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I count 29 different cans of beer. Yes, 29. No beer bottles, no tap handles, just cans. Sure, The Red Derby has a fully stocked liquor selection, and six wines at $6/glass, but really, the comfort beverage of choice here is the canned beer. Understanding this unusual approach to beer selection requires a quick detour through the history of beer in America.
In the beginning, there was beer. It was good. It was poured into drinking vessels from large tanks: this was time efficient and cost-effective, but it lacked portability. Then along came the bottle, which provided portability but lacked the cost-effectiveness of draught beer. It wasn't until 1935, two years after the end of Prohibition in America, that the technological hurdles were overcome and beer was produced in canned form. Cans are lightweight, don't allow light to reach the beer (exposure to light is a major cause of beer spoilage), and the raw materials involved are cheaper. The big breweries that remained after Prohibition started canning more of their beers, and as the larger breweries bought out the remaining smaller breweries, they were able to use economies of scale to make canned beer even cheaper.
This all continued, business as normal, until the craft beer movement began in the 1980s. The large breweries were producing a mostly uniform product with slight variations on a pale lager, but customers began clamoring for more flavor and variation of style. As microbreweries starting springing up throughout the country, canned beer became synonymous with cheap lager, and many beer drinkers shunned cans in favor of bottles and draught beer. It wasn't until 2002 that Oskar Blues, a small brewery in Colorado, started breaking down the "canned beer cannot be good" myth by releasing Dale's Pale Ale in cans. Although customer perception was a big impediment to early sales, their production has since gone through the roof, and they have added several canned beers to their lineup. About two dozen breweries around the country have followed suit, from Sly Fox in PA (the Pils is great in the can) to 21st Amendment in San Francisco.
But I digress: The Red Derby's canned beer list runs the gamut from the inexpensive light lager category (Schlitz and Natty Boh are $2) to the American micro category (Dale's Pale and Brooklyn Lager are $4) up to the relatively more expensive imported cans (Old Speckled Hen and Young's Double Chocolate are $6). As for bar food, The Derby offers a quality selection ranging from mac-and-cheese wedges and sweet potato fries to foot long fish dogs and grilled boursin and american cheese sandwiches.
If you're worried about enjoying your beverage or food in a dingy environment, don't be: although the decor is sparse, the music is eclectic (customers can plug in their iPods to be played on the sound system) and a projected movie always seems to be playing sans-audio on a side wall. The glow of the white Christmas lights against the red walls somehow highlights both the action of Full Metal Jacket and also the drama of Five Easy Pieces, which was playing on another visit.
Due to the location (a good walk either north from the Columbia Heights metro or west from Georgia Ave-Petworth), the customers seem to consist primarily of local residents. Despite all the things that make The Red Derby unique, it's the neighborhood feel that makes me wish I lived nearby. Hipsters certainly are a presence here, but they are far from dominant: either they haven't discovered it yet, or the Derby's location is far enough away that they don't frequently make the trek. The Derby only opened a few months ago and for now, it's a nice mix of patrons and a great beverage program to boot.
The Red Derby
3718 14th St. NW (at Spring St. two blocks from the 16th street S1/S2/S4 buses)
202-291-5000
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No! The place only works if it's kept kind of secret.
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.
I also enjoyed this:
3718 14th St. NW (at Spring St. two blocks from the 16th street S1/S2/S4 buses)
202-291-5000
Or, you know, zero blocks from the 14th Street 50s lines.
Yea, I don't know my DC buses as well as I should...bonus points for trying?
what is the deal with making hipsters seem like non-humans that ruin stuff for everyone?
And frankly, i'd say the bar is about 80% lawyers and non-profit workers.
great, great neighborhood establishment. love the beer selection (hooray, high life!), friendly staff, and chatty patrons. $1 per game pool is a plus as well. add in the fact that it is never balls-to-ass packed on the weekends (due to its lack of proximity to a metro) as another major selling point, and you're left with one of the only worthwhile bar-bars in the district.
Appropriately priced cheap beer in a can in DC. Sweet mystery of life at last I've found you!
because hipsters are non-humans that ruin stuff for everyone?
because hipsters are no longer hip & different, they are like a new breed of fratty kid, just dressed even worse.
Rusty saves me the trouble of checking WMATA's website to make sure the 50-series buses haven't been re-routed. (I wouldn't put it past them, but that's just me, that's just something I enjoy doing.)
Great place, nice bartenders, good concept, but it's rather inconvenient. Wish it were in my neighborhood instead of a 25-minute bus trip. You can rot out there late at night waiting for the bus home.
Sometimes I really miss the old pull tab cans; the kind you'd have to put back into the can to get rid of it. And every time you'd take a swig, secretly you'd think, maybe this is the one that's going to choke me to death so I don't have to drink this swill anymore, out here in this boring 1970s suburb. But it never happened. So you'd take the empties out into the woods, knock the bottoms out, duct tape them together, and you'd have a nice little M80 mortar. The simple pleasures of getting wasted and blowing crap up in the woods. Ah, Bartleby! Ah, Humanity!
Great place, nice bartenders, good concept, but it's rather inconvenient. Wish it were in my neighborhood instead of a 25-minute bus trip. You can rot out there late at night waiting for the bus home.
