Firehouse Grill
3988 University Drive
Fairfax, VA
703 383 1030
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You know what's great about Firehouse? Carpets Jazz band, phenomenal kids, seriously I can't say enough. They play every Monday in this loose near jam session, and my first visit here was a Monday (St. Patrick’s 2003), and my next visit was the Monday next week, and I'll probably be back in a few days on that Monday too. So even if Firehouse was crap on a stick, if they had taken all the evil pretension run-off from the Dharma days and bottled it and worked it into their bar, I'd still be able to say, "I enjoy Carpets at the Firehouse every Monday, and then I go home and try to scrub the stink of bar off. And of failure". But I don't have to do any such thing, because the Firehouse Grill is a pleasant little place, nothing offensive.

Well, the fireman theme does seem a bit tacked on, like they spun a big wheel of themes and decided to put a fire hose up on the wall instead of a viking helmet and axes and whatnot. Whatever prepackaged collection of firefighting memorabilia they put up in the place, they opened only the one box, so it’s not so bad. They've got a big curvy (like half a kidney pool) bar and four or five booths and some circular tables... and the back room. I was walking up the street this past Monday, and I had brought Zach with me to see these kids play, and we were getting near this big window wall that makes up the back room and already you could hear the base, big guitar chords and bongos and a drum set eating for two now; and I know that Carpets is playing that night and everything's cool, sound is reverberating from that atrium windowed wall out into the street, and the mirrors on the opposite wall are shining harmonica player (always facing away from us, southernmost bookend) at you before you enter.

This is going to be one of those horribly unfocused reviews, because the band makes up a huge portion of my perception; Firehouse is more of a frame. This is not a small bar; I once heard that this had become the main repository for GMU drinking (something about lax carding something something; and I believe it; there’s a lot of open space here to hold a decent crowd. In fact, yeah, that’s a good descriptive; Firehouse is spacious. It doesn’t have a lot of room devoted to tables, booths, or stools, but if things get standing room only, there’s plenty of opportunity for said standing. Or leaning, lots of supports and windowsills and the like. I kind of dig the bathroom setup, a small scale single room dealie instead of the more traditional stall/urinal setup; is this a holdover from the coffee house days?

We’ve got a link to the official website, and it’s not much to look at. Now granted, I’m not looking for pictures of the last Halloween party, but as aforementioned, Firehouse has a great setup for music. Who’s playing there, I couldn’t tell you. Well, I can say on Mondays... St. Patrick’s day, but there we were, watching green beer come out of the Budweiser taps and killing time when this harmonica starts crying through the mirror in the backroom, and it's jazz, hornless jazz but these kids were blowing as hard as they could blow... I made us move to that back observation lounge, sitting and digging. This drummer; I've seen a lot of jazz but I've yet to see the drummer as leader, this David Byrne looking kid sitting back and directing, no, that's too passive, but there was a passivity to it, he was riding things, letting waves pass through and move him like a sock puppet, long neck weaving, those mouth agape grins from suburban geniuses, sneaker-clad virtuosos carving crevices out in our urban experience to live unfettered by our white gentile visions... I talked to the harmonica player, that crying force I saw through a mirror at the bar when it was video poker or talking to the... well, I'm sure they were nice girls, but I was so much happier moving into that room of confessional communion... those sub vocalized volumes between bassist and drummer and bongos and drummer and shining teeth... I talked to the harmonica player to try and get a group name, he himself didn’t know at the time, he sez, I'm a stranger here myself, but now its a Monday-night jam session, and I turn to Matt and say, you’ll have to make the call for whenever we leave because I'm noticing my weariness of just a half hour before is just psychosomatic and all of a sudden I'm jumping, I'm in synch with those beauty drums, we've got to go at 10:00 and I'm maybe 5-6 beers into the evening over four hours but its ear to ear, I'm ecstatic, this jazz is as good as love, it fills and warms and I'm making plans for next Monday and its so good to have an excuse to drink on a Monday.

We’ve got to go back to Fairfax on some proper night, I get shakes of misrepresenting this place; it could fill with weekending assholes and I’m look like a Monday-obsessed idiot. But whatever Firehouse Grill is like in the mainstream, there’s nothing about its basic structure that holds it back from being a great bar. Catch it in the corners of the week and things are verified beautiful.

OK, so every Irish bar from here to Dublin usually has Police patches stapled to a wall, so I guess it is only fair that one bar has fireman memorabilia. Fine fine, everybody loves the fucking firemen yippie hoo-rah yay. Police need their own bars to hide in because everyone hates them. Firemen can go anywhere, treading the land like giants confident the public will love them as heroes. They could walk into Chez Châteaux Le Buttoks clad in fire gear covered in ash and still be seated with a smile. Cops are lucky if their food has no spit in it.

But I digress . . .

Although distasteful, the fire theme is at least something and something is better then nothing. Sadly it is very sparse and confined to the bar which leaves the general decor somewhat generic - which is bad. Glancing inside you could easily imagine yourself in a T.G.I. Fridays or Bennigans until you notice the lone fire hat or dozen patches on the wall. Now, if I ran this place there would be columns of fire and ash shooting out of the walls at irregular intervals while animatronic firemen and citizens burn to cindery graves - a Rainforest Cafe' from hell gone mad. Shots would be served while lit.  People would be doing beer bongs out of fire helmets.  They would hand out cheap plastic squirt guns at the door. It would be great!  Plus, my place would have a bitchin pole.

Can you spot the fireman?

On the other hand, this place used to be a coffee shop called Dharmas which was a haven for the local goths.  It reeked of underage smoking and bad high-school poetry.  That and angst - the angst of well-do do middle class suburban white kids.  The fact that Firehouse displaced all that earns it a plus in my book. Now all the local goths have to hang out at Amphora where we go to mock them.

But, I'm off topic again.

As I'm sure Brian will spout on and off about, the other plus is the stage and bands. Firehouse has a big open stage and sponsors walk on musicians on Monday nights. The night we went the players were quite good, especially considering their diminutive ages. It was almost like being in HR57 without the cover and without having to go into DC. Brian said it made him so happy he would consider talking to girls. 

Brian's happy band

In summary, Bar and Grills are a dime a dozen in this area and most have nothing to distinguish themselves. Firehouse has good bands and a willingness to draw them in and, to me, that is enough to earn a thumbs up.