K Street's Second Shift

Saturday, 11 p.m.

"I'm bullish on K Street," said Stephen Tedeschi, watching a crowd swell out to the curb at the newest addition to the strip, Josephine. Tedeschi, who co-owns 100 King, a steakhouse in Old Town Alexandria, said he is eyeing a spot in the K Street area to open a restaurant/lounge soon.

"It's the closest D.C. has right now to a New York scene," he says. "K Street is the equivalent to the meatpacking district."

For many civic leaders, K Street at night is the fulfillment of a decades-old dream to create a downtown that doesn't shut down at dusk. "Our downtown looks nothing like it looked a decade ago," said Neil O. Albert, deputy mayor for planning and economic development. "The office crowd is no longer just heading back to the suburbs at the end of the day."

It's "more hip and trendy than it was when I moved here seven years ago," said Lisa Klein, 35, a physical therapist whose office is a few blocks away.

Klein is on K Street with three friends who have very inside-the-Beltway lifestyles: Two work on Capitol Hill and one works for a federal agency.

The women usually spend nights out in the Connecticut Avenue corridor, Klein said. In search of a little sophistication -- and a critical mass of good-looking, 30-something men -- they have come to K Street.

Klein and her entourage start at the Park at Fourteenth, a four-level club co-owned by local nightclub veteran Marc Barnes, who also owns Love. The four are doing "recon," Klein explains, in which one woman takes the lead in scouting the crowd.

The women quickly move through the first floor, designed with dark wood and upholstered chairs, and head up the stairs toward the club's most distinctive feature: chandeliers that look like the head of Medusa, with red, yellow and white glass snaking out in different directions.