Hipsters!? Check out the pics on their website...Red Dorky
monkey: don't forget the increase likelihood of slicing your lip open. That was always a fun little game. Kinda like something out of "The Deer Hunter," only slightly less deadly.
I don't know if this is appropriate or not but the DC Furies are having a fundraiser at Hamilton's (formerly the Flying Scotsman and Sullivan's Emerald Isle) tonight featuring $1 PBRs and jello shots.
My team will be there to support our fellow ruggers, watch some World Cup rugby, and to drink as much cheap beer as humanly possible.
Could someone please define this term, "hipster," to me?
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Hillrat: Now THAT sounds like a good time! Cheers!
Great neighborhood bar. As much as I'd love for Red Derby to stay a "secret", it's much more important to me that the one cool bar within a few blocks of my home stay open. So come on by! Yes, even the hipsters and the lawyers and the non-profit workers. Because once you enter the door below the red derby hat, all of those barriers break down, and we are all one as BEER DRINKERS. PEACE!
Hipsters are like wax fruit. They (might)look good but, well, that's about it.
"My favorite definition of 'hipster'... is: A hipster is somebody who complains about hipsters." - M Doughty
I think hipsters are like Justice Stewart talking about porn; I can't define them, but I know them when I see them.
As annoying as hipsters are alleged to be, they are (stupid clothes not withstanding) far less annoying to be around than most other people in DC.
I've always wondered: what exactly are hipsters? They seem to occupy a position in the public consciousness similar to that which the yuppies did in the '80s: people who are younger, better-looking, and happier than we are, or act that way. I didn't know what the yuppies were supposed to be, either.
Are hipsters something to do with a liberal arts B.A. and a service economy job? Do we hate hipsters for the same reason we hated hippies, and yuppies, and all kitsch, because they embody something momentarily constituent of the culture?
Eh, goddamn hipsters. Get a pair of Dockers for chrissakes.
A hipster walks into a bar....
Love this place. Only been twice, but it's been well worth the trip both times.
Thank you, cminus. That's just what I was thinking.
Can I add another correction? Thanks.
Spring Road - not Spring Street. (Street implies that it is part of the grid. It is not. It is a pre-existing roadway that has been absorbed into the city plan.)
This hipster term--it's good for labeling others, but can you be a hipster and not know it? Is it like being insane?
I always equate hipsters are the guys that are dressing like my dad circa 1981 and always with some weird beard going on…cant wait till they adopt my dad style circa 1993 those were some wacked out years for him.
this is a great bar, not just because of the reasons listed in the post, but also because of the owners. really solid people. the bought a friend and i a round when i first checked the place out, just cause i had been in their previous location on 18th street. give 'em some business!
Hipsters are like halitosis: you can smell everybody else's but not your own. The irony is that the worst is RIGHT UNDER YOUR OWN NOSE.
Can I add another correction?
Red Derby is at Quincy St, one block north of Spring.
Oh, and behold, plans for a sidewalk cafe and possibly a roof deck.
Thank Jebus I live two blocks away.
i sense a little beard envy RJ.
I would love to grow a nice beard, and I bet it would be fantastic....but someone has veto power on my facial hair.
http://www.baileo.nl/binaries/images/stick_whip.gif
I'm marching my lawyer-ass right up to the Red Derby, gonna pop the right side of the collar on my chartreuse polo shirt, adjust my ray bans, and make sure my flat-billed hat is still crooked cause that's how I rock. Enjoy your once-secret bar.
Oh, and I'm telling all my friends.
Feeling a tinge of "Pantsless-Metro Day" guilt yet, DCist?
beards: old and busted. mustaches: new hotness. get with it people.
This is my very favorite bar in DC.
Eric: Sparse decor? Hardly! The walls are painted a really rich red color, there is a fantastic mirror on the wall that the owners constructed and there is a wonderful story behind the piece that holds all the alcohol and stuff behind the bar.
The crowd is diverse in age, style, job, etc. Def. local, but thats one of the things that makes it great. The owners go out of their way to get to know everyone, and really try to make you feel at home.
Love this bar.
wow, this comment thread seems to be full of people who are highly threatened by people who seem to have good sense of style.
Clearly you haven't hung out there enough.
All these "hipsters" you speak of seem to bring out feelings of maybe that one girl that rejected you (over and over again?) or the people you yourself seem to be too afraid to talk to.
One great thing about the Derby is the fact that no one is in there trying to be scene. People are there with their friends, and every single time I've been there, I've met new ones. Regulars and non-regulars...with not a bit of adversity from wither party.
So if by "hipster" you mean cool people, who enjoy bear, and know how to match their shirts to their shoes...then maybe...but clearly there's some deeper issues at hand that you may want to talk to someone about sometime.
You should come out to the Derby next weekend. There's always friends who are eready to listen.
As far as the pictures go, I see at least 4 people I'd totally make out with...soooo...I don't see anything wrong with that.
wait, I looked again, make that 7 people I's totally make out with.
also, by bear I meant beer. and by I's I meant I'd. and by not a hipster I meant better than you.