Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:52:00

A DJ walked into a narrow two-storey space at Ninth and U in 2003 and said the words every landlord wants to hear: this is the space. DC9 at 1940 9th Street NW opened in February 2004, founded by Bill Spieler - a local DJ and club manager - with nightlife impresario Joe Englert and other partners, in a Shaw building that had already lived through nightlife lives as Metro Cafe, Club Hollywood and Asylum. Spieler read the low ceilings and exposed beams as good acoustics and the double-wide second floor as a natural concert room, and built the club accordingly. The formula is three floors doing three jobs: a snug saloon bar with a digital jukebox at street level, a 250-capacity live room upstairs where the stage and dance floor live, and a glass-enclosed rooftop deck added in 2010 that Spieler counts among his best decisions - heated, open year-round, and one of the neighbourhood's favourite outdoor drinking perches. The booking built its reputation on indie rock - Japandroids, The xx and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros all passed through after Steve Lambert took over booking in 2007 - alongside the recurring dance parties that defined a decade of U Street nightlife, most famously Liberation Dance Party and the electro-era Nouveau Riche. Recent years have leaned further into house music and DJ culture, with a no-phone policy at DJ events, plus karaoke nights and a devoted weekly Survivor watch party on the roof. The kitchen keeps it honest as a neighbourhood hangout - burgers and comfort food, weekday happy hours with five-dollar local beers - and tickets for most shows stay under thirty dollars, holding the line as one of the city's most affordable stages. Twenty years in, DC9 remains the archetype of the small Washington venue: independent, three storeys tall and ten steps from the U Street corridor, where a national tour, a local band's first headline and a rooftop dance party can all happen on the same night.