For a moment, just as the holiday season kicked into gear, New Year’s Eve was beginning to look somewhat normal. Other Half announced a big party at its Ivy City brewery in D.C., with a DJ and four hours of unlimited pours of its popular hazy IPAs for $150. Silver Lyan, the basement bar at the Riggs Hotel named the Best New American Cocktail Bar at last year’s Spirited Awards, planned to turn into a disco with dancing and an open bar until 2 a.m., also for $150. Barca, the popular wine bar on Alexandria’s waterfront in Virginia, pitched a soiree with appetizers, a paella buffet, a pair of drink tickets and “the best seat in the house” for Old Town’s annual firework display for $159.
Then the latest wave of coronavirus cases swept across the region, intermittently shutting down bars and restaurants for days or weeks at a time, and making customers more cautious about their plans to ring in 2022. All three of those big-ticket parties were canceled in the last 10 days, along with public celebrations in Vienna, Annapolis and Alexandria, though the latter two cities will still host fireworks displays. The bars aren’t shutting completely: Silver Lyan and Barca will open Dec. 31 with a la carte menus instead of open bars, while Other Half has scaled back its hours to noon to 7 p.m., with special New Year’s beer offerings.
Others chose to pull the plug altogether. The Black Cat announced Dec. 20 that two staff members had tested positive for the coronavirus. On Tuesday, the well-known D.C. rock club canceled its annual New Year’s Eve Ball with Peaches O’Dell, and will be closed until mid-January to install a new HVAC system with improved ventilation and filtration. The sold-out Peace Ball at the Busboys and Poets in Columbia, Md., featuring activist Angela Davis and authors Ibram X. Kendi and Michael Eric Dyson, was postponed “due to the surge in Covid-19 cases and scarcity of appointments for Covid-19 PCR tests,” according to its website.
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The truth is even before we had heard of the omicron variant, this was shaping up to be a more low-key New Year’s Eve than in previous years. For example, St. Vincent would be a prime candidate to host one of the best New Year’s Eve parties in town. The Park View wine bar, which has a back garden with seats for more than 200 customers, opened in late 2020, and added live music and an attractive indoor lounge this year. But on Dec. 31, St. Vincent is planning to operate no differently than they would Jan. 31 or Aug. 31. “The reason we’re just doing a usual day of service is because we’re all exhausted,” co-founder Peyton Sherwood says. “It’s been a long year.”
Sherwood says regular customers have been asking about New Year’s Eve, and when they’re told it’s business as usual, most are into the idea. “We close at midnight anyway,” he explains. “I think we’ll stay open until 12:30 to do a toast with everyone who’s there,” but that’s the extent of it. And after the last customer is out the door, St. Vincent is closing for two weeks to give employees a well-deserved break.
Whether you view New Year’s Eve as a cause for celebration, an “Amateur Night” full of sloppy revelers in overcrowded bars or somewhere in between, there’s no denying that it’s one of the busiest and most profitable nights of the year for bars and restaurants. Until last year, that is, when a combination of curfews and travel bans forced businesses across the region to stop serving alcohol at 10 p.m., and the public had to welcome 2021 at home.
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As 2022 approaches, the hospitality industry has been weighing how to return to New Year’s parties, balancing safety protocols with a desire to celebrate the end of another year. For some, it’s keeping things casual. Others are almost back to where they were pre-pandemic — with slight changes, of course.
Ian Hilton, who operates Players Club,El Rey and other bars across D.C. with his brother Eric, won’t be charging admission or organizing special events at any of their locations this year. “Second weird NYE in a row,” he wrote in an email, explaining that this year has seen an increase in private events. “Let’s hope for a return to amateur night shenanigans next year.” Mykl Wu, the director of communications for the Hiltons’ empire, adds that there are two factors at play: “Overall, especially with the new variant out there, we’re not doing anything out of the ordinary” that might to lead to overcrowding, Wu says. “The fact that it’s on a Friday also helps with the decision, as people who are into going out on NYE probably head out without extra incentives.”
