“You don’t want to meet your future wife at the Hawk ‘n’ Dove,” an old friend once told me. “But you do have to bring her here.” In the shadow of the Capitol Dome, the Hawk was never an elegant or chic bar. It wasn’t hip. Instead, the Hawk ‘n’ Dove was the highest form of saloon: a living room away from home.
At the end of the month, the Hawk’s doors will close, and new proprietors will demolish the interior, leaving only 44 years of memories — some of which are a bit clouded by the effects of affordably priced domestic beer.
The Hawk’s employees and patrons got the news last week. Wally Mlyniec, was an original waiter when the pub opened. He had just graduated Georgetown Law School, and was making some extra cash while fighting some losing causes: trying to stave off Mike Gravel’s primary challenge to Alaska Sen. Ernest Gruenig (one of two senators to oppose the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) and working the Chicago convention for George McGovern.
Mlyniec, now a professor at Georgetown Law, describes the Hawk in its infancy as almost another radical outpost of highly educated idealist liberals. Co-founder Stuart Long, a Gonzaga High and George Washington Law School alumnus, describes himself as “far-left” even today. (He and his Gonzaga contemporary Pat Buchanan limit their conversations to foreign policy.)
Thirty years later, my Hawk ‘n’ Dove gang, which came here in 1999 for free tacos and $4 pitchers of Bud Ice, was less Bobby Kennedy and Ernest Gruenig, and more Tom Coburn and Pat Toomey.
One of the Hawk’s two back rooms has portraits of the first 25 presidents or so. We’d take over as many of the two-person tables as possible, as friends poured in once they got off work, and sneaked out to try to meet a girl somewhere with shinier decor and more expensive drinks.
As waiter James fueled the wide-ranging debate with a steady supply of pitchers — he didn’t have to wait for us to order — I would berate National Republican Senatorial Committee staffers as unprincipled party operatives, and they would mock my confident prediction that Dick Gephardt would win the 2004 Iowa caucuses.
Last week, the bar’s management handed out an essay that stated, “The Hawk really has been a news bar, as writers from the old Washington Star to future MSNBC talking heads ate and drank there.” One friend referred to our expanding and shifting Happy Hours, featuring journalists, lobbyists, staffers, and think tankers, as “salons.”
Over the decade I’ve been there, the Hawk has changed. They removed the pool table after too many fights. An upstairs dance floor was incongruously added. On autumn and winter Sundays, with half-priced burgers, the place used to be a Cleveland Browns bar.
“No offense to the people of that fine city,” manager Paul Meagher told me, “but they tend to walk out on their checks.” Presumably after a loss, which was most of the time. Today it’s a Green Bay bar for the simple reason that Packers fans started coming to watch the game there.
But free tacos and cheap pitchers can’t pay the rent anymore. Long says he basically got outbid. This stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue now hosts a fancy gourmet pizza joint by a celebrity chef (one online review proclaims “The spinach and artichoke pizza slice is my favorite”), and the Goodstuff Eatery by the same Bravo-TV star.
This is Washington, and so the blame game gets partisan. One of my old Hawk gang, now a GOP Hill aide, wrote me on Tuesday: “Let me guess, the free taco buffet wasn’t chic enough for the MSNBC crowd. Put Wolfgang Puck’s name on the same menu and they’ll need three hostesses with headsets. Another sad casualty of the Obama Administration.”
Maybe there’s something to that. My old boss, Bob Novak, used to tell me stories of how the Washington scene changed almost overnight when JFK was inaugurated. Fun bars set up shop. Fancy restaurants opened up. Men stopped wearing hats.
Since Obama, D.C. is the hottest place for well-known chefs to open new chic restaurants. The new Hawk ‘n’ Dove owners’ description fits the bill: “locally sourced, seasonal bistro menu prepared in an open kitchen.” You’ll have an extensive wine list. The pub’s five small rooms that now embrace you like the soft arms of home — they will be torn down, leaving Washington diners with yet another open floor plan. All the better to see and be seen, I suppose.
The new owners have bought the naming rights, so there might be no need to change the phone listing. “But it won’t be the Hawk ‘n’ Dove,” says owner Long.
Long, says the last few years have been rough for him, just as they’ve been good for D.C.’s drinkers and eaters. “I was pummeled. Everyone wants to try the new thing.”
Long and Mlyniec, McGovernites of the “don’t-trust-anyone-over-30” crowd, now curse change.
Times change, and Ryan Stroschein, who used to come here regularly as an aide to Sen. Tom Daschle and then to Rep. Stephanie Herseth, is now a green-energy lobbyist living in Annapolis. He was visiting the Hawk Wednesday night out of nostalgia and sadness. Of course, Stroschein doesn’t frequent the Hawk anymore.
Neither do I. Tuesday night, when I got the bad news, I wanted to rush there. But I had to go home, to the suburbs, because it was back-to-school night at St. John’s elementary school.
I didn’t meet my now-wife at the Hawk. But early in our courtship, I brought her to a free-taco affair, loaded with debate and revelry. When the rowdy talk turned to immigration, she forcefully and deftly picked apart my arguments in front of all my friends. Later that night, out of her earshot, two friends separately assured me that I was going to marry her.
A couple years later, the Hawk ‘n’ Dove was the site of my bachelor party. A year later, the Hawk is where my wife and I learned that, even with the smoking ban, bringing your 3-month-old to a bar can be awkward.
Edgar, the bartender (who will need a job come Oct. 2), was shocked Wednesday night when I told him we were expecting our fourth child. He still thinks of me as the 21-year-old (give-or-take a year) intern trying to fill up on tacos.
It’s a worn-out trope to lament when the fixed stars of your youth fall. But as a conservative, I’m entitled to curse change. As a liberal, Long is entitled to curse the fickle market.
And as consolation, the Tune Inn still remains.
Timothy P.Carney, The Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Monday and Thursday, and his stories and blog posts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.
