After six months in Washington D.C., I’ve made it to most of the gay bars in town. One of my favorite spots so far is TRADE bar in the Logan Circle neighborhood.
TRADE is a gay hipster bar that has a daily happy hour (until 10 p.m.) and plenty of drag events. The decorations are also insane and change fairly often. TRADE is usually cover-free, even when there’s an event going on — which means that it can get insanely packed.
As an aside — one of my problems with many straight D.C. bars is that they tend to be in narrow former-rowhouses and most places don’t enforce fire code capacity limits. The moshpit bar experience isn’t for me. TRADE is one of those rare places that will actually start a line when it gets too busy, so it feels less hazardous than your typical D.C. bar.
A drag performance at TRADE bar in Washington D.C.’s Logan neighborhood.
A drag queen bartender at TRADE bar in Washington D.C.
A RuPaul’s Drag Race-inspired sign at TRADE bar in Washington D.C.
Searching for the D.C. Gayborhood
One of the nice things about living in Dallas was that the city has an established gayborhood with dozens of gay bars and restaurants.
D.C. apparently used to have a gayborhood, but there are now gay bars in small clusters throughout the city. This means that bar-hopping is quite the logistical nightmare and either involves multiple Uber trips or long treks on foot. That is why we try to stick to a particular area of town on a given night. TRADE is centrally located among the city’s gay bars — so it’s a convenient place to start on any night.
Street art in the back patio of TRADE bar in Washington D.C.
Brunch holdovers on the patio of TRADE bar in Washington D.C.’s Logan Circle neighborhood — the girl ended up losing control of the fan and it hit my phone.
A RuPaul’s Drag Race quote on the wall of TRADE bar in Washington D.C.’s Logan Circle neighborhood.
The brunch dilemma
Although we’ve explored most of the gay bars and restaurants in the city, we have yet to make it to drag brunch in the city and the regular brunch places have been pretty underwhelming. The problem is that the drag brunch events tend to be booked weeks in advance and we aren’t that organized.
Perhaps that’ll change, but I’m sticking to TRADE happy hour for now. 🍹
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