I will be in the DC/Baltimore area this weekend

[MgoBlue-LightSpecial]

Going to see Belle and Sebastian/Broken Social Scene on Saturday, and hitting up a Nats game on the following Sunday.

I've only made a couple visits to the east coast, and have been to neither city.

I'm staying at a friend's place downtown Crackmore on Friday and Saturday, and a hotel on Sunday in the DC area. Any tips on good places to booze it up/eat would be fantasticle.

[Bizzarofelice]

Belle and Sebastian... Nats game

sounds like a good time.

Stay around the capital. Great neighborhood.

[L45B]

I was out there for the first time a couple weeks ago for my buddy's bachelor party. We rented a couple houseboats and spent the weekend on the Chesapeake. We docked right in downtown B-more Saturday night, but I was too shitfaced to remember where the hell I was. I think we went to Fell's Point (?) one night, and that was pretty cool.

[BBMarley]

Drinking? Go to Fell's Point- alot of hot college ass running around. As far as eating- go to the Phillips Seafood house at the Inner Harbor. Great food, good drinks...

[BSmack]

Take a Duck Tour.



;)

[socal]

Blow off the Nats game and meet Zyclone for the World Cup final.

[Smackie Chan]

If you're gonna try the local favorites, have crabcakes in B'more. Unfortunately, DC isn't really known for any specialty foods, except the half-smoke - a glorified hot dog, somewhat similar to a Louisiana hot link, sold by street vendors. Ben's Chili Bowl on U St. near 12th St. NW is generally regarded as the best place to get half-smokes. Not the best neighborhood in the District, though. Might wanna bone up on your ebonics.

[Screw_Michigan]

Belle and Sebastian... Nats game

sounds like a good time.

Stay around the capital. Great neighborhood.

the neighborhood where 9:30 and howard are located is pretty happening as well.

[Ken]

The Metro is your friend. Use it.

[MgoBlue-LightSpecial]

Blow off the Nats game and meet Zyclone for the World Cup final.

Actually, he's getting me tickets to the game.

He and Alfonso Soriano are bros, and they've got a mansion full of hotties lined up for my friends and I after the game.

[PSUFAN]

If you've never been to the Smithsonian, I highly recommend it. It's really amazing - worth a look.

[MgoBlue-LightSpecial]

S'what I keep hearing from folks.

[Tom In VA]

Used to be a place called Hoagates in SW that had good seafood, eat down in SW by the Wharf and you'll find a good place on the river and then hit the game.

Ken is right, and he's wrong, depends on where you go. For the game, the Metro is most definitely your friend. For night-life, if you're in Georgetown you can drive and hunt/pay for parking. OR do the Metro deal and walk across the bridge from Rosslyn

Archibalds (15th Street), Camelot (2? st), NW
JP's, Good Guys, NW - Georgetown up Wisonsin Ave.

9:30 club is good, NW.

And the old Grog and Tankard if it's still standing is up ... conveniently next to JP's.

Have fun.



Daytime, PSU is right and the WWII Memorial is pretty intense.

[Smackie Chan]

If you've never been to the Smithsonian, I highly recommend it. It's really amazing - worth a look.

A good look might take two weeks or more; it's fuggen HUGE! The American History Museum is closed (I believe) for renovation. The basement of the National Archives (not part of the Smithsonian) got flooded last week, and is also closed, or at least was last I heard. The Air & Space Museum is cool, and there's an even more impressive annex to it out near Dulles Airport, the Udvar-Hazy Museum, that has an SR-71, the Enola Gay, an SST, and a Shuttle prototype among its many exhibits. The newest addition to the Smithsonian, the American Indian Museum, is OK, though I wasn't as impressed with it as with some of the others, such as the Natural History Museum. The best part of the Smithsonian is that it's free, although parking at Udvar-Hazy is about $12.

For clubs, the 9:30 and Black Cat are happenin'.

And Ken is right - use Metro.

[Diego in Seattle]

I would say that both Smithsonian museums for American History & Aerospace each require at least 3/4 of a day to see everything. A definite must-see.

The other must see is Arlington National Cemetary.

[PSUFAN]

The best part of the Smithsonian is that it's free

My thought exactly. As we all can attest, the museum/park thing can be expensive. [zy]Not that I'm adverse to peeling off a few benjis,[/zy] but it's just amazing that there are so many great museums there, all free. The whole setup kinda makes you believe that our tax monies are sometimes spent wisely...

[socal]

A good look might take two weeks or more; it's fuggen HUGE!

Fixed.



:P

[Smackie Chan]

A good look might take two weeks or more; it's fuggen HUGE!

Fixed.



:P

You might be right, although I haven't been to the Stinkstar Stabber Museum. As far as you know, anyway.

[MgoBlue-LightSpecial]

Well, I have to say we had a pretty rackable time. Everything I've ever heard from folks about Baltimore has been extremely negative at worst, and "boring" at best.

Wasn't the case for us.

I guess it helps to know people who live in the area that can show you around to all the hot spots and such. We met up with friends in Canton, and pretty much did bar crawls throughout the Fell's Point and Canton districts. Most of the bars were packed, and the ones that were bare were selling $1.50 domestics. That was a nice surprise. We came back Friday and Saturday nights piss drunk, so missions accomplished there.

As per usual, we opted to miss the opening act (Ted Leo) to drink heavily in the hotel, which was within a free shuttle's distance to Merriweather. Our goal was to arrive right around the time Broken Social Scene came on (who I wanted to see almost as much), but alas, their set was over when we arrived. Of course, the clueless ticket-taker douches at the gate can never confirm nor deny this, so when we stepped foot inside, we assumed they had yet to take the stage.

B&S was amazing. I bought the tickets like two months ago, and for some season, thought I had purchased pavilion seats. We get to the venue and whip out the tickets and I realize we have general admission on the floor. So for the majority of the show we were about 5-10 feet from stage left, and got to shake Stuart Murdoch's hand after the show. And though it wasn't a hard rock show, we still did a good enough job pissing off all the uptight indie dorks in our drunken states. For my money the song selection could've been better (not a single tune from Tigermilk), but the show was good enough to leave with no bitterness about that.

The Nats game was quite memorable. We show up at the stadium ready to buy tickets on the spot, and before we can even reach the box office, some lady comes up to us and hands us two $40.00 lower field, 1st base side tickets. Apparently their friends weren't going to make it out, so we got to take advantage. And that was sweet because we were planning on just getting a couple $11 upper deckers and then moving down. The game? It was a game full of pitcher meltdowns and giant blasts. There were 4 or 5 HRs hit, including a late inning upper decker by Mike Piazza, who trotted in from the bench and belted the second pitch to give the Pads the lead and the eventual win.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in DC just walking around and checking out the sites. That evening we went to a bar called the Dubliner, which I presumed was just your standard Americanized Irish-themed bar, like a Blarney Stone or something. To our surprise the place was actually filled with Scottish people (there were about four), or the "Scotch" as smackaholic would say, singing along to Irish folk songs from an Irish folk singer hired by the bar. Since Belle and Sebastian is Scottish, that seemed a fitting opportunity to tell the middle-aged Mick to play some for us, but he dismissed our tongue-in-cheek request and kept on with his standards for a jar full of singles and a few pops.

All-in-all, a very solid time, and I will definitely be going back to Baltimore in the not-so-distant future.