Best of D.C. 2009

As a rule, I don’t do pews. Chair, beanbag, unclaimed stretch of floor—all superior to the pew. For years, the only way you could get me on one of those hard, 25-person benches would be to pledge eternal love to somebody—or to die. Add to those exceptions the durable community seating at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, equally equipped to handle crowds for a reading of the Book of Esther, a post-Shabbat mixer, or an extended comedy routine about fucking. Last year, the synagogue accommodated after-hours entertainment that ranged from the cognitively dissonant (the cast of Stella cracking Nazi jokes beneath a 69-foot dome designed to “bring alive motifs destroyed in the Holocaust”) to the sublime (Antony and the Johnsons, bringing its indie fans as close to a religious experience as a transgender atheist classical musician can). Worth shuffling past two dozen of your closest pewmates for: Sometimes they sell beers downstairs.