Do I Look Like the NASCAR Type?

There's so much to like about that venerable northside institution, Dot's Back Inn now that the smoke screen is absent. From the 48-star flag to the 1950 Look magazine in the ladies' room (which included a recipe for authentic French dressing: oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. The secret, it said, was in the measurements.) to the quotes on the menu (from Twain to Wimpy; I think that says it all), it's a classic diner in every sense. The chalkboard even said they had butter beans as a side tonight, so what's not to love?

I took a friend who was a Dot's virgin there this evening and he was won over by the food, the atmosphere and the Vargas tray on the wall. The place was crowded when we arrived around 6:45, but with a "Neighborhood Hour" of drink specials from 3:30 to 7, we weren't surprised to find no empty bar stools. There's a reason this place has been around for more than half a century.

Our waitress (of whom it was said by Butch that she's the best shag dancer in Richmond and I tend to believe a man named Butch on the subject of shag dancing because I've never actually seen shag dancing...and, no, I didn't know Butch before walking into Dot's) assumed we were out-of-towners in for NASCAR this weekend. You could not find a couple of less likely NASCAR looking fans than the two of us, but it did help explain the endless stream of people who kept trying to find a seat in an already full restaurant. Of course, being the NASCAR neophytes that we are, neither one of us even knew it was a race weekend.

Feeling fibrous, we decided to share the back bean nachos and the black bean corn cakes (grilled corn cakes topped with black beans, provolone, onions and tomatoes) although my friend was sorely tempted by the fried cod and tater tots. The spongy corn cake was the highlight but the nachos somehow disappeared first. Funny that.

Afterwards, we went to Strange Matter for dessert (chocolate cake with peanut butter icing made by Ipanema) and a showing of American Hardcore, about the short- lived hardcore music scene which began in California and was embraced by D.C. The DIY aesthetic that accompanied it was epitomized by band members recalling cutting and Elmer's gluing record covers together.

The documentary explained the birth of the hardcore scene as a result of the frustration of Reagan's election and the bland preppy world that accompanied it. Hardcore was by kids, for kids and about kids and musician after musician reiterated that there was no expectation of radio play or any kind of mainstream success. The scene had a violent side, evident in the regular fighting at shows, intense stage diving and even fans trading pipe bombs for admission to shows; this was the anti-Reagan world.

A lot of attention was given to seminal hardcore bands like Bad Brains, the band you didn't want to play after because they owned the show with their technically challenging music and stop and start precision and Minor Threat, whose song "Straight Edge" spurred a movement and spoke to a whole generation of kids who'd just lived through the drug-happy 70s; now they had an excuse to celebrate the fact that they were smart, hostile and sober.

I was surprised at the amount of video that existed of these obscure shows in unlikely locations and while we never got to see any song in its entirety, the energy of the music came through loud and clear. Henry Rollins and Black Flag especially were a force of nature to watch perform.

Not surprisingly, Reagan's reelection sounded the death knell for hardcore and by 1986 it had flamed out; many of its musicians felt like the attendant violence had become too alienating to its audience. One musician insisted that "there was no organized left in the 80s, but there was hardcore, in the best tradition of radicalism." And when it was time to go, hardcore went away as suddenly as it had begun. It had to.

Turns out it was an evening to enjoy short-lived music and long-lived restaurants; thankfully there was cake in between to soften the transition. Unlike our brethren NASCAR fans, my friend and I needed a little buffer to go from butter beans to pipe bombs.

On the other hand, we both lived through the Reagan years, so we should be able to handle anything. Come to think of it, you can even consider us hardcore.