By Fritz Hahn
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, July 28, 2006; WE05

There are two new venues on H Street NE offering a serious choice on Saturday nights: Would you rather watch an up-and-coming local rock band or someone lie on a bed of nails?

Showbar Presents the Palace of Wonders draws its inspiration from Coney Island sideshows to create a two-level funhouse of curiosities, such as the two-faced bull, shrunken heads and the taxidermied remains of a unicorn. On weekends, '50s-style burlesque dancers, sword swallowers and human blockheads take to a stage in the rear of the building.

Next door at the Red and the Black, the guys behind the U Street corridor rock club DC9 have turned a hairdresser's salon into a cool little spot with live music, Abita beers and jambalaya, plus the occasional weekend DJ. And if you need more incentive to visit, the bars are offering free rides back to Union Station for Metro riders Friday and Saturday nights. "We realize the big problem [for customers] isn't getting here -- it's getting home," explains Getinet Bantayehu, co-owner of the Palace of Wonders. "Cabs will take you here, but cabs aren't accustomed to there being life in this neighborhood after a certain hour," leaving customers with long waits for random cabs that happen down H Street. In response, the bar owners have hired a cab whose sole mission is to drive patrons back to the Metro. Patrons tell their bartender they're ready to leave, and within a matter of minutes, they should be on their way home.

1210 H St. NE; 202-398-7469

The Scene: Sideshow oddities, carnival performers and burlesque dancers make for one bizarre bar.

The Palace of Wonders is the only bar in Washington that can claim to have a taxidermied unicorn on display. It's the only nightspot I've ever visited where the bartender puts down her cocktail shaker, takes the stage and swallows a huge sword. On the comfortable back patio, the resident orange tabby tries to make friends and taste your beer. That's about par for the course.

The cornerstone is a selection of sideshow relics, freaks of nature and other oddities belonging to carnival expert James Taylor. For years, Taylor and his friend Dick Horne ran Baltimore's American Dime Museum, dedicated to showing off their collection, which included nine-foot-tall Peruvian mummies, a five-legged dog named Fivey and that unicorn, which once traveled with the Ringling Brothers circus.

Taylor and Horne dissolved their partnership a few years back, and when nightlife mogul Joe Englert was dreaming up themes for his H Street properties, he approached Taylor about opening a sideshow-themed bar that would offer a stage for live performers as well as provide a museum-like setting for Taylor's best (and grossest) items.

Checking out the assorted skulls and the wax statue of the Elephant Man while having a beer and a foot-long hot dog was the draw when the Palace of Wonders opened six weeks ago. Patrons crowded around the cluttered glass cases holding such marvels as the eight-legged goat "Spider Billy," the fearsome Samoan Sea Worm or a mummified "Devil Man." The problem is that the second floor gets congested, and after dark, the soft lighting doesn't show the artifacts to their best advantage. It's hard to read the explanatory plaques that accompany some of the strangest objects, like the one-gallon jar holding the head of the gigantic python that crushed famed showman Sailor Katzy. And besides, once you've browsed the collection, the novelty wears off.

Instead, I find myself returning for the Saturday night shows, which offer everything from lip-synching drag kings to a guy who drives nails into his nose. Among the performers I've caught in the last few weeks: the captivating Kitty Victorian, whose classic burlesque routine begins with an elbow-length satin turquoise glove snaking from between two black curtains and ends with a tornado of tassel-twirling; women who walk on (and do handstands in) piles of broken glass or lie on beds of six-inch nails before inviting audience members to walk across their bodies and smash cinderblocks lying atop their stomachs. Bartender Charon Henning, who bills herself as "the most dangerous beauty alive," has wowed crowds with her sword-swallowing ability several times. (It's a serious business, too. Hanging on the wall upstairs is a Celtic broadsword that almost killed Henning a few years ago when she "swallowed wrong" during a live broadcast on a Baltimore radio station and had to be rushed to the emergency room.) In coming weeks, Bantayehu says, the schedule is going to expand even more, with a dog fashion show (which may include an owner-pet look-alike contest), game show nights, bingo, female-only arm-wrestling contests and family days when children can complete scavenger hunts through the museum area. "The goal," he says, "is to have odd things and odd acts." I'd say they're two for two.

1212 H St. NE; 202-399-3201

The Scene: The owners of DC9 bring a smaller copy of their successful live music club to the other side of the city.

With the 2004 opening of DC9, Bryan Deily and Bill Spieler filled a serious hole in Washington's music scene: a venue that holds about 200 people, slotting in between tiny local clubs like the Velvet Lounge and larger destinations that welcome hundreds of fans, such as the Black Cat and the 9:30 club. Still, Deily says, "there's just a lack of music venues in D.C. Many bands will skip Washington instead of playing here" because they can't get the date or the venue they want.

Englert, who's also a partner in DC9, was looking to add live music to the H Street mix and asked the duo if they'd be interested in running a similar venue. Deily and Spieler leapt at the chance to run a second club, which they dubbed the Red and the Black.

Because the upstairs concert area holds about 100 people -- half the capacity of DC9 -- Deily originally planned to pack the Red and the Black's schedule with "singer-songwriters, more of a blues or country vibe," but, he says, "I'm not getting that type of booking right now." Instead, he has turned the Red and the Black into an ancillary stage for DC9. "There are a lot of bands I want to get at DC9, but there's not enough room [on the schedule]. Bands see that DC9 is booked on a certain night, so they call and ask if they can play [at the Red and the Black] instead."

A mix of local groups that have previously played DC9 (Nethers, Greenland, Alcian Blue) and regional touring acts have taken the small stage in the narrow room, where the blood-red-and-black decor is reminiscent of a New Orleans bordello. DJs will be added beginning this weekend, and Deily says there will be two or three monthly. The biggest problem so far has been the sound, which could be because the folks most often working the mixing board are bartenders and the bands themselves. Hardcore acts are incredibly loud -- you can hear them next door at the Showbar -- while more mellow acts find the acoustics soft or unbalanced. This is something that should eventually work out, though.

Like DC9, the Red and the Black is more than just a performance space. The first-floor bar, which never charges a cover, is laid out exactly like DC9's, with a long bar along one wall facing a row of red leather booths. Its lived-in feeling -- creaking floorboards, a collection of old photographs, red lights casting shadows on black walls -- is intended to evoke New Orleans, where Deily spent years bartending. Beers from the Crescent City's Abita Brewing Co. are featured, and simmering pots behind the bar hold house-made jambalaya, gumbo and red beans and rice. (The spicy jambalaya is far and away the best choice.) As the Red and the Black works through the kinks, Deily says he's surprised with the response the club has received so far. "I thought this would take a couple of years to come together, to get people to come over here."