By Amber D. Dodd
Special to the AFRO
adodd@afro.com
As Washington, D.C., welcomes summer visitors flocking to its restaurants, festivals and museums, a new Northwest D.C. hangout has been introduced into the lexicon in the form of a well-loved corner space in Shaw.
Opened this April, Gold Clover Bar blends pop culture, eclectic yet classic music, and affordable drinks all in one.
“This is a great place for people on their way in and out of the city, before they go out and turn all the way up or before they go home and fully decompress,” said Antoine Lyers, 34, the general manager of Gold Clover Bar. “This is a great in-between. We’re here to serve.”
Located at 251 Florida Ave. NW, the space housed the Truxton Inn bar from 2017 to 2023. Not much has changed about the spot. Stained glass allows filtered lighting into the basement corner bar. Mahogany furniture is sprinkled throughout the space. Furniture still remains in the outdoor space, allowing patrons to enjoy the weather. Three large televisions showcase live games and sports talk TV shows.
Gold Clover Bar has already been a packed house for the NBA Finals, Washington Mystics matchups, and soccer.
“It was extremely low priority to switch anything up they had,” Lyers said. “It was a beautiful, functional bar space,” Lyers said.
To Lyers, corner bars are a staple for any thriving community. It is a place of not only good drinks and vibrant conversation but familiarity.
“I’ve tried to keep open tabs with people,” Lyers said. “Every time we say goodbye, that conversation might end but the relationship doesn’t.”
The drink menu spans from $8 wines to $12 “handshakes” composed of beer and shot combos.
“I wanted the price to be set up where people don’t think twice about having another drink,” Lyers said.
Most of the Gold Clover Bar staff are fellow bartenders that Lyers met in the entertainment scene. Lyers has been part of D.C.’s hospitality industry for over a decade, working in popular bars such as Solly’s, Lucky Bar and Red Light.
A six-year friendship with Aaron Petty, 36, preceded the bar’s opening after Petty served Lyers a drink and started conversation.
“I saw the community he fostered and carried,” Lyers said. “People understood that any time Aaron was anywhere, they were going to have a good time.”
Eugene Barnett, 45, has been in hospitality work for 15 years, spending 10 of those at Solly’s where he met Lyers. Joey Madden, 32, is a Brookland native and one of Gold Clover’s bartenders. With Lyers’s leadership, whom Madden met in 2018, Gold Clover’s potential is infinite.
“This neighborhood has a lot of young families and young professionals who don’t have a place to drink on an every other night basis,” Madden said. “We can be the place that kicks a night off or the night’s cap, or if you need to hype yourself up to cook dinner or relax after a long day at work, we’re here. We can be a lynchpin for a bunch of different neighborhoods.”
Lyers’ governance derives from observing vast community spaces. He served as a photographer for longtime friend and D.C. rapper Oddisee’s tour from 2015 to 2017. Making international stops in Europe, the diehard international soccer culture shaped his understanding of sports’ unifying magic.
“Sometimes it’s the background for people, other times it’s the reason why people came out,” Lyers said.
There is also a litmus-test community library to gauge everyone’s interests. Some of the library’s first fruits are Nikole Hannah-Jones’ book “The 1619 Project,” DC Comics’ “Watchmen” and “Black Women, Black Love,” Dianne M. Stewart’s examination of Black women marriage rates on the backdrop of America’s racism.
A music lover since he can remember, Lyers uses music and pop culture as the bar’s attraction.
“Audio is a way to communicate, and that’s one of my primary ways to communicate,” said Lyers, who played the alto saxophone for eight years.
Three rows of his vinyl collection rest on the back wall of the space. Most sport property labels from the beloved, now defunct Waxie Maxie’s Record Store. Forty vinyls from Prince’s “Sign O’ The Times” to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” are part of the collection, along with records from pianist Patrice Rushen.
“If there’s a record on the wall that you recognize, it’s probably a deep cut, and you can already have a more substantial conversation with the person next to you because these things speak to you,” Lyers said.
He’s also hosted album listening events such as Eaton’s “A2B series,” where he and Talley Major discussed the DNA of The Internet’s “Ego Death” project. Lyers keeps a “non-guaranteed” song recommendation list in a pass around notepad, which he also adapted into an ongoing Spotify playlist called “Clover Request Live!”
“I played Teena Marie’s ‘Portuguese Lover’ last night and the whole bar just came together,” said Lyers. “People who were with somebody, they were dancing with them.”
For the English Premier League finale, about 30 people came to Gold Clover Bar as the establishment’s first official watch party. To accommodate the time difference, Lyers opened the bar early at 11 a.m. to seat guests. Nicholas Warmington, 36, was one of the fans in the early-open crowd.
“This feels homey,” said the lifelong D.C. resident.
Warmington said Gold Clover’s location is a sweet spot for the Shaw neighborhood, in between D.C. hot spots like U Street and H Street.
“The location is unique,” Warmington said. “I enjoy something that’s off U and because it’s a neighborhood bar you can create a following.”
So far, Lyers and the Gold Clover crew are preparing for bigger weeks to come in Chocolate City. The world awaits the 2024 Paris Olympics. About 30,000 visitors attend the city’s popular Broccoli City Festival. Congressional Black Caucus Week looms months away.
But the team will continue building, curating a Gold Clover community that shows the cultures of D.C. that Lyers remembers, knows and wants to build. According to Lyers, some have already likened the space to a Black “Cheers.” His thoughts? Great.
“I am more interested in meeting new people, meeting the neighborhood, integrating myself within the neighborhood and the people who live around here,” Lyers said. “People have been friendly, excited about having a neighborhood bar. I want to have a personal connection to everybody that comes in here.”
The post Northwest D.C.’s newest attraction: Gold Clover Bar appeared first on AFRO American Newspapers.
