Arts & Entertainment
Freddie’s purple reign
Va. gay bar/restaurant celebrates 10 years with month of festivities
Freddie Lutz at his 60th birthday party in December. The gay entrepreneur has another milestone coming up — his bar turns 10. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)
Freddie’s Beach Bar and Restaurant
555 So. 23rd St.
Arlington, Va.Anniversary festivities:
8 p.m. Tuesday “Purple Party” — buffet and DJ Alicia
March 4 — Wicked Jezebel
March 5 — Saturday ‘Drag Diner’ buffet brunch
with Shelby Bottoms (Saturdays weekly)
$9.95 — 10 a.m.-3 p.m
Sunday champagne brunch
(Sundays weekly)
$19.95 – 11 a.m.-3 p.m.
Freddie’s Follies Drag Show
with Destiny B. Childs (Sundays weekly)
9 p.m.-11 p.m.
March 8, 10 and 11 — WiseCRACK Disco Trivia
(Tuesday, Thursday, Friday weekly)
March 10 — “Dining Out For Life”
March 20 — “Mimi I’mFurst”
For details, go here or call 703-685-0555
Freddie Lutz knows what it takes to succeed as a restaurateur. But how to put it into words?
Certainly it’s that ineffable “je ne sais quoi” — that intuitive yet practical sense of how to succeed in the world of hospitality, as a purveyor of food and drink and good times. And it’s second nature to the man known to everyone simply as “Freddie.”
His is the motto for many who succeed — “excellence equals success.” In Lutz’s words, “They say if you make it past the first year, you’re doing good, but if you make it past the third year, you’re really doing good.”
However, the well-known rule of thumb in the restaurant industry is this sobering statistic: most new ones don’t make it much past one year. Therefore, Lutz says, “I guess if you make it past a decade, you’re doing fabulous.”
March is his 10th anniversary celebration month, starting Tuesday. He calls it “our purple party,” and it begins at 8 that night with a complimentary hors d’oeuvre buffet and an atmosphere of merriment with party favors. There is, as Freddie insists, “no cover charge” whatsoever,” because, he calls it “a big celebration, and everyone’s invited.”
“It’s a thank-you to the community,” he says, “for all their love and support over the last 10 years.” Lutz’s favorite color is purple, so that’s the theme.
Purple streamers deck the small stage — a mainstay for karaoke and drag shows, flanked by a white baby grand piano.
Lutz admits he borrowed — he calls it “artistic license” — the purple hue from elsewhere. He dubs it “royal purple” and says proudly, “I stole it from a diner in Key West, where I fell in love with it.” So back in Arlington, he immediately went to a Duron paint store, and found it.
But Tuesday’s kick-off party is just the beginning.
March 4 at 9 p.m., the lesbian band Wicked Jezebel will perform. Then on March 10, Lutz plans to give more back to the community, by, he says, “donating 110 percent of the proceeds” — not the profits, but the proceeds — of all sales that evening to Food and Friends’ “Dining Out For Life” fundraiser. March 20 brings the drag artist “Mimi I’mFurst,” well-known from “Ru Paul’s Drag Race.”
But Lutz is counting on staging more events. He’s planning them in concert with his general manager, his 24-year-old nephew Ryan, whom Lutz insists is straight, saying he is sort of like the young man Val — played by actor Dan Futterman in “The Birdcage.”
One touch of décor, of course, is Lutz’s sense of fashion style, through his own collection of colorful Hawaiian shirts — at first he simply estimates there are “a lot of them” in his closet, but then concedes that maybe it’s around 40. “Hey,” he says, “it’s a beach bar.”
Lutz also says that he has aimed to transplant the atmosphere of “The Birdcage” — set in Miami’s South Beach — to his place, with its “islandy feeling,” on 23rd Street in a commercial strip between Arlington Ridge and Crystal City. Its decor was spun through his own mixing bowl of styles. “I didn’t need to hire a decorator,” he says, “I pretty much did it myself, I guess my theme song is ‘I Did It My Way.'”
Lutz lives on Meade Street, near the restaurant in the old Lutz family home, with his partner of 13 years, Johnny Cervantes. It’s the same house where Lutz lived with his parents, from when he was age 3. He boasts a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Lutz just celebrated another landmark anniversary — his 60th birthday, on Dec. 3, with a big bash at the restaurant. Cervantes, meanwhile, only owns up to being “39-ish, again, but I never give out my age.” When interviewed, they had just returned from their second home — in Rehoboth Beach — and Cervantes’ fondness for his partner was palpable.
