L's Inner Circle

It's Friday, and the bar, the tables and the outside seating are full. Freshly washed glasses perspire on the rubber mats. Wedges of lemon and lime cuddle in a steel tray beside the beer taps -- Bud, Redhook, "Stoney's Amber" (aka Michelob). The Redskins play silently on the rear TV, the Nats on the front. Classic rock is on the speakers, backed by the pip-pop-sizzle of grease on the range.

Steve waits tables. Behind the bar is Attila Locsi, originally from Hungary, "the piece of the puzzle that doesn't fit because he's so nice," as Sandy says. Ron Frazier works the grill and Cigifredo "Freddy" Guzman, who's been with Stoney's for 23 years, is downstairs in the kitchen.

Steve lumbers in from outside, the humidity stuck to him, and plucks two plates from the bar. "Attila, a pitcher of Stoney's, please ."

" 'Please,' " Attila gasps, jerking the tap. "I haven't heard that word in years."

They fling muttered expletives one minute and share a booming laugh the next. Behold the Stoney's dynamic.

Steve bellows downstairs, "Freddy! Where's that pizza? I'm gonna call Domino's!," and then scurries back outside, plates in hand, doing his best Belushi. "Cheeburgercheeburgercheeburger."

Attila twists the cork out of a bottle of red wine and refills a beer glass. Red wine on the rocks. Mr. Leon's drink of choice.

With skin the color of the bar he plants his elbows on, Mr. Leon, 90, looks like he was born of Stoney's woodwork. After 28 years in the Army as a staff sergeant -- a career that took him from Guam to France -- he settled in Washington at the Massachusetts House across 13th Street.

He first sauntered into Stoney's on Aug. 10, 1970, when a bottle of beer was 75 cents, when there was a gas station next door, and Stoney's was the only place in the area that would serve blacks without umbrage. "This is my family right here," he says, his gravelly whisper almost lost in an Eric Clapton solo. The Stoney's folks call him Pops; he calls them his children. Even if Stoney's relocates nearby, it'll be too far for Mr. Leon.

"I don't know where I'm gonna go, to tell you the truth," he says, tugging the bill of his blue cap. "Here, I come get my drink and talk to my friends. Everybody's somebody."

Attila tops off Mr. Leon's glass, then pours a splash into his own. They clink, and drink.

Outside under the purpling sky sits the Stoney's marriage, Christopher Welch and Sara DeCair, who met at the dive in January 2004 and were married this March. Tonya Vaughn, who works weekends at Stoney's, unwinds with them, flying through Newports, her high-pitched one-liners embodying the loving-but-surly Stoney's sentiment.