At Last – All Souls Patio Opens (with limitations) in Shaw!

8th and T Street, NW courtesy All Souls

From an email:

“We worked long and hard with our ANC reps to reach a settlement agreement that would be beneficial to both the neighborhood and the bar. There are only a few items that will really affect people. The first is that we will have limited hours. Monday through Thursday 6pm-10pm (until school is out for the summer then we can open at 5pm – this is actually an ABRA rule when a bar is located across from a school), Friday 6pm-12am, Saturday 4pm-12am and Sunday 4pm -10pm. We’ll probably open earlier on weekends if there is a demand.

The next item is that we agreed we would have a seated only patio. There was a concern about this space being a densely populated “beer garden” on the residential side of our building. So we will have a limited number of seats (33) and will only serve seated patrons, but we’ll have table service to make it easier for everyone. The patio will be non-smoking. This will prevent our indoor patrons from coming outside to hang out and smoke. So we will ask everyone to smoke outside in the front of the building where we have provided a smoking pole for cigarette butts.

We have also agreed to not have speakers or any type of music playing outside and will ask patrons not to play any type of musical devices. This will help keep the noise level down.
Finally, there will not be dogs allowed on the patio. First, we are asking people to enter the patio from the inside of the bar. This enables us to control the crowd (and noise to a degree) and to maintain a wait list when the patio is full. As much as we love dogs, we can’t have them walking through the bar. Also, sometimes dogs and people don’t get along so well. In order to ensure everyone’s comfort and safety (both dogs and humans) we are asking our guests to leave their pets at home.

We are excited to finally have outdoor seating 16 months after we started the process to obtain all the necessary permits and permission. While we will be open, we have not yet completed our vision of what the patio will become and in the upcoming months we will continue to make improvements and changes to the space. We hope to add another window on the side of the building, an awning to cover some of the tables, fans, heat lamps and additional lighting.

We do want to thank everyone who supported us, helped us out and worked so hard to make this happen.”