Sometimes you want a bar to serve as a sanctuary — a quiet place where you can have a drink while not being disturbed. Other times you’ll want it to serve as a social hub, a place to gather with friends or meet new people. And then there are the times when you need a bar to let you combine childhood loves, like playing Connect Four or a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game, while doing something very adult: getting drunk. Happily, there are plenty of bars in this city that serve that purpose. Below are DCist’s favorites.
Photo via Atlas Arcade Facebook.
ATLAS ARCADE: There is no bar I love more in D.C. than this H Street NE spot, formerly home to Fruit Bat. The bar is tiny, with just four seats, but you’ll be on your feet the whole time. Why wouldn’t you be when the bar is home to arcade games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a Simpsons four-player game, Revolution X featuring the band AeroSmith and many, many others? If you do snag a seat at the bar, you can play Sega, Atari and Nintendo games for a buck an hour. These have the drawback of being played on public screens — a man once laughed very hard at my poor Sonic skills — but you’ll be having too much fun to care. The beer is basic and cheap, and there’s a quarter machine in the back. What more do you want? —Sarah Anne Hughes
Atlas Arcade is located at 1236 H Street NE.
TRUSTY’S: Even with more transportation options like Car2Go, it still takes convincing for people in Northwest to spend the evening in a different quadrant than their own. They sometimes protest the cabs are too expensive, that there’s nothing out there, and the Metro is too unreliable on the weekends. Trusty’s, the neighborhood flagship bar near the Potomac Avenue Metro stop, is a strong enough draw to quell that specific type of whining. Not only can you order drinks through the windows of a school bus — a school bus(!) — but they have several games to keep you entertained if/when the conversation falls short. There’s Jenga, Big Buck World (not hunter), and several others that do not require full command of your motor skills. This spot deserves more attention from the rest of the city, and not just because RFK happens to be nearby. —Alan Zilberman
Trusty’s is located at 1420 Pennsylvania Avenue SE.
ATOMIC BILLIARDS: Cleveland Park’s Atomic Billiards is great not only because it’s a billiards bar, but because it’s a billiards bar that isn’t overcrowded, tacky, and stylish. It’s a testament to the billiards bars of yesteryear, where people came to simply get sloshed and shoot some pool. Probably for money, or some other shady exchange. Of course, that sort of stuff (probably) doesn’t still go on today. Point is, Atomic Billiards is one of the few game bars I’ve been to without any pretense. Pool, shuffleboard, darts, beer, no bullshit. — Matt Cohen
Atomic Billiards is located at 3427 Connecticut Avenue NW.
Photo by Mr. T in DC.
H STREET COUNTRY CLUB:This is not a judgement about the food or clientele at H Street Country Club. It’s as simple as this: If you want a bar with an indoor miniature golf course, this is your only option in D.C. And it’s a pretty nice one, too. There’s also skeeball and shuffleboard. —Sarah Anne Hughes
H Street Country Club is located at 1335 H Street NE.
BREADSODA: While off the beaten path of the normal bar crawl corridors such as Adams Morgan or H Street NE, Glover Park’s Breadsoda has the vibe of a 70s finished basement with all the food, drinks, and games of a great neighborhood bar. Skateboard-lined wood paneling and exposed stone walls give a comfortable feel for the pool and shuffleboard tables while large screens display grainy films from a few decades past. TVs in the corner are also set aside for Wii playing which further lends itself to a nostalgic lived-in feel. While the beer list is more than adequate with favorites like DC Brau, Great Lakes, and Duvel, I personally have a hard staying away from the High Life pony bottles. Toss in darts and a stack of boardgames, and you have the best night staying in you ever had going out. —John Fleury
Breadsoda is located at 2233 Wisconsin Avenue NW.
THOMAS FOOLERY: Thomas Foolery is owned by the same fun-loving rocket scientist behind Mr. Yogato. That means games are incorporated into every facet of the bar. Sure there’s a shelf where you can grab Connect Four and Jenga and play with childhood toys, magnetizing a beard onto the face of Wooley Willy. But the unique fun here is the playfulness in drink ordering. Discounts currently listed on their website include cheaper beverages for dancing like Carlton Banks or tying a cherry stem knot with your tongue. Looking to ‘ice’ your friends like it’s 2010? You can play that game here. Smirnoff Ice bottles are for sale, but the only way to buy one is to Plinko to establish the cost. There’s no set price. The P Street, Dupont Circle bar has quickly established itself as a popular spot for charity guest bartending happy hours. —Josh Novikoff
Thomas Foolery is located at 2029 P Street NW.
SATELLITE ROOM: I am a big pinball nerd. Unless there’s something going on at a specific place that someone invited me to, I will almost never go to a bar without a pinball machine. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot pinball machines in the city. Satellite Room, the U Street Corridor bar next to the 9:30 Club, has two pinball machines I like a lot: A Tron one and a Batman one. They are pretty great pinball machines. The bar is OK too, I guess. — Matt Cohen
Satellite Room is located at 2047 9th Street NW
PENN SOCIAL: When Riot Act proved unsuccessful as a comedy club, the large cavernous Penn Quarter space rebranded, choosing to elicit D.C. residents’ smiles in a different way. The blank white walls were painted with sports graphics, and the stage hosted Ladies Arm Wrestling Matches instead of marquee comedians. Penn Social basically turned into a more grandiose version of your rich friend from elementary school’s killer rec room complete with skeeball machines and rock, paper, scissors tournaments. Sure, it can be intimidating to head down there while (seemingly) the entire city’s bocce and kickball teams are there for happy hour, but the life sized games of Connect Four are just as fun as they sound. —Val Paschall
Penn Social is located at 801 E Street NW.
ROCKET BAR: I don’t much care for the bar, but they do have a lot of pool tables and some pretty cool arcade games, like Golden Tee and Big Buck Hunter. But it does have a Pirates of the Caribbean pinball machine that I quite like, so I feel obliged to include it. Because, pinball. — Matt Cohen
Rocket Bar is located at 714 7th Street NW.
KANGAROO BOXING CLUB: The owners of Kangaroo Boxing Club know a thing or two about the brilliant, surreal conversations that happen at the bar after you’ve had a few. They named the Columbia Heights staple in honor of their friend, one who passed away too early and would constantly try and convince his buddies that he could take a kangaroo in a boxing match (he probably couldn’t). Aside from their underrated brunch, KBC treats the bar like a home away from home. Sure, they have Trivial Pursuit and other classic board games, yet their crown jewel is Cards Against Humanity, the popular party game for horrible people. There’s no faster way to make fast friends (or enemies) than to find out whether the person next to you also finds the card, “Warm, velvety Muppet sex” hilarious. —Alan Zilberman
Kangaroo Boxing Club is located at 3410 11th Street NW.
BOARD ROOM: If your two objectives are to drink good beer and play a ton of games, Board Room is the destination for you. The Dupont Circle bar has 21 draft lines and over 30 games that you can rent for just a couple dollars apiece. Depending on your mood and size of your group, you can pick from the likes of Uno to Operation to Trivial Pursuit. Board Room’s beautiful-but-narrow space can get a bit rowdy on crowded weekend nights, but just think of it like an adult version of indoor recess. —Nicole Dubowitz
Board Room is located at 1737 Connecticut Avenue NW.
