ranch

Picture it: Tuesday night, working late, you get a call -- friends going out for wings. Do you take a pass citing work and an early day tomorrow, or do you shut off your monitor, get on your bike, and make it happen? I briefly considered the question and a half hour later walked into Looking Glass Lounge. I'd soon be glad I did.

I don't spend a lot of time downtown, but I'm still surprised that I hadn't heard about Recessions. It's in the ground floor of a hotel and is pretty much a dive bar, but they have big, cheap beers at happy hour with respectable food and a good location. In fact, I'd really like the place if it wasn't for one thing: they seem to have a serious temperature problem.

I don't know what it is about Stetson's. Lots of people like it but I can't get excited about the place. It's kind of a saloon but doesn't play up that angle, it has TVs but isn't a sports bar, and serves food but isn't a restaurant. I just don't know what they're going for. But I was there, dagnabbit, and I was going to review the wings.

We went to the "Wild Buffalo Wings" place up in College Park. They have 17 different types of sauce - we taste-tested the three spiciest before ordering -- the jabanero-mango, the "wild," and the "blazin'." We passed on the jabanero-mango, because it was a bit too sweet. The "wild" was probably my favorite - it is essentially a much spicier version of the traditional Buffalo sauce. I.e., it was tangy but without being sweet. The "blazin'" sauce was definitely tolerable the first time around. Then they served it to us "wet," in that they dipped it again in the sauce right before serving. And that got the fire alarms going...good thing they had plenty of 23 oz. beers to put the fire out with!

Capitol City Brewing Company was the destination of choice for a geek-heavy happy hour after Mobile Tech 4 Social Change DC. After spending the day at Google's office talking about mobile technology and social causes, wings and a pint of "prohibition porter" seemed like just the thing. Thankfully CCBC came through on both counts.

'Twas a happy hour indeed.