Mr. Smith’s
3104 M St.
Carded: at the door
Dress: It’s a G-town bar, I suggest a polo shirt and khakis
Cover: Nada

The weird thing about being a newly ordained 21-year-old on winter break is that you don’t have to hide the fact that you’re wasted. It’s 3 a.m., you’re drunk, and there’s nothing anyone can say about it. My mom used to be pissed when I would fall through the front door, crawl to the kitchen and start micro-waving hot pockets. Now she’s is just extra loud in the morning. Still, being drunk at home is not nearly as fun as at school, mostly because parents are not nearly as cool about being sexiled as roommates are.

So as much as I love break, I was happy to be back in D.C a few days earlier than most of my classmates. With the G-dub crowd still in Long Island and Georgetown already in session, I decided M Street was the perfect destination for some pre-semester partying.

As we passed Garret’s and saw the line outside stretching six doors down I came to a profound realization: Georgetown kids suck. There are a billion bars and Georgetown and they wait hours in the cold to get in the one that is completely boring. “Honestly, it’s not that cool” I shouted to them and headed into Mr. Smith’s.

The bottom line on Mr. Smith’s is that the cool crap outweighs the bad crap. Cool crap includes, in no particular order …

1) Phat drink specials. The best one is $1 icehouses on Saturdays and $2 Dos Equis on Thursdays. You can get bombed for 10 bucks and that’s cool no matter where you are.

2) The piano man. He’s not as hot as Tori Amos, who once played at the same bar, but he is fun and he’ll let you sing even if you don’t know the words. His best covers are “County Road,” “Sweet Home Alabama” and, you guessed it, “Piano Man.” So put a dollar in his jar and help him pay his kid’s tuition.

3) While the main bar is really crowded, there is a lovely sitting area with glass ceilings and green foliage in the back, prefect to toss back a few without worrying about spillage. Apparently there is an upstairs, featuring local rock bands every Friday and Saturday, but I’ve never seen it.

Bad crap, if you haven’t guessed,

1)Georgetown kids,

2) Hot and crowded and

3) this “serving area” they have at the end of the bar. The waitresses yell at you if you stand there, but it is impossible not to. By the end of the night, I almost threw down with some snotty waitress, but I decided it wasn’t worth getting thrown out of yet another bar.