Rats WIn

Dear Readers, 

We have a winner in the DC Rocks' Dive Bar Story Contest.  After reading all the entries with identifying bands and names removed, an independent panel voted unanimously for Anthony Piazza's rodent infested tale which happened at the old 9:30 Club on F Street:

Sometime in the mid-eighties my band, Eubie Hayve was playing the club. We were hanging out in the basement dressing room enjoying the beer and pizza the club had graciously provided. We decided to save most of the pizza for after the show, and we all headed upstairs to play our set. I was the last one out, and halfway up the stairs, I realized I had forgotten something, guitar picks, cigarettes, I can't remember. But when I went back down into that dressing room, only 30 seconds or so after leaving, the table with the pizza box was covered in rats tearing it to bits!!! In fact there were rats everywhere, crawling over our clothes, on the backs of the chairs, and on all of our belongings. We made it a point to never eat food or leave anything we cared about down there again---ever!!!

Congratulations, Tony. You survived that night, and you've won two tickets to see X at the new non- rat infested 9:30 Club. Thanks to everyone who wrote in and a special shout out to Kendall Church who came in second with this memory:

I was playing drums with my band The Nuclear Crayons. I wasn't sure if, with our approach,that was rather outside even for punk, that we had reached our audience at the Dirty Thirty....That is until a really stunning young girl with dark hair and miniskirt came directly up to me in the front hall of the club. She smiled, planted one right on my lips, and then handed me a small piece of leopard-print stationary with her phone number on it. I knew right then that not only did God not hate me, but playing drums in a punk band was the exact right thing that I should be doing!