Metro Weekly

Be Bar Be One!

AGrateLoveCheeseGraterFavorUnpackaged.jpgRemember back in January, when you vowed to lose weight, watch less TV, have more sex with strangers, sleep less, party harder and finally move that cheese grater to the bedroom where it could get more action? Hearsay bets you didn’t live up to your New Year’s Resolutions — probably because of that damn boyfriend. He’s always getting in the way! Hearsay can’t even remember its New Year’s Resolutions. But here’s what Hearsay has resolved anyway. To Be:Older. Be:Drunk. Be:Broke. And, always after, Be:Better. Which brings Hearsay to last Saturday, Sept. 1, when it helped Be Bar celebrate its first anniversary of bettering 9th Street. (And just for fun, here are Scene shots from Be Bar’s grand opening a year ago!) 2006-08-24_feature_story_2271_3090.jpgA Be:Bronzed Mike Watson was be:celebrating by wearing nothing but a be:boxer-style swimsuit, while his fellow co-owner Be:Buoyant Thomas McGuire was less be:spectacled but no less be:celebrating. The entire place was be:beaming, in fact — and be:glistening too, especially when the night’s tag-team DJs Alan “You Lift Me Up” Chasan and Bill “Where I Belong” Keart dropped “Get Me Bodied.” Beyonce is right: “A little sweat ain’t never hurt nobody!” The main lounge area was packed with an intriguingly diverse crowd, from women to drag queens and points in between, and from twinks to bodybuilders but no points in between, enjoying, at least those in the door before 11 p.m., complimentary cocktails, including Mount Gay Rum Mojitos. Who could possibly turn down something from Mount Gay? There was also the DeKeypur ice sculpture in the middle of the room that people couldn’t help but touch. Oooh, look, it’s ice, ice baby! Poor Jean-Philippe Aviance learned this the hard way. As much as Saturday night was a birthday party for Be Bar, it was also the launch of a new level. Be:VIP is literally above the dance floor but is its own “self-contained destination,” complete with couches and private cabanas and lighted foliage all around and overhead. Watson spent much of his night up there, helping out with his team of Cabana Boys and Ladies who, true to Be Bar’s fashion philosophy, always come out on this side of chi-chi on the thin thread line that separates it from slutty. The VIP Suite is part of a new complicated “Be:Rewarded” program that Be Bar has launched, whereby every dollar a drinker bee spends at the joint earns him five points on the card. Eventually, if you drink enough, you will gain platinum or even black card status, which earns you admission to the Be:VIP. But if you ain’t that much of a gin-guzzler, then you can simply buy a VIP band from someone on staff, or book a VIP cabana for you and your friends. With the VIP Suite, Be Bar is this city’s first gay bar offering bottle service, which does not mean they’ll hold the bottle for you as you drink, though if you insist, Hearsay’s sure that could be arranged. No, little lambs, bottle service involves you picking out the big bottle of libations of your choosing — vodka, gin, Jagermeister, or even water that’s “bottled at the source,” which does not mean someone turned on a tap at the 14th Street theater space and filled a bucket. The busy Be:Bees will then add fresh fruit, mixers, glassware and complimentary Red Bull and Voss water to complete the service. With bottles priced as low as $150 and as high as $495 (for Hennessy XO) — and a $300 minimum to reserve a cabana, Hearsay is seriously on the hunt for a sugar daddy to enjoy this new level of Be:dazzled. But too late! The cabanas are already booked for New Year’s Eve, Watson says. Hearsay Be:sad….

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