better way to show pride in the District than putting a D.C. flag on the door with a sign that says, 'God save the District.' We also wanted to incorporate local things, like half-smokes and rickeys.

"The rickey is actually D.C's native cocktail. The gin rickey may be the most popular rickey, but the bourbon rickey was the original, and it was invented at Shoomakers, which was on Pennsylvania Avenue, in 1893. It was described quite literally as a shit hole. One of the bartenders, George C. Williamson, was considered Washington's greatest bartender at the time. The Washington Post called him the 'King of Julep' makers and he invented the rickey. Every President visited Shoemakers except for Rutherford B. Hayes, who was dry. I went and made drinks for President Obama, but can you imagine that presidents actually used to go visit that guy to get a drink. It blows my mind. In his obituary, it said that Williamson likely had a hand in every political decision of the time, as Shoomakers was where all of the politicians and journalists hung out and talked about work. 

"Shoomakers eventually closed because of prohibition, which came to D.C. earlier than the rest of the country. Morris Sheppard, a senator from Texas, wanted to make an example of the District. D.C., now as then, drinks more per capita than any city in the country. Correspondingly, the indicators of drunkenness are 36th or 37th in the nation, which means that we can hold our alcohol." 

Derek Brown is the co-owner of The Passenger at 1021 7th Street Northwest.  He is also a regular contributor to The Atlantic.  

Sam on the Audacity of Hops

"I grew up outside of Burlington, Vermont. When I was 19, I tried to convince my Dad to let me use his home beer brewing kit, but he said I was too young. Then, when I was 20, I bugged him again and he finally took it out and we brewed a brown ale together. In college, I grew to like beer more and brewed a new batch every couple of months for me and my friends. But, I really fell in love with beer when I moved to DC.

"I bought equipment down here and started making regular batches. DC is a political place and I like to make theme beers. You know, beer names are full of puns, that is why people like beer so much. I wanted to throw an election party and brew a cleverly named, themed beer. Four or five months before the election, which is probably more time than I spent preparing anything, including my senior thesis at college, I created the Audacity of Hops. I used victory malt and progress hops and coffee from Hawaii, Kenya, and Indonesia, which are Obama's three homelands. It was 8% alcohol and made of half-light and half-dark malt. It was a very thought-out process. The election came and the party went over really well. People loved it and The City Paper even wrote about it. You know, I didn't have a contingency plan had McCain won. I could have made a McCain beer I guess, but it would have been bitter, old, and dusty!

"For inauguration, I had another party and made 200 numbered Audacity of Hops beers. That was the most beers I had ever made in my life. I even kept a bottle of Audacity of Hops for the President. It is numbered 50 for the great State of Hawaii. I have tried to get it to him on a number of occasions, but I don't know if it's going to happen. But, if the President ever wants it, even when he is no longer the President and just some dude living down the street and he wants to have a beer, it will always be waiting for him.

"Seeing and being involved with the beer culture in this city got me thinking about starting a brewery. One of my biggest questions is why there is not a real functioning DC microbrewery. Other major cities have multiple local breweries. Seeing the success of the Audacity of Hops and the success of my regular beer-tasting nights with friends, it is clear that people love beer here. But, the most local brew you can get here is from Delaware and Virginia.

"It has been 25 years since there was a microbrewery in the area. Before the Kennedy Center was built, that land once belonged to the Heurich brewery, built by a German immigrant in the 19th century. But, sometime in the 50's or 60's, he started contract brewing up in New York. That was really the last bottling brewery in DC. I would love to buy a DC beer that is brewed with DC water and takes pride in being from DC."

This post is part of a weekly series of People's District on the Prince of Petworth, check it out here.