Eighteenth and Red

Saturday night, stop #3.
Unlike Mary B., I –can– say that this is the worst place I have been to. I already thought Adams Morgan was a shithole, but THIS! Holy crap indeed.
Still following my herd of friends and acquaintances like a docile sheep, I ventured into this dark, dark place — but only after insisting that I would not step foot in it if there were a cover charge when I heard the awful, overplayed, outdated Top 40 music that was creeping out.
For some unknown reason, we went to the upper level — only to turn around and nearly voluntarily throw ourselves down the stairs. It was stifling and smelled AWFUL; there was no hint of ventilation.
We hung out downstairs for a while… until a few of us decided that it was time to go to Pharmacy Bar because we’d had enough of this nonsense. I shudder at the thought of all those people who were dressed like they were on a boat.

It’s my kickball bar. It’s dirty. It’s grimy. It’s got two levels, even though I’ve never hung out down low. This is why 18^th and Red is awesome. It’s a homecoming for all of the crazy kickballers looking to play some flip cup and take advantage of an enormous upstairs space that enables crazy dancing.
Not only is it a good boozy dive bar, but 18^th and Red has some pretty tasty food! Buddy ordered chicken fingers and fries, and I gotta say: both were amazing! they came with fantastic BBQ sauce and some less appealing dijon mustard, but either way, this place is worth a low-​expectation, drink a buncha beer, have a random good time with friends kinda place. Don’t bring visitors here. Don’t dine here on the regular. Don’t be a douche. Just come here for good, old fashioned, «we used to be in college and want desperately to pretend like we still are.»
Bottom line: decent.

All I can write about this place is… I drank and drank and drank until I passed out. That’s it… strong drinks, not too crowded, nicer end Ad MO bar!

Plenty of fist-​pumping party music. I got tanked here last night. Good times.

Ok. so I can’t say this is the worst place I have been too, but cannot say its worth trying.
I went on a Saturday night with a friend. We were walking around Admo and figured why not stop in. We went up to the second floor and the music was ok, although there was a lot of people dancing. The crowd was pretty decent, as there was a couple of cool guys we chatted it up with (there was a birthday party that night so not sure if that helped or not).
The price for drinks were pretty good and the bartenders were pretty quick. Another good plus is you can see the line of Grand Central from the windows, so if your looking to head over there later on in the night you can snipe the line and head over when it goes down.
Overall: ehhhh… wouldn’t go out of my way to go back. Most likely would have to be convinced to go back.

Eighteenth and Red is Adams Morgan on a budget. It’s a solid bar with decent prices. It is also Jumbo Slice adjacent, which is a big plus for me. Really, I think I like just being in Adams Morgan. When I get to 18^th St a little buzzed and see the martini glass lights in the lightposts, I know I’m in the right place. There’s nothing that special about the bar, but I’ve had a great time everytime I’ve been there.

This is probably my favorite place in Adams Morgan. I think it’s also one of the only Adams Morgan bars that I’ve been to where I haven’t been completely drunk off my ass (because it’s usually the first place we go).
My favorite aspect of this place is the drink prices… Five bucks for a gin and tonic in Adams Morgan is an excellent price; most of their well drinks are in this price range, which means you can have a night out and still have a moderately full wallet at the end of the night.
The bar itself is pretty meh. It’s just your average 2-​story DC bar (second floor is the best, as it doesn’t fill up as quickly). The whole place starts getting crowded around midnight or so. The bartenders are also very pleasant and they don’t look at customers like their a pain in the ass, like some bartenders in this area tend to do. Overall a good experience.

Hands down my favorite bar in Adams Morgan.
Some reasons:
1. The drinks aren’t going to drain your bank account.
2. Bartenders are friendly and attentive. They don’t really play favorites here or pay attention only to the hot girls which REALLY pisses me off.
3. Great music selection and it isn’t so loud that you go deaf, you can actually have a conversation here if you really wanted.
4. It is not a seedy bar.
5. It is relatively clean.
6. Unless I was so drunk I am imagining this, I ordered food there and it was actually decent.
7. Very, VERY close to Jumbo Slice, which I love with all of my heart after punishing my liver all night.

