Having been to the Whale a handful of times with larger groups and for rather brief periods of time left me eager to come back and truly experience the Whale as a bar and not as a mere pit stop on a night on the streets of DuPont.
Everything was going swimmingly with our first bartender... he was conversational if not down right kind and had a heavy pour. Myself and my drinking comrade were feeling great and living high off the fat of the land until the unfortunate timing of a shift change came and with it a bar keep that pushed the boundaries of douchiness (even by DC standards) and defied the laws of service. Within 25 minutes we found ourselves shanghi'd out of $25. When our first bar tender left we had a bar tab of $23 and when Skippy our buzzed headed bar keep stepped in we magically had a tab of $54... funnny how that happened. We asked for a print out of our tab and he handed us a print out and said that since we had a gift card we were unable to receive happy hour pricing yet when we walked in and presented our first bar tender (a manager) with the card he has said ""perfect time to cash this bad boy in we have happy hour until 9... good bang for your buck.""
This all being said I can't be mad as this was all free money, however, with dozens of amazing bars in DC and mountains of untested drinking holes in the city I will not being coming back to the Whale anytime soon. Sorry great bar tender but your pals that came in for the night shift have left a bad taste in my mouth that shall not be removed anytime soon.
Goodbye and good riddance.
Pros: decent happy hour prices
Cons: awful buzzed head bar tender
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