Whatever bar or club scene you favor, D.C. has it aplenty. The hottest clubbing spots are in Adams Morgan around 18th St, Dupont Circle and nearby Logan Circle, and increasingly and improbably on K St near McPherson Square. Adams Morgan's scene is the edgiest and likely most exciting of the three, and draws a really young, diverse crowd. Dupont Circle's scene is probably the biggest and most established, with sometimes frighteningly upscale clubs catering to extremely wealthy foreign clientele, as well as a more happy-go-lucky gay scene. Logan Circle is less established as a nightlife hot spot than Dupont, but the two areas otherwise resemble one another.
If these destinations are all a bit too high-octane, you should definitely explore the clubs around U St and 14th St in Shaw, which cater to an older, diverse, and self-regardingly more sophisticated crowd. Shaw is also a fantastic destination for live jazz, with echoes of Ellington ringing out from nearly every restaurant, bar, and not a few world-class music venues on Saturday nights. Georgetown is another major nightlife destination, although the emphasis here is less on dancing and more on drinking. It has tons of bars, most of which have a "privileged" and sometimes rowdy collegiate atmosphere. Back on the topic of live jazz, Georgetown is home to the city's most prestigious venue, Blues Alley.
But that's hardly the end of things. D.C. at the end of the 90s and into the current decade went from being one of the blandest, shut-down-at-ten-o'-clock American cities to having a thriving nightlife scene pretty much city-wide. Aside from the north central neighborhoods listed above, Barracks Row, Woodley Park, and Chevy Chase each have their own nice "strips," mostly filled with upscale bars, that are worth visiting. The downtown nightlife is lacking, to put it mildly. Foggy Bottom, despite the huge quantity of students, remains pretty quiet, and the Penn Quarter is a den of tourist traps. If you're looking for nightlife downtown, research carefully.
Long lacking anything even resembling a bohemian neighborhood, a successful Adams Morgan club owner decided to manufacture one along H St NE around the newly renovated Atlas Theater in the Near Northeast. The result is strange. It may never be properly "bohemian," but the Atlas District is intriguing. It's a poor but quickly gentrifying neighborhood, and is dead quiet most of the week, but now there are blocks worth of crazy dining/clubbing options, and even a few upscale joints, that fill the street on Friday and Saturday nights. The biggest attraction has to be the Palace of Wonders, a vaudeville/sideshow/burlesque bar with sword swallowing bartenders and a "museum of oddities," but there are also a couple surprisingly cool rock clubs, a mini golf bar, Belgian mussels and pommes frites, and even an upscale wine bar and lounge. Streetcar service is expected to begin in 2014, with cars running from Union Station.
Gogo clubs the funk/hip-hop genre, not dancing in 60s miniskirts were once probably D.C.'s most distinctive nightlife scene, concentrated in Anacostia, but today all indoor gogo performances have been banned in D.C., due to a backlash at the staggering number of homicides occurring at clubs and events. If you're looking for live gogo today, look for big outdoor events or head out to the Takoma Station in a homicide-free section of the Northeast, which seems to get away with regular gogo acts by claiming to be a jazz club.
