Hello there, Capitol Hill! It’s late March. This means several things:
1. Spring is tomorrow (!)
2. It’s going to snow tomorrow (??!?!?!?)
Click to see the full-sized Bar Madness 2015 bracket. Behold its beauty and good luck to all players!
3. Around the country, people who could not possibly care less about college sports are scrambling to fill out brackets with names of colleges they didn’t even know existed (I’m rooting for you, Coastal Carolina Chanticleers, despite the fact that your mascot is like staring into a terrible nightmare circa 2003 for me!) because it’s MARCH MADNESS and apparently, it’s glorious. Many publications will also be offering you their own versions because, as previously stated, MARCH MADNESS. I read somewhere in the Jezebel comments that if you don’t know how brackets work, there must be something wrong with you, but that’s what I get for reading the comments, amirite? After all, not loving the NCAA tournament has to be the sign of a sick mind. For more commentary on just how disgusting amazing the NCAA is, you should hear what John Oliver has to say about it. It’s okay if he says it: he has a British accent.
Anyway, here at The Hill is Home we’re no different. What started in 2013 as a sudden, dawning awareness that maybe we had enough bars in the neighborhood to play a little game resembling March Madness has now turned into an official tournament with sixty-four entrants. Yes, that’s right: there are SIXTY-FOUR establishments on Capitol Hill that boast a full liquor license and offer some sort of happy hour special. There are more than 64, actually, but a few were eliminated thanks to a set of tenuous rules which I’m sure you guys out there will find hollow and just not very compelling, especially if we left out your favorite watering hole.
In picking these arbitrary sixty-four, we tried to keep within the boundaries (ha, ha!) of the Hill: no NW addresses, and nothing north of H Street NE. Other than that, almost any restaurant that serves alcohol worked for us, although I trust you readers out there to point out that somehow we left off your favorite bar and therefore you’ll never be reading us again. I’m sure we’ll miss your eyeballs lovingly caressing the screen and everything, but we couldn’t have possibly screwed up worse this year than we did the year we left off the winner from the previous year.
(That, dear readers, was last year, and it really did happen.)
Anyway! Today, you get to pick your favorites in our Round of 64 by voting below between now and March 22, 11:59pm. Since it would be deeply unfair to seed our bars according to awesomeness because they are all great, we simply entered all the names into our trusty phone app (We used Bracketmaker Pro! We love you, Bracketmaker Pro! Send us stuff!) and pushed the “scramble” button, so you know you’re getting some sweet algorithm goodness. Do not read too much into these matchups: it’s all math.
Without further ado, YOUR 2015 BAR MADNESS BARS! VOTE, KVETCH, SHARE!
1. Park Tavern Vs. Biergarten Haus
2. Osteria Morini Vs. Star & Shamrock
4. Atlas Arcade Vs. Sol Mexican Grill
5. Lavagna Vs. Kelly’s Irish Times
7. Capitol Lounge Vs. DC Harvest
8. Tunnicliff’s Vs. Belga Café
11. Pacifico Cantina Vs. H Street Country Club
13. Gordon Biersch Vs. Justin’s Cafe
@Agua301WDC vs @sonomadc
15. Hank’s on the Hill Vs. Tune Inn
16.Le Grenier Vs. Molly Malone’s
17. Little Miss Whiskey’s Vs. Bistro Cacao
19. Vendetta Vs. Boundary Road
20. Medium Rare Vs. Banana Café
24. Smith Commons Vs. Rose’s Luxury
27. Driftwood Kitchen Vs. Beuchert’s Saloon
28. Sticky Rice Vs. Willie’s Brew & Que
29. The Dubliner Vs. Boxcar Tavern
30. Ambar Vs. Jimmy Valentine’s
31. The Queen Vic Vs. Hawk ‘n’ Dove
32. Mr. Henry’s Vs. Acqua al 2
We will be sharing matchups throughout the day and tagging the players on Twitter. Make sure you alert your favorite bar still stuck in the 20th Century that we’re playing, so they can get the love they deserve!
Even the NCAA lets the Black schools “play in”…By your own rules, you have a bar that’s not located in the geographic boundaries, but Rose’s Dream and Elroy can’t even play in Dayton!? #ftssb
How could you leave out Granville Moore’s???