Walk into McFadden’s—the popular Foggy Bottom bar near the George Washington University campus that Complex dubbed the “Douchiest Bar in D.C.”—on any given weekend evening and you’ll see the same scene: popped collars; a DJ spinning ear-piercingly loud EDM; hundreds of college students grinding on each other; probably someone doing a body shot off of someone else.
But walk into McFadden’s on a Monday night and you’ll see a completely different scene: A bunch of film nerds giddily watching a schlocky cult film on the projector. For the past couple years, the Washington Psychotronic Film Society—D.C.’s long-running transgressive cinema club—has hosted screenings at McFadden’s. But since five people were stabbed at the Foggy Bottom bar on December 27, the place has been closed by order of the D.C. Alcohol Board, and, according to an ANC 2A Chairman Patrick Kennedy, it plans to shut its doors for good.
That means the Washington Psychotronic Film Society is, for the umpteenth time, without a home. But they’re not too broken up about it. “Everyone hated it,” Carl Cephas, WPFS president tells DCist over the phone. “They were always out of food, thedrinks you wanted,” he says. “The staff was rude to us, people would always say, ‘what a dump.'”
But a change of venue isn’t anything new for the WPFS. Now in its 26th year, Cephas says that he thinks they’ve hosted the weekly film series in “30 establishments” so far. Before it moved to McFadden’s, the WPFS hosted screenings in the warehouse space behind The Passenger, which was later turned into The Columbia Room. (Both The Passenger and Columbia Room also closed recently because the block is slated for redevelopment).
Even before the incident at McFadden’s, Cephas says they were looking for other places to host the WPFS permanently, and even held screenings occasionally at The Raven, Smoke & Barrel, and Bardo. Though Cephas says Bardo, situated at 1200 Bladensburg Road NE, is “kind of out of the way” for the WPFS’s regulars, he says it’s still better than McFadden’s.
“Many places [that’ve hosted us] know we’re not for profit and have kicked in money,” he says. “McFadden’s never did. We spent more money on our tabs then we got on donations and door prizes.” Additionally, Cephas says that more people would go to McFadden’s for WPFS screenings on Monday nights then to watch Monday night NFL games, only to find staff members and bartenders “at the bar eating pizza, or, if they got bored, playing Xbox in the middle of the restaurant” while WPFS screenings were taking place.
“People would walk in and there would be no staff there to take their drink orders,” Cephas say.
For now, Cephas says the Washington Psychotronic Film Society is taking a little break, but will be back soon with its next screening at Bardo, though a permanent spot to host screenings is still up in the air.
