Sequoia: Waterfrontin'

It’s hard to draw comparisons between Sequoia the bar and Sequoia the tree. Sure, both are huge and often visited by tourists. They both provide sweet nectar when the season is right. You could, but probably don’t want to, try to drive you car through the middle of them. (And I wouldn't recommend trying to ride your horse through either of them either.) Although the similarities end there, I’m happy to say that one of my new favorite bars in DC shares a name with one of my all-time-favorite trees (the others include: Charlie Brown Christmas, Blue Spruce, and the American Bladdernut – look it up).

Most of us A-to-Zers arrived around 7pm. We were greeted by a mammoth outdoor seating area, buckets of beer, a gentle breeze off the Potomac, and Max and his coworkers, who had been there for several hours celebrating the end of training. As you can imagine, they had quite the headstart. Max kept asking me to take photos of him attempting handstands on the railing that separated us from the river. I said no, and tactfully reminded him that Sequoia is a "classy joint." Max was disappointed, so Andrea G. cheered him up by teaching us all a game she likes to play called "Gay or European?", whereby you try to figure out whether passersby are, well, Gay or European. She also pointed out that this game is much more fun during tourist season because of all the fanny packs. She was right.

Speaking of clothing, it seemed like a full 90% of our bar hoppers opted to wear some form of pink to the party. Weird. Must have been because we were all trying to fit in with the Georgetown regulars. Or something. Anyway, we enjoyed a quite pleasant few hours at Sequoia under the multitude of lights strewn among the trees, sampled the menu that was light years better than Tony and Joe's next door (that place is garbage). But as the river breeze faded, we decided it was time to move on. The idea of a "double feature" was thrown around, but our scouts sadly reported back that both Saloun and Mr. Smiths were dead. Cutting our losses, we moved on to J. Paul's, which has a nightly happy hour special starting at 10pm -- $1 beers and $1 sliders/oysters.

Our group was still going strong, but had to split up to separate tables once we arrived at J. Pauls. My table ordered some sliders and beers, and slowly sipped and savored our order. We were amazed and appalled, however, to witness what occurred one table over. Seems our friends had not eaten in 82 days, for the 4 of them ordered 36 oysters, 12 hotwings, 12 chicken tenders, 12 crab cake sliders, 4 chicken quesadillas, 8 beers, and 1 bucket to vomit in. I do not exaggerate -- I wrote it all down in my handy journalists notepad. Man, I hate oysters.

Of course, I can't tease the oyster shuckers too much, for once we vacated J. Pauls, a group of us went right across the street to Johnny Rockets for some late night chili-covered-everything. This was a mistake, but awesome at the time. Conversation was pleasant, and we were proud to learn that Jimmy P was coming up on a full year with his current iPhone, a feat to be proud of for sure, given his penchant for losing/having women of questionable morals steal them. He even contemplated having a one-year birthday celebration for his phone, but we convinced him this might be disrespectful to those that didn't make it.

All-star of the evening: Jimmy P, for being a constant enjoyable presence at these happy hours, for holding on to his current phone for nearly a year, and because his previous all-star selection had to be overturned due to NCAA recruiting violations.