DC, Where the Bourbon Flows Like Bourbon
By Well, this is a shiny little piece of dreck:
I came home this fall to the state where I was born, raised and somewhat educated. My apartment is three times the size of my last one and half the cost, and it’s a little more than a block from Rupp Arena, home to the winningest college basketball team of all time and where I’d have my ashes spread if I weren’t worried a player would slip on them…
Much of my time in Washington was one hell of a party, an endless and decadent blowout bash more suited to VH1’s Behind the Music than working in the nation’s capital.
The first couple years, I spent almost every night downing bourbon—and sometimes indulging in harder substances—at Capitol Lounge before walking back to my studio apartment in Eastern Market, occasionally with some female congressional staffer whose name I was almost always too drunk to remember. (I later sought out and apologized to as many of those women as I could. To the ones I missed: I’m profoundly sorry for my behavior.)
I suppose part of my disillusionment had to do with my breakup with bourbon, after a real-life, devastating romantic breakup that was followed by a downward spiral. When I returned from my 28 days in rehab, in January 2010, it was harder to ignore the near criminal disconnect between Washington and the rest of the country.
Mr. Youngman has now returned to Kentucky, where bourbon and women of loose morals are never to be found. Of course, professional contrarian Matt Yglesias has a predictably #slatepitchy take:
Sick of people blaming “DC” for their own decisions about who to socialize with and where: http://t.co/sfhMhc9xQl
— Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 19, 2013
Remarkably enough, I was able to do some empirical work on just this question last night. I determined that one could, in fact, find people willing to sell bourbon of many different varieties in the very shadow of hallowed Rupp Arena. At one establishment, I was referred to as “that hot Irish man at the end of the bar” by an obviously inebriated young woman. Fortunately, I maintained my virtue. The entire experience, however, made me wonder whether the problem wasn’t “This Town,” but rather “Mr. Sam Youngman.”