Vanishing Georgetown

[Anonymous]

This thread is so timely - we were just discussing old, edgy Georgetown at dinner tonight. It makes me sad to remember all the cool, original haunts from the 80s that I used to cruise with my friends as a teen. We lived in NoVA and it was a big deal to head "downtown" to bar hop, shop, eat. Such a great period in my life and I miss it.

Georgetown is just not the same at all anymore.

[Anonymous]

Cafe Med on m street
An small antique shop on lower Wisconsin where the owner sat outside (odd women with a black bouffant hair-do)
OG Abercrombie
The Bayou
Houston’s

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How about the original Georgetown head shop, Electro Max?

(Plus the really bad fake IDs they pedaled).

my

I got one of those from there back in the day!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Biograph theater!

For sure!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A French restaurant on one of those streets that crosses the canal. My friend’s menu caught fire from the table candle.

Was it Tout Va Bien? I used to wait tables there. It was next to Paper Moon I think? It's all a haze now. Used to finish my shift, then we would go out dancing at The Vault or what was the other dance club like it? The 5th Column?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Might've been considered Foggy Bottom but my best memories are from nights at the 21st Amendment

First bar I ever went to as a freshman from the Midwest! Thought it was the coolest and “so DC!!” Oh and Winston’s! The tiki bar at Thirds was the greatest. JFK Junior once stepped on my friend’s foot there. Our brush with greatness!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cafe la Ruche!

I lived in Clarendon in 1991 and we used to walk there all the time. I thought it was so elegant.

Clarendon was basically a wasteland in 1991. My girlfriend lived there. We'd rent moves from Erols. There was not much else to do there.

Definitely, but an interesting one, in a grungy kind of way. I lived with my college boyfriend in an in-law suite in a house on N. Edgewood next to a car dealership on the main drag—Wilson. We signed the rental agreement without realizing our place would be bathed with security floodlights every night. We went to Whiteys, Pollo Rico, and Summers a lot and to a little French restaurant on Wilson that had a bird symbol. We missed Bardo’s and that whole scene by just a couple years.

Whitey's was the best.

That is all.

[Anonymous]

Georgetown Park Mall - when it was actually a mall with an open atrium and a sushi bar downstairs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At the risk of sounding old, I thought I’d start a list of places I loved in Georgetown, but which have since disappeared.

Anyone remember (and can add to the list)

- Au Pied de Cochon?

Safety concerns in gtown now. Murder two days ago on m street in public. Shot in the head. Plus homeless all over the place in tents make it less appealing to many. They don’t want to go there anymore. Bethesda seems more safe and appealing.

[Anonymous]

Did anyone mention the Red Balloon toy store? How about the sticker store in the basement of Georgetown Park?

Next to the Key Theatre was a Movie Madness poster store where it was so cool to buy posters. Then we would go to Roy Rogers to hang out.

There was a fern bar on Wisconsin avenue where all the cast from St Elmo's Fire was eating in the window table and we keep walking up and down the street.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did anyone mention the Red Balloon toy store? How about the sticker store in the basement of Georgetown Park?

Next to the Key Theatre was a Movie Madness poster store where it was so cool to buy posters. Then we would go to Roy Rogers to hang out.

There was a fern bar on Wisconsin avenue where all the cast from St Elmo's Fire was eating in the window table and we keep walking up and down the street.

OMG, I'd forgotten about the movie store and the sticker store!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread is so timely - we were just discussing old, edgy Georgetown at dinner tonight. It makes me sad to remember all the cool, original haunts from the 80s that I used to cruise with my friends as a teen. We lived in NoVA and it was a big deal to head "downtown" to bar hop, shop, eat. Such a great period in my life and I miss it.

Georgetown is just not the same at all anymore.

Your post makes me smile; so well put.

I am OP.

[Anonymous]

While I do appreciate walking down memory lane and we often look at the rear view mirror with much nostalgia.. but framing the current Georgetown as "going down hill" and the old Georgetown as much better days... idk, there were literally 15 year old getting trashed at bars and throwing up on the street during that time.

Now I appreciate it, I could get served wearing my Catholic school uniform, great memories. I could drink on Georgetown's campus and meet college guy, woohoo! (hello statutory rape)

But let's not white wash it too much.

[Anonymous]

Reading these posts is making me miss 1980's G'Town. Pardon me while I go re-watch St. Elmo's Fire

[Anonymous]

Britches
Hats in the Belfry
F Scotts

And there was a magazine store that used to sell all these lovely international magazines, below street level store. Forget the name.