“With Freddie, what you see is what you get,” Cervantes says. “But it’s true,” adding that “it’s his honesty and his integrity,” plus, “he’s got so much energy.” In their relationship, Cervantes says, “he’s always the one who is willing to take the risks — and the only way I can describe him is as a free spirit, while also remaining respectful of everyone that he knows.”
“He doesn’t step on anyone’s toes. The bottom line is this, everybody loves Freddie, and Freddie loves everybody, whether in this neighborhood, in the business community, straight or gay.”
Cervantes says the secret of the success of the bar and restaurant is that Lutz has “great negotiating skills.”
Asked about that, Lutz acknowledges that when he started out a decade ago, after a 25-year career working down the street as manager and maitre’d at Cafe Italia, “I just wanted to see if I could do it myself, to see if I could make it happen, to create a gay bar and restaurant, but also — gay or not — to just see if I could do it on my own.”
Yes, he sees Freddie’s as “just one big, happy, dysfunctional family, with all the crazy drama that goes along with a gay bar, the intensity and all that, but this is important,” he adds, “the accent is on the word ‘happy,’ that’s definitely a key word.”
So yes, he feels “a great sense of accomplishment” now, to hit the 10-year mark.
Asked about the new LGBT bar in Northern Virginia, whether or not he feels any rivalry with the So Addictive Lounge at 733 Elden St. in Herndon, Lutz insists, “Absolutely not, in fact, I welcome it.”
He says there’s plenty of room in Northern Virginia for another gay bar. It’s managed by a former Freddie’s employee and they’ve talked about how they can help each other. Lutz sent flowers opening night. He got flowers in return.
When Lutz began 10 years ago, buying the location of the old Foxhole — he called it “a neighborhood, ‘Cheers’-type sports bar.” But then he started to change everything, he says, though they stayed open the whole time. Several of the Foxhole regulars hung around. He told them to hang on, the purple paint and redecorating were just part of “a work in progress,” a phrase he says still applies.
Books
Love or fear flying you’ll devour ‘Why Fly’
New book chronicles a lifetime obsession with aircraft
‘Why Fly’
By Caroline Paul
c. 2026, Bloomsbury
$27.99/256 pages
Tray table folded up.
Check. Your seat is in the upright position, the airflow above your head is just the way you like it, and you’re ready to go. The flight crew is making final preparations. The lights are off and the plane is backing up. All you need now is “Why Fly” by Caroline Paul, and buckle up.
When she was very young, Paul was “obsessed” with tales of adventure, devouring accounts written by men of their derring-do. The only female adventure-seeker she knew about then was Amelia Earhart; later, she learned of other adventuresome women, including aviatrix Bessie Coleman, and Paul was transfixed.
Time passed; Paul grew up to create a life of adventure all her own.
Then, the year her marriage started to fracture, she switched her obsession from general exploits to flight.
Specifically, Paul loves experimental aircraft, some of which, like her “trike,” can be made from a kit at home. Others, like Woodstock, her beloved yellow gyrocopter, are major purchases that operate under different FAA rules. All flying has rules, she says, even if it seems like it should be as freewheeling as the birds it mimics.
She loves the pre-flight checklist, which is pure anticipation as well as a series of safety measures; if only a relationship had the same ritual. Paul loves her hangar, as a place of comfort and for flight in all senses of the word. She enjoys thinking about historic tales of flying, going back before the Wright Brothers, and including a man who went aloft on a lawn chair via helium-filled weather balloons.
The mere idea that she can fly any time is like a gift to Paul.
She knows a lot of people are terrified of flying, but it’s near totally safe: generally, there’s a one in almost 14 million chance of perishing in a commercial airline disaster – although, to Paul’s embarrassment and her dismay, it’s possible that both the smallest planes and the grandest loves might crash.
If you’re a fan of flying, you know what to do here. If you fear it, pry your fingernails off the armrests, take a deep breath, and head to the shelves. “Why Fly” might help you change your mind.
It’s not just that author Caroline Paul enjoys being airborne, and she tells you. It’s not that she’s honest in her explanations of being in love and being aloft. It’s the meditative aura you’ll get as you’re reading this book that makes it so appealing, despite the sometimes technical information that may flummox you between the Zen-ness. It’s not overwhelming; it mixes well with the history Paul includes, biographies, the science, heartbreak, and exciting tales of adventure and risk, but it’s there. Readers and romantics who love the outdoors, can’t resist a good mountain, and crave activity won’t mind it, though, not at all.
