At Sip & Dry Bar in the District’s Ivy City, it’s possible to get your hair done and have a cocktail. (Nathaniel Koch/for The Washington Post)
At the heart of the new development in Ivy City is a unique blowout bar, Sip & Dry Bar (2004 Hecht Ave. NE). This blow-dry salon, which opened in the mixed-industrial district off New York Avenue NE in January, has 10 employees, two shampoo stations, five styling chairs — and six seats in the bar.
Owner Sahar Bozkurt (she and her husband also own Pidzza next door and U Street’s Desperados Burgers & Bar) says the concept — a mixed drink with your ’do — was “a no-brainer.”
“I grew up in the beauty industry,” says Bozkurt, 33, who was born in Afghanistan and came to the United States when she was 4.
In keeping with the Dieselpunk style of the revitalized Hecht Warehouse, Sip & Dry’s interior is old-movie monochrome, softened with distressed rose pink and accented with riveted chrome.
“I wanted something that has character,” Bozkurt says of Ivy City, where new organic markets and boutique distilleries rub shoulders with razor wire and bus lots and auto-repair shops. The Ivy City Smokehouse, New Orleans-style bar Big Chief and the District’s first Nike Community Store are all about a block away.
Sip & Dry offers six drink-and-blowout combinations ($48 each). These include the Dirty Shirley (“beachy, undone-looking hair” plus a Shirley Temple-and-vodka) and the São Paula (a chemical-free Brazilian blowout and a caipirinha). Stylists are trained for varied hair textures. Also available: makeup, ponytails, updos, braiding and hair-care products by Paul Mitchell, AG Hair and Obliphica.
Cocktails are $10 a la carte. Sometimes, customers are just there for the bar.
“There are always guys here ... hanging out,” Bozkurt says. “[Often] the girlfriend is getting her hair done.”
Bozkurt designs the menu, aiming for not-too-sweet and freshness, and offering homemade syrups and infusions — including pineapple vodka, jalapeño tequila, mint whiskey and cucumber gin.
Customer Karene Brown, who lives next door in the Hecht Warehouse apartments, was making a second visit — for a Pink Lady and a “blowout with curls.”
“Places like this are really helping to put the neighborhood together,” she says.