Acting as if New Year’s Eve is just another night isn’t a novel concept — neighborhood spots, such as All Souls, Boundary Stone and Galaxy Hut, usually shun cover charges and anything fancier than a free glass of cheap bubbly at midnight. But this year, with the pandemic on bar owners’ minds, avoiding big parties is an even more attractive concept. Brittany Carlson, a veteran publicist who represents Jack Rose, Calico and other D.C. bars, says she sees bars moving toward free New Year’s Eve events because they have “fewer moving parts” in case something goes wrong: What if a customer, spooked by rising case numbers, cancels and demands a refund? What if a customer catches the coronavirus and has to isolate? What if an employee tests positive or has a close contact test positive, and the whole bar has to close for an uncertain period of time, as was the case with a number of bars this month?
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In lieu of all-you-can-drink affairs, Carlson says, her clients have moved toward events she dubs “chill but with fun elements.” Jack Rose has jettisoned the prix fixe happy hours and ticketed parties to focus on special whiskey flights picked by owner Bill Thomas, a menu of Old Fashioned cocktails and optional bottomless champagne, while Calico has stocked up on board games, so customers can gather with friends over hot cocktails on the patio in Blagden Alley.
Lulu’s Winegarden, which Carlson co-owns, is “business as usual,” she says, with two-hour table reservations throughout the night and some special offers, such as $35 bottles of sparkling wine, and a happy hour with discounted food and $9 cocktails that runs from 10 p.m. to midnight. Part of the reason they’re keeping it casual, Carlson says, is to keep up with customer trends: “People are not planning ahead as much” as they were earlier in the pandemic, when reservations were a must. “We’re seeing fewer reservations in advance and a lot more walk-ins,” at Lulu’s, she says, even though overall numbers are the same.
For Gordon Banks, the co-owner of several D.C. restaurants and Silver Spring’s Quarry House Tavern, each business is different, but “we’re looking at it like a normal night.” Reservations at Little Coco’s are on the earlier side and have more families, Banks says, while at Quarry House, “New Year’s Eve is not a big deal, and we like it like that.”
Where there are specials, they’re somewhat toned down. Both Bar Charley and El Chucho have an open bar, for example, but all tickets come with seated reservations. Admission to Bar Charley includes a three-course dinner, and El Chucho is offering unlimited tacos. “We used to do just an open bar,” Banks says, but this year, instead of having people pack in together, they’re taking an approach similar to the “fairly robust bottomless brunch” that the two restaurants offer each week, with some tables removed “to give people more space,” he says. Outdoor seating is also available for those that prefer it. (Banks says the bar area at Bar Charley will be open for walk-ins, without the option of an open bar, because “usually it’s just people on their way somewhere else” who stop in for just a drink or two.)
Not everyone is bearish on the holiday. “I think we’re on track for pretty normal New Year’s Eve,” says Fritz Brogan, whose bars include the Admiral, Hawthorne and two branches of Mission. “All of our New Year’s Eve ticket sales are tracking where we were roughly in 2019 and past years.” Mission Navy Yard, a sprawling two-level establishment with a 150-foot bar, is offering the same deal from two years ago: an open bar from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. with DJs and an appetizer buffet, though tickets top out at $150 this year instead of $125.
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“I think a lot of people have a pent-up demand for New Year’s Eve parties” after the disappointment of 2020, Brogan says. “People want to return to normalcy, but obviously things have changed a little bit,” including lowering capacity to ease social distancing and increasing the use of outdoor spaces with heaters and cocktail service. “It’s something a lot of people and groups have asked about,” Brogan says. “In past years, people weren’t really outside on New Year’s Eve — it was just too cold.”
Look around, and you’ll find evidence of that desire to get back to 2019-style events: Wildly popular ’90s cover band White Ford Bronco headlines the 9:30 Club. Duke’s Grocery in Foggy Bottom has four hours of open bar and live music with the Rock Creek Kings, and Flash is bringing back its marathon Brand New Day dance party, with nonstop music from 9 p.m. Friday until 6 a.m. Sunday. But for the most part, if you’re going out on New Year’s Eve, it might feel like just any other night — a fitting way to end a strange year that often felt as if it would never end.
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