If you own a plane – or want to – you’ll want this book, too. It’s a great waiting-at-the-airport tale, or a tuck-in-your-suitcase-for-later read. Find “Why Fly” and you’ll see that it’s an upright kind of book.
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Theater
Out actor Kevin Cahoon on starring role in ‘Chez Joey’
Arena production adapted from Broadway classic ‘Pal Joey’
‘Chez Joey’
Through March 15
Arena Stage
1101 Sixth St., S.W.
Tickets start at $93
Arenastage.org
As Melvin Snyder in the new musical “Chez Joey,” out actor Kevin Cahoon plays a showbiz society columnist who goes by the name Mrs. Knickerbocker. He functions as a sort of liaison between café society and Chicago’s Black jazz scene circa 1940s. It’s a fun part replete with varied insights, music, and dance.
“Chez Joey” is adapted from the Broadway classic “Pal Joey” by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. It’s inspired by John O’Hara’s stories based on the exploits of a small-time nightclub singer published in The New Yorker.
A warm and humorous man, Cahoon loves his work. At just six, he began his career as a rodeo clown in Houston. He won the Star Search teen division at 13 singing songs like “Some People” from “Gypsy.” He studied theater at New York University and soon after graduating set to work playing sidekicks and comedic roles.
Over the years, Cahoon has played numerous queer parts in stage productions including “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” “La Cage aux Folles,” “Rocky Horror” as well as Peanut in “Shucked,” and George the keyboardist in “The Wedding Singer,” “a sort of unicorn of its time,” says Cahoon.
Co-directed by Tony Goldwyn and the great Savion Glover, “Chez Joey” is a terrific and fun show filled with loads of talent. Its relevant new book is by Richard Lagravenese.
On a recent Monday off from work, Cahoon shared some thoughts on past and current happenings.
WASHINGTON BLADE: Is there a through line from Kevin, the six-year-old rodeo clown, to who we see now at Arena Stage?
KEVIN CAHOON: Anytime I want to land a joke in a theater piece it goes back to that rodeo clown. It doesn’t matter if it’s Arena’s intimate Kreeger Theatre or the big rodeo at the huge Houston Astrodome.
I was in the middle stadium and there was an announcer — a scene partner really. And we were doing a back and forth in hopes of getting laughs. At that young age I was trying to understand what it takes to get laughs. It’s all about timing. Every line.
BLADE: Originally, your part in “Chez Joey” Melvin was Melba who sings “Zip,” a clever woman reporter’s song. It was sort of a star feature, where they could just pop in a star in the run of “Pal Joey.”
CAHOON: That’s right. And in former versions it was played by Martha Plimpton and before her Elaine Stritch. For “Chez Joey,” we switched gender and storyline.
We attempted to do “Zip” up until two days before we had an audience at Arena. Unexpectedly they cut “Zip” and replaced it with a fun number called “I Like to Recognize the Tune,” a song more connected to the story.
BLADE: Wow. You must be a quick study.
CAHOON: Well, we’re working with a great band.
BLADE: You’ve played a lot of queer parts. Any thoughts on queer representation?
CAHOON: Oh yes, definitely. And I’ve been very lucky that I’ve had the chance to portray these characters and introduce them to the rest of the world. I feel honored.
After originating Edna, the hyena on Broadway in “The Lion King,” I left that to do “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” as standby for John Cameron Mitchell, doing one show a week for him.
Everyone thought I was crazy to leave the biggest musical of our time with a personal contract and getting paid more money that I’d ever made to get $400 a week at the downtown Jane Street Theatre in a dicey neighborhood.
At the time, I really felt like I was with cool kids. I guess I was. And I never regretted it.
BLADE: When you play new parts, do you create new backstories for the role?
CAHOON: Every single time! For Melvin, I suggested a line about chorus boys on Lakeshore Drive.
BLADE: What’s up next for Kevin Cahoon?
CAHOON: I’m about to do the New York Theatre Workshop Gala; I’ve been doing it for nine years in a row. It’s a huge job. I’ll also be producing the “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” opening on Broadway this spring; it’s a queer-centric uptown vogue ball with gay actor André de Shields reprising his role as “Old Deuteronomy.”
BLADE: There’s a huge amount of talent onstage in “Chez Joey.”
CAHOON: There is. I’m sharing a dressing room with Myles Frost who plays Joey. He won accolades for playing Michael Jackson on Broadway