Washington hit bottom in the early 1990s, with a murder rate that earned the city a grim national reputation. But by decade’s end, the turnaround had begun. Penn Quarter was reviving, the MCI Center had opened, and the city was starting to believe in itself again after years of decline.
Shanklin Hall and Columbia Station made 2325 18th Street NW famous for music. A century ago the same Adams Morgan storefront was the home, store, and headquarters of D.G.S. founder William Hornstein.
How a Court House Oldsmobile dealership became the Plymouth-in-the-wall brewpub Bardo Rodeo, then Dr. Dremo’s Taphouse, then a condo tower.
A few doors south of Heaven and Hell, 2321 18th Street NW in Adams Morgan was the Blue Room lounge, then Bill Thomas’s Bourbon whiskey bar, and now Death Punch.
The Big Hunt opened in 1992 inside a 1928 storefront at 1345 Connecticut Avenue NW and closed for good in 2020. Inside Dupont Circle’s three-story dive bar with the safari kitsch, the hidden patio, and the Hell’s Kitchen basement.
Before Blockbuster, the DC area had Erol’s Video Club. Turkish immigrant Erol Onaran arrived in 1960 with $16, opened a Georgetown TV shop in 1963, started renting tapes in 1980, and built the largest privately owned video chain in America before selling to Blockbuster for $40 million in 1990.
Twice in twenty years, someone climbed into a stolen aircraft and put it down on the White House South Lawn. In 1974 it was a 20-year-old Army private in a stolen Huey. In 1994 it was a depressed truck driver in a stolen Cessna. Both times, the president was away. Both times, the Secret Service had to rewrite the rules.
For most of the 1990s, Arlington was the favorite to land the Montreal Expos. There was an HKS rendering on the Potomac, a governor in support, and three candidate sites in Pentagon City. Then in eighteen months it all collapsed, and the rejected block eventually became Amazon HQ2.
Three bars in 63 years at one Georgetown address: Shamrock 1952, Winston’s 1972, Rhino Bar 1998. The full arc of 3295 M Street NW before retail took it.
Forty-five years of Georgetown’s loudest room. The Bayou opened in 1953, closed in 1998, and put U2, Dave Matthews, and a whole DC scene through its doors.
