Eyebar -- Not Setting a High Bar

Let me preface this review with the honest truth—I am now thirty years old. Please do not interpret the following as a jealous rebuke of a younger social scene—its not. Because while it is true that I am over-the-hill in terms of the DC club scene, I am not mourning or trying to recapture my lost twenties. Nevertheless, my review of Eyebar, reflects a coming of age.

Nothing can spur the regression of humanity like the combination of alcohol, drugs, dance music, dim light, and attractive people. This is the lethal combination I found at Eyebar last Saturday Night. I arrived with some friends who were meeting THEIR friends who had been invited to the birthday party by a DIFFERENT friend’s girlfriend. Amazingly, this translated to me being on a list and jumping the line. Despite my quick and painless entrance, I did take time to notice a loitering group of patrons being asked to “please not smoke on the red carpet.” I elected not to broadcast that the carpet was already coming apart at the seams out of fear that the bouncer might revoke my newly acquired VIP status.

We proceeded upstairs and into an uncomfortable amalgam of intoxication and overly-active hormones. I made a beeline for the bar, hoping there was a concoction for my eyebar ailment. My girlfriend stopped to mention her fondness of the “slide-by”—an overly-utilized tactic by a groping male and apparently an accepted form of “club frotteurism.” Meanwhile, I watched as a guy dressed up as a traffic cop locked lips with not one, but two women in the span of five minutes. Elbowing and nudging my way to the bathroom, dodging the dirty-dancing grinders, and being careful not to slip on the floor saturated with sweat, booze, and god-knows-what-else, I saw a woman with her head under the sink. My first interpretation was that she was sick, a scene that I had wholly come to expect. But then I realized she was drinking water—“wheezing the juice” Brendan Fraser style in the epic great Encino Man. Her actions made sense when I later witnessed someone at the bar order water. The bartender returned with a bottle and a tab.

We couldn’t stay more than two drinks. Eyebar was too much. Too much grinding. Too much indiscretion. Too much sweat. Too much moral decrepitness. In all fairness, we arrived well after midnight, so it might not have been an accurate representation. And, I have heard that earlier hours boast jazz and a slightly older happy hour crowd. In any case, I found myself on Saturday Night, a fish out of water. But I am probably just getting old.