Whiskey

It’s been one day since Northern Virginia closed its liquor stores and already civilization has collapsed. Fires burn on the horizon as the cry of the sober mob reverberates through the streets. People nail boards over their windows and spray paint ‘NO VODKA’ on them. Yuppies have descended into the underground Metro stations, where rumor is they’ve become something less than human. Harvesters, we call them, and last night they came for my friend Bone Saw… That, of course, is not what’s happened in Virginia since the state ordered the temporary closing of some liquor stores last week. Life in the quarantined DC suburbs has mostly continued as usual.

This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. A white cross once rested over the door of the windowless warehouse at 1135 Okie St NE in Washington, DC. Residents seeking a reprieve from the street gangs and drugs that plagued the Ivy City neighborhood would huddle on the second floor and listen to the holy men of Old Ship of Zion Baptist Mission Church preach deliverance. Deliverance came. Crime plummeted. The violence and poverty along H Street gave way to Zagat-rated restaurants, organic markets and boutique bars. The closest thing you’ll see to weapons now in Ivy City is at Kick Axe, a new watering hole offering flannel-clad Capitol Hill staffers the opportunity to have a drink and, well, throw axes at wooden boards.