Bar with crappy décor and you have to 2^nd guess before sitting down because you’re afraid you might get a splinter in your butt?
SIGN ME UP! The music is awesome (both recent hits + your classic bar songs). You can probably throw your drink against the wall and no one will care because it will blend in with everything else.
I’d definitely come here again to get crunked! Holler.

18^th and Red is the only place on 18^th St. I can dance. While that’s not saying much, I will attest that the music is fantastic. Every time I’ve come here, albeit twice, I can’t stop dancing. When I try to get away to, say, talk to my non-​dancing friends, I get drawn back in. Music is a mix of 80’s, 90’s to present dance, hip-​hop, R&B, etc. Although, honestly, I can’t really remember the songs because I usually get here after hitting the bars.
I can’t even comment on the crowd that comes here, aside from the 21 year olds who have introduced themselves to me, because I don’t really care. I just come for the music.
Unlike many of the other reviewers, I actually think the upstairs is nice. Once you get past the dance floor, there are nice couches to sit on and exposed brick in the area overlooking 18^th St.
One thing about this place that has turned me sour is that last Saturday night they had a private event going on upstairs and weren’t letting anyone in to dance. On a Saturday night? My friends and I had hiked out to the hole of Adams Morgan for the sole purpose of dancing at 18^th and Red. They wouldn’t let us in until midnight. We didn’t want to take our high heels to Chief Ike’s so, we wandered in the cold through the other bars, but no other place has good music. I’m now less likely to hike in my heels out to 18^th and Red to dance for fear that my mission will not be accomplished.

This bar was pretty grimy arriving around 1am on a Friday night when most of the damage was done. The bathroom was on par with a public restroom along a busy interstate, with clogged toilet soaked with tp covering a turd the size of texas, broken paper towel dispenser, and a stench that would make Fat Bastard proud. The bar area and seating had chairs that were sticky and included surprise beer puddles on the seats. Yikes.

Eighteenth and Red seemed like an average sports bar, though they did have room upstairs for dancing which seemed like a good idea until my group realized «hey its ridiculously hot up there, maybe a crowded room full of sweat isn’t the best thing for us right now.»
The scene is pretty typical: people drinking moving from one side of the room to the other without a plan or really clue as to what they are doing and why.
I added an extra star though because the doorman was a complete gentleman even though he was being pressed hard by a preppie who «fogot his wallet» and couldn’t seem to understand he was too drunk to go inside. Kind of sucks when the method of identification is in the one place you can’t go in… oh the joys of people watching in Adams Morgan.

I was in DC for the weekend visiting some friends from college and they suggested that we go to Eighteenth and Red for a Friday night out. I guess my standards have gone up over the past 1.5 years that I’ve been out of school because this place seemed very very college-​like. Although some of the girls were dressed nicely, most of the guys were in shorts and tshirts. There was no cover (and I heard $ 1 shots) which is cool. The music was a good mix of Top 40 and classic 80’s pop, but the dance floor was just not happening. I would not recommend this place to any of my friends, but I guess if you are drunk enough, anything is fun.

It seems we end up here a lot even though I usually don’t get to cysed for this place. To me it’s a borderline dive bar down stairs, no bottle service and no real frills. The bar itself is large and fairly accommodating so that drinks don’t take to long to get. The music is standard as well, mostly modern and throwback pop hits. The ladies usually love it.
There is a small dance floor downstairs and I hear that upstairs is a big rave. When you get there early you can get draft beers for $ 2 which is pretty legit. However, there is no set end to the special, the bartender kind of decides when it ends.
While not a great place to go to I never find myself really disappointed when I leave.

