Lord knows we need all the tolerable bars in DC we can get, but last night's experience is making me want to write off Townhouse Tavern. We ended up there with a larger-than-expected and somewhat unwieldy group, but arrived early and had secured chairs for everybody outside. After an hour or so one of our party went a few feet up the street to take a call. When the bartender came to clear empties he pushed the guy's chair a bit out of the way, making it look like it belonged to a different, unoccupied table.

Some new arrivals approached another table out front that had folks around it, and one of them grabbed the now-slightly-displaced chair. We tried to explain that it was spoken for, but the guy who had snagged it just ignored us. Emily politely tapped him on the shoulder and explained the situation again, but he continued to blow us off, not even bothering to make eye contact. One of his group found the whole thing funny, and asked us incredulously if we realized that the chair-taker owned the bar.

Well, hell, did he? My gullibility is well-established, but it actually seems pretty possible to me: the bartenders were hanging out with their table all night, and the guy certainly carried an attitude of entitlement sufficient to mark him as a proprietor. If so, man, what a lousy way to treat your customers. I left that place pretty pissed off, and am sorry to have had a chip placed on my shoulder about what is, like I said, one of the few endurable bars in DC.

I suppose when you buy a place like Townhouse a large part of your motivation is a desire to host your friends exactly how and when you want. I can understand that. But it's tough to want to put money in the pocket of someone who treats you like garbage, regardless of how nice his bartenders are. Hopefully somebody'll pipe up and tell me that no, there's no way that was the owner.

KRISTON TO THE RESCUE: Mr. Capps, a good friend to me and Townhouse both, writes with assurances that the TH owner is considerably taller, beardier and more Scottish than the thoroughly dude-like dude who behaved so poorly toward us. Sounds like it was just a bunch of regulars with delusions of grandeur. Good.