The popular television show “Cheers” (1982-1993) was set in a fictional neighborhood bar on Beacon Street in Boston . . . a place “where everybody knows your name” (Norm!). Of course, most of the show was filmed on a sound stage in Hollywood, but the exterior location shots were of the Bull & Finch Pub, located across Beacon Street from the Boston Public Garden. This pub quickly became a tourist mecca after it had been renamed “Cheers” to cash in on the show’s popularity (we walked pass it on a visit to Boston in 1988 and my wife and a friend had lunch there last summer).
Beginning around the same time as the show, I discovered my own neighborhood bar where the staff and many of the regulars did know my name. Stoney’s, originally located at 1307 L Street, NW in Washington, was just a hole-in-wall bar and grill when my office was located two blocks away, at 1395 K Street, from 1979 until 1984. It had originally been Herman’s, a Jewish diner owned by Herman Susser (1900-1976) until he sold it in 1966 to a fellow named Tony Parzo. He was a great cook but a lousy businessman, and two years later he sold it to Steve Papageorge and Tony Harris and the restaurant was transformed into Stoney’s. Papageorge sold out in 1973 and moved to Florida, leaving Harris the sole proprietor at the L Street address for the next 32 years.
During the time I frequented the original Stoney’s and occasionally chatted with Tony Harris, who continued to work behind the bar, as well as others who had worked there for years. I heard stories (often many times) of the early years when the place opened up at 7am and was permitted to serve booze at 8am. Reporters and others working at the former Washington Daily News (1921-1972), whose offices were just a block away in the 1000 block of 13th Street, would often come in for a nip or two after their shifts were over. And there were the firefighters from DCFD Engine Company 16 stationed at the historic firehouse in the same block who were still coming in during my time as did Metropolitan Police officers from the nearby district station. Shoulder patches representing police departments and law enforcement agencies from across the country were pinned up over the bar. The headquarters of the US Secret Service Uniformed Division was also located across L Street until it moved in 2000 to a new and larger facility on 18th Street. Off duty officers would come in for breakfast and lunch, or for a beer after work.
At the time I frequented Stoney’s in the late 1970s and into the 1980s the downtown neighborhood where my office was located was just five blocks from the White House yet it was the epicenter of Washington’s red light district with its nudie bars, bath houses, skin flick theaters, and shops selling “Doc Johnson’s Marital Aids.” Prostitutes often gathered outside the old McDonald’s across 14th Street from my office building in the evening chanting “we do it all for you” as cars cruised past checking them out. The police prohibited right turns into the block of L Street where Stoney’s was located, but it never seemed to slow down the nightly caravans. At times some of the girls would come in for a drink or two despite the preponderance of in situ law enforcement types.
This neighborhood also had an important connection with Washington’s history. A block south of the original Stoney’s is Franklin Park. An Union Army encampment during the Civil War, Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross at her home on 13th Street across from the park. Adjacent to where her house once stood is the former Franklin School from which Alexander Graham Bell transmitted his first wireless message in June 1880 using a beam of light (a precursor to our modern fiber-optics) sent to a window in a building at 1325 L Street that served as his laboratory. Almost a century later the area adjacent to the 14th Street corridor was devastated during the rioting in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination on April, 4, 1968, just a month before Stoney’s opened. The legend has it that the idea for the bar came about while Harris and Papageorge spent a night in jail having been arrested for a curfew violation during the unrest. The neighborhood was also the scene of large anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in the early 1970s.
The original Stoney’s was looking rather worn down when I discovered it in late 1979; a narrow space with a long bar counter running the length of one wall and with a few small tables along the opposite wall. Stairs in the back led upstairs to a small office and two extremely small and bare-bone restrooms. I remember there was a condom vending machine over the urinal in the men’s room upon which someone had scratched “This is the worse gum I have ever tasted.”
Stoney became my go-to place for lunch when I was not tied to my desk. It was well known for the “Super Grilled Cheese sandwich,” perhaps its signature dish, which included a generous portion of fresh tomatoes, sliced onions, and bacon. The menu also included burgers and fries, roast beef BBQ sandwiches, pizza, chili with cornbread, salads, and an open-face hot turkey sandwich served with a generous helping of stuffing that was to die for. My colleagues and I would also frequently gather on Friday evenings after work to share cheap pitchers of Budweiser while solving the problems of the world, even after our office moved a few blocks farther down 14th Street, in 1984.
My colleagues and I would still occasionally meet at Stoney’s on Friday evenings until the early 2000s. The neighborhood had long ago cast off its more notorious reputation as the older buildings were being re-purposed or replaced by new office and residential structures. The original Stoney’s held its ground for longer than many of us thought possible, but in 2005 the owner of the building sold it, and after 37 years Tony Harris was forced to close or relocate.
Harris signed a lease in 2006 for a space at 1433 P Street, NW, the largely gentrified residential Logan Circle neighborhood; more specifically in the revitalized commercial western end of the neighborhood with its restaurants, bars, art galleries and live theater. Harris brought the original outdoor sign and the collection of police patches, hoping to recapture the ambiance of the original place and bring his old customers - all those “good guys” and “good people” - with him. My colleagues and I, who were by then based at the corner of 13th Street and New York Avenue, NW, had to look for a new watering hole “closer to home.”
A few years passed before I had an opportunity to check out the “new Stoney’s” prior to theatrical productions at the nearby Studio Theatre, on 14th Street, and the Keegan Theatre, on Church Street, just a short walk away. The new space is a two-floor restaurant and bar and the times I have been there the clientele was predominantly Millenial and Gen-Z types with a few hipsters thrown into the mix. Yes, the familiar sign was out front and the collection of police department patches is now displayed under glass, but otherwise there is virtually nothing to remind those of us who remember the original Stoney’s where everyone knew your name. Business must be thriving because Stoney’s opened a second establishment five years ago at 2101 L St, NW, in the West End neighborhood between the George Washington University campus and Dupont Circle. So Stoney’s has found a way to return to L Street . . . at least in spirit.
There is little to distinguish the new spaces from the other the glass and chrome establishments popping up all over the city. But this is not to say, however, that there is nothing to commend them to their current customers, many of whom I am sure are regulars. While they do little to resurrect the ambiance of the original establishment in the 1300 block of L Street long since lost to the wrecking ball, the food and drink are worth the effort regardless and I look forward to returning and enjoying the “new” Stoney’s for what they are. Nothing wrong with that. Stoney’s remains a Washington institution regardless of its locations today. Long may it remain the “Boss of the Sauce.”
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