A group of friends decided to continue our Saturday night trek around the Adams Morgan area with a stop at Eighteenth and Red. Being as it was Saturday night, the place was jam-​packed with people. We headed upstairs to dance, but when we approached the door we were inundated with heat and sweat… sooooooo no dice. We went back downstairs and found a small «four-​top» near the bar.
They had a small dance floor in the back of the downstairs area by the bathrooms and they do have a couple TVs behind the bar. The one thing that scared me the most about this particular bar is that they had a fire sprinkler pipe leak above the bar stool area. You could tell by the ever expanding paint boob that kept growing bigger and bigger by the fire sprinkler. I just stared at it for most of the night and wondered how would be the lucky person under it when it broke. All that was done to protect their patrons was that they stuck a trash can under the bulge.
I was unimpressed with the clientele. Not the bar’s fault, of course, but I wasn’t too down with the frat boy style. Especially the drunk one who looked like he was about to fall over any second on top of us.

Went here to check it out, it was quite compared to the other spots, but during our bar crawl through much of the night we have had to deal with crowds and lines at the bar. Because it was a little slower here we were able to walk in grab a booth, have some Patron and take a couple of shots. We were able to drink and chat comfortably without having to scream the top of our lungs and strain our ears to hear. We had quite a bit to drink at that point and wandered out into the night are kicking back. I do remember that they had a dinner menu, which looked pretty good as well, maybe worth checking out.
We were pretty buzzed when we left, and I did break bar rule #2, of don’t leave your credit card at a bar with an open tab. The next day I came in during lunch time and they gave me back my card and I was really lucky no one else went to town on it… I had a good time here from what I can remember, still with all the mixed reviews and this being well over 8 months ago, (wasn’t a Unilocaler yet…) alot could have changed since then… Still it’s worth a shot next time…

Too loud and crowded upstairs with absolutely no ventilation. Like can’t hear the person 5 inches from your face without yelling loud. Agreed with other Unilocalers that some mood lighting wouldn’t be bad. It’s pretty damn dark.
Downstairs was about 20 degrees cooler and a much thinner crowd. Probably because there was broken glass all over the floor that wasn’t cleaned up all night.
I left sweaty with my ears ringing (in November). Nothing notable here, on the lower end of the Adams Morgan choices.

A large group of us headed to 18^th and Red on a Saturday night after many, many shots at Roxanne. We were looking for something a little more energetic as the 6+ hours of drinking we had just taken part in was quickly descending into an «I’m going to pass out on this bar if I don’t hear some Kanye soon» kind of night.
A quick jaywalk across the street, quick chat with the friendly bouncer (apparently *not* an oxymoron) and we found what we were looking for. The first floor had some TV’s and bar top tables. It was too loud to talk to one another so we decided to head upstairs to the dance floor. The upstairs had some great music but it was soooooo dark. No lights whatsoever. I like my dancefloor dark, but this was ridiculous. Still, we managed to stay up there for about 2 hours so we obviously had a good time. Bathrooms were surprisingly clean and they had a good amount of seating upstairs for a little break from the all-​out dance party.
I’m not sure what this place is like during the week, but I can tell you that on a Saturday night it’s got a good, diverse crowd and some good jams… they just need to add a bit of mood lighting.

I’m rating this place based on the Thursday comedy night «Bomb Shelter.» We went last week and I laughed my half-​breed butt off. These comedians, though already the cream of the local DC comedy crop, killed in a way that I’ve never seen them do before. Though every comic brings something to the line-​up, Diana Saez is one of my favorites. The only female, she does dirty vag-​centric jokes that make the women in the audience explode into cackles. Comedy hot and served rare, just the way I like it.
The atmosphere is cozy and cool at the same time. Great couches, a brick wall, good space, perfect for a comedy club. 18^th and Red offers patrons drink specials like $ 4 rails, $ 3 blue moons, and $ 2 off house wines.
Funny fact: look at the «RED» part of the sign as you’re walking up – the script makes it look like a giant phallus :).
Find me there on Thursday nights!

This is a great place to grab dinner before a night of drinking. This place has great service and awesome TVs if you are looking for a place to watch sports. My favorite food? The wings and the mac and cheese. I hear the filet and the burger is also pretty good.