• Broke the gum ball machine, stealing all the quarters stockpiled there;
• Opened the downstairs jukebox to try and get the cash out of the collection box (there wasn't any money in it—it was removed the day after the fire);
• Rummaged through the downstairs bar cabinets;
• May have fallen down the basement stairs—the owners found some broken bottles and a bar stool at the bottom of the staircase behind the bar.

Police dusted the place for prints and found some on the "windowsill, the air conditioning unit, the cash collection box in the juke, and the gum-ball machine," the Web site says. The prints will be sent to the FBI.

This isn't even the first plundering of the establishment since the fire. Right afterwards, thieves got  their hands on a cooler and some umbrellas. But it takes a special kind of dedicated—and shameless—burglar to break into a gum ball machine.

The lone surviving piece of political propaganda after the first Capitol Lounge fire, circa 2005

Popular H Street NE hangout The Argonaut is closed following an apparent kitchen fire on Sunday morning. Photos of the extensive damage have been posted on the place's own web site, which also dishes up some details on the Argo's post-blaze hangover:  

Most of you may not know this, but our kitchen used to be an alley. Which means that the wall separating the kitchen and the bar is an "outside wall" and is several layers of brick. We are very thankful for that brick wall – it helped contain the fire.

Prolific tavern operator Joe Englert, who owns the Argonaut, is no stranger to the inherent fire hazards of the bar and restaurant business. His lawyers just settled a lawsuit with the Hartford Casual Insurance Company over damages associated with a 2007 blaze at one of Englert's other locations, Capitol Lounge on Pennsylvania Avenue SE, according to court records. That fire also damaged the neighboring Trover Shops, which Hartford had insured.

I'm referring to the second Capitol Lounge fire, of course, not the first. Both were reportedly started by errant cigarettes. The first fire, in 2005, radically altered this reformed nightlife reporter's position on D.C.'s smoking ban (although the link to that old City Paper article is, apparently and rather regretably, no longer available).

Argonaut management is organizing a benefit at the neighboring Englert-owned Rock and Rock Hotel on June 30, with proceeds going to help repair the fire damage.

Photo by DCist/Creative Commons Attribution License

As Joe Englert and I take a taxi (he rarely drives because he thinks it's cheaper to take cabs, once you figure in parking tickets in D.C.) to Enology, the wine bar he co-owns with Adam Manson, I ask the businessman if this indeed has been an average day for him. After all, by my reckoning, here's his day (at least the parts I witnessed):

• Eat breakfast with sons, Henry and Alex
• Call a taxi and take Alex to school
• Play tennis with buddy Matt Weiss
• Sign a few documents in his office
• Play bubble hockey with me
• Share some rum shots
• Eat lunch and crack jokes at Argonaut
• Pick out china and flatware for the H Street Country Club
• Drink a small glass of black muscat at Enology
• Make phone calls

Yep, Englert says, this is pretty much an average day, though he's quick to remind me that he did get some documents notarized at the National Capital Bank of Washington, where he traded jabs with Vice President John Gordon, who wanted to know when Englert moved to D.C. It was 1984, Englert remembered, right after he gorged on Big Macs in Los Angeles when McDonald's was giving them away for every U.S. gold medal won during the Olympics. "That explains a lot," Gordon says dryly.

But Englert says that sometimes he goes from place to place, checking on the Internet jukeboxes at his bars and restaurants. He wants to make sure that some evil music hasn't been automatically downloaded onto the machines. "You can show up one day, and George Michael is on the jukebox," Englert says. "It's just not good for your place."