Last month we got a letter from reader Christine, who related the follwing story and asked us to look into it.

I recently moved to Fairfax, VA to live with my parents until my marriage next month to a marine who is stationed at 8th and I Marine Barracks in SE. After their Friday evening parade, many of the guys like to grab a beer or two. This Friday, myself, my fiancee, and five others decided to grab some drinks. We decided to walk down to Pennsylvania Ave. to find a bar that didn’t require a taxi ride home. The first place we found was the Hawk N Dove. Not the kind of place I normally would frequent on a Friday night, but it has a small room downstairs with a TV that they can watch sports and drink beer.

As we go in, we were informed by the gentleman checking IDs that “house rules” states that “no marines without dates are allowed in.” Apparently, since our group had only two females, only two of the guys were going to be allowed in. Now, I understand that it is common practice to try to keep the male/female ratio somewhat even in a club by not allowing guys in. The Hawk N Dove is not a club. It is crap dive bar with a sketchy ass dance floor that serves disgusting hamburgers. I cannot believe that they do not let people in because of their occupation.

I was more upset that I was the only one who was taken aback by this. My fiancee’s friends informed me that this happens quite often — they are told that because they are marines, they are not allowed in, but other males are. Is this common practice in DC? Does the DCist know of some unofficial list of bars that don’t allow members of the military? Should my fiancee invest in a wig to hide the crew cut so he can have a beer three blocks from the capital?

Hawk N’ Dove’s manager Paul Meagher confirms that this is in fact official policy of his bar, though he clarifies the policy also allows unaccompanied marines to enter if they’re in uniform. Meagher said that the policy was first put in place in the 1990s, around the time of the Gulf War, due to a series of incidents inside the bar involving destruction of property at the hands of marines from the nearby Barracks.