“Is it okay if she sits here?”
These words don't make sense until you put them in the context of bars and eateries sprawling Washington DC.I first went to DC when I was 13 years old. It was the summer before eighth grade, it when I cut my hair into a pixie cut and was mistaken for a boy on multiple occasions. Of course, the button-down collared shirts didn’t help, but it was the time J.Crew became my religion and Annie Hall became the unofficial mascot of my burgeoning pretension.
That summer I saw fireflies, I saw the White House, I had tea at a museum I don’t remember, I saw memorials for lots of dead white men, but they are all pale—both literally and figuratively-- in comparison to my culinary awakening at the tender age of 13.
My first happy hour was at a restaurant in DC that I have now forgotten the name of. I sat on a high chair looking at the Urban Outfitters across the street. I should clarify this is not an infant's high chair but a soapbox for the drunk that encircles those high tables in the bar areas of restaurants.
It was there I learned of the pseudo-hipsters' plot conspiring to run corporate America, and what makes a perfect chicken wing: tenderness, sauce and chicken to bone ratio. There’s a science I’m still exploring, an equation I’m working on, but I've solidified some advice for the chicken wing purveyors of America: don’t skimp on the crudité and blue cheese dressing.
I went to my first happy hour before I could even experience the hour’s adjective by imbibing discounted cocktails. That summer was marked by multiple happy hour jaunts with my mother and grandmother, half-priced alcohols I have yet to consume, and the novel concept that I could have more than three meals a day if what I ate was served on a toothpick.
That summer began a yearly tradition of discounted hot wings, bar hopping, and multiple meals in succession. The happy hour became the essence of summer at a time when my adolescent precociousness was in full force; I had already abandoned swimming lessons and pools, and what I traded it for had the fantastic glimmer of bargain and taste.
I don’t remember a bar in DC that went untouched, a quesadilla unsplit or any appetizer in the entire district that was not sampled, devoured or inhaled by a Golden Girls-like trifecta of varying generations. But what I do remember is the unofficial anthem of every trip since: “Is she allowed to sit there?” my mother would ask pointing to the bar and looking at me.
My mother, grandmother and I continue our summer happy hour jaunts six years later. I still can't drink legally, but Shirley Temples and half priced appetizers are a combination that can't be tampered with just quite yet, and maybe one summer, my mother’s question will be obsolete.
