Roadhouse Blues

What Do You Think You're Looking At? #94

This is along Rockville Pike, the main highway running through Rockville, Maryland:

Now, these are, technically, the same building. But it’s an edge case, and kind of a “Roadhouse of Theseus” deal. More on that in a bit.

Hank Dietle’s Tavern, one of the oldest surviving structures on Rockville Pike—over 100 years old—is a classic no-frills roadhouse/bar. One article quotes some Facebook comments on a news item about it, and one of them is this: “Best cold PBR around. My dad grew up going there and took me for a beer when I was old enough. Such a great place!”

That’s the general sentiment: atmosphere, tradition, gathering. Is it the best PBR? Well, it’s your bar. Kind of like how your mother’s cooking is the best. Hank Dietle’s is a type of working-class establishment of which I have very little experience. There was a similar place near Woodbridge, Virginia back in the day called Hillbilly Heaven. This bit, which could probably no longer describe anything in the area, gives you an idea:

Arnson’s [a musician who plays at Dietle’s] connection to Dietle’s dates to the late 1970s, when he attended Kensington Junior High School (now razed) 3 miles away. “It was kind of like a biker bar and pool hall, and always seemed a little rough to [my friends and me] because we were kids,” he says. Arnson and his friends would try to get served there—unsuccessfully—at 15. At 18, when they were legal—the drinking age in Maryland for beer and wine was 18 from 1974 to 1982—they’d go there for Schlitz on tap.

The culture and economics that gave us these places is pretty much gone from the D.C. area. And it’s gone from Hank Dietle’s too, arguably, because the second image is a nearly complete rebuild of the tavern following a devastating fire in 2018.

Much of the exterior stood, but it needed significant restoration work. The interior was gutted and was completely rebuilt down to the paneling. So while it is the same structure—one articles even notes that the project was permitted as a renovation and not a build—most of the individual pieces are not the same.

Arnson said when he saw the fire, “I didn’t picture that it would be this bad.…I don’t know how this place could even be rebuilt at this point.” And he also wrote a little ditty about it:

I got them old Hank Dietle blues.
I went down to Hank Dietle’s to get some beer.
I got to Hank Dietle’s weren’t nobody there
But a big ol’ melted plastic sign,
People standing ’round moanin’ and cryin’.
Well, I went to Hank Dietle’s,
But they burned up all the beer.
I got them old Hank Dietle blues.

The current sign is an exact replica, as is pretty much everything.

Things come and go. But sometimes they come back.

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Related Reading:

What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #5

What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #8

Workhorse Buildings

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