With no football team to tailgate for and a campus located in the heart of a major city, GW is not your typical party school.
While GW students are not afforded the preeminent Greek Life scenes and boatloads of darties often found at state schools, they do have the D.C. nightlife scene at their fingertips. But navigating the trials and tribulations of partying in the District is no easy feat for fresh college students.
Here Hatchet staffers recount some of the most memorable going-out experiences from their years at GW.
From Ultrabar to a family road trip
Brianna Kimmel | Reporter
Living on the Mount Vernon Campus and wanting to go out was a difficult dichotomy to juggle. The first step in schlepping to the clubs in D.C. was boarding the Mount Vernon Express, which used to run every 30 minutes after 7 p.m. on weekends.
The first night of Labor Day weekend, my friends and I landed at Ultrabar — a nightclub near Chinatown with laser lights, deafening music and a $20 cover fee that takes advantage of students who don’t know better.
The next morning, I woke up at 6:30 a.m. with the memories from last night a blur and only 30 minutes to get ready before my uncle arrived to drive me home to surprise my mom for her birthday. When my uncle arrived at the Vern, I told him I had food poisoning — too nauseous to care if he bought my lame excuse.
Halfway through Pennsylvania, I was forced to ask my uncle to pull over, and I became intimately acquainted with the shoulder of I-81. After a stop at the gas station Sheetz for Gatorade, we made it home to surprise my mom — who cried when my sister and I both arrived.
Although the experience was avoidable, it felt like a rite of passage. A fuzzy night at Ultrabar full of bad choices followed by a six-hour car ride isn’t a fun way to learn your limits, but it worked for me.
It’s the “Sign of the Times” to get out of here
Caitlin Kitson | Contributing Culture Editor
As the youngest on both sides of my family, I had heard my fair share of college party stories before I even stepped foot onto GW’s campus. Some were epic tales of bar hopping and dancing the night away with lifelong friends, but most were peeks into the disappointing reality of most universities’ party scenes.
Yet when I started my first year at GW, I was still naively intrigued by the 18-plus clubbing scene available to D.C. college students. So as my first Halloweekend rolled around, my friend and I decided to embrace our curiosity and finally make the trek to the much-discussed club, Decades DC.
We pulled up to the lengthy line outside Decades decked out in our Halloween attire: I went as Emma Stone’s character in the 2010 film “Easy A” while my friend opted for a dark angel costume. But as we finally made our way into the club, the reality of Decades’ environment snuffed out any sparkle of excitement we had left.
The floors of Decades were mostly packed with college students, but there was also a frightening presence of middle-aged men who seemed to flock to an 18-plus club for all of the wrong reasons. We attempted to shake our uneasy feelings and stake out a territory near the DJ booth to at least enjoy the music.
But you should never put your faith in a nightclub DJ. For reasons unknown, the Decades DJ decided to start blasting Harry Styles’ somber 2017 single “Sign of the Times” and play the accompanying music video on every available screen. We took this as a sign from God, or maybe Harry Styles, that it was time to call it quits on our attempt to enjoy the D.C. clubbing scene.
How’s that song go again?
Nick Perkins | Culture Editor
The strobe lights were dancing around the red vinyl couch that curved along the room’s walls and a slightly familiar set of chords came over the speakers when I realized: I didn’t remember half the words to the song I was about to sing. And I was about to sing it in Mandarin.
I was out that night to celebrate the end of my first-year summer Hillternship with other interns from my office, and we found ourselves at Wok and Roll, the downtown D.C. Chinese karaoke bar (my favorite fact about the District remains that the Abraham Lincoln assassination was planned there a few hundred years prior). The evening had progressed to the point such evenings often do where I wasn’t necessarily in condition to fully think through every decision, and I began to search the karaoke machine for a song I thought I knew in Mandarin, Richie Jen’s “Dui Mian De Nu Hai Kan Guo Lai.”
I took Mandarin for about a decade growing up, and every teacher I had adored Jen, so I’d gotten a fair amount of exposure to the song, which I’ll argue to this day is very catchy. The only issue I ran into that karaoke night was that I hadn’t heard the song in well over a year and wasn’t sure I could remember the words I needed to belt.
As Jen’s smooth voice pined over the broken down speakers, without thinking I was transported back to eighth grade Mandarin class and was shocked to learn that deep within me I still remembered every last lyric. Even my high school Mandarin teacher said I nailed the performance after I sent her a video. But the sheer anxiety of those few moments has meant that whenever I go out, I play it a little safer with my karaoke choices.
She’s just not that into you
Annie O’Brien | Staff Writer
Last semester, my friend visited me for the first time since we’d turned 21, and we decided to have a girls’ night out. I hadn’t been of age for long, so we relied on recommendations. This is the last time I’ll follow someone down a rabbit hole.
Distance was no match for our inebriated state. After a carefree start in Adams Morgan, we ventured down to Dupont Circle. Immediately after migrating to the dance floor, a man grinning like the Cheshire Cat approached my friend. Learning she was visiting, he winked and said, “We have to leave now if we’re going to make the most of the night.”
He was correct.
My friend and I darted up the stairs to make the most of our girls’ night. We ordered tequila sunrises to recover at the upstairs bar and sat down to debrief — where two guys asked if they could buy us a drink. We raised our full glasses in response. After that, we chugged our drinks and decided to go home. As I ordered the Uber, two new guys crowded around us and continued to talk. We left, waiting for our ride elsewhere.
Since March, I’ve gone out in D.C. more. I’ve never seen men acting that aggressively. We laugh now because we got home okay, but the night may have gone differently if we hadn’t looked out for each other.
