Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Trusty's

Sometimes, when nothing else is working, you gotta go down to Trusty’s on 14th and Penn SE. The place is about a year and a half old and sits comfortably apart from the 8th Street corridor and the rest of the bars on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The bar has a sort of Route 66 service station theme which basically works. Old gas and oil cans hang from a ceiling propped up by license plate speckled walls. In the bathrooms, you’ll find photos of car crashes which are an especially nice touch.

The bar is rather small and they serve you beer in mason jars. On the wall behind the bar there’s a nice jukebox with download potential. Past the bar, you’ll find a few tables with board games stacked on them and really, what's better than drunk Jenga?
Answer: Drunk Candyland
Rowdy and Boullionui have issued Trivial Pursuit challenges to other tables, but wisely, none of them have accepted.

The menu has basically what you’d expect at a bar like this—hamburgers, nachos, half-smokes etc… The burgers are acceptable, the nachos are cold (they don’t put them in the oven) and should only be ordered after you’re drunk.

One of the pleasures of Trusty’s is that it’s rarely too crowded and there usually seems to be a friendly vibe amongst the patrons. Nobody trying to impress anyone else with their fancy job or degrees, just people looking to drink, talk, listen to tunes, and maybe watch a game or two. The crowd is reflective of the area to an extent—white gentrifiers, black folks growing accustomed to them, and other hill peeps who have made the pilgrimage to the East Side.

Put simply: We dig this place. Worth the walk (when you pass "Nina's Place" you're almost there) or metro ride (it's at the Potomac Ave Metro stop) from the main hill drag, but please, don’t everyone go down there at once and ruin it for us.

- Bouillonnui and Rowdy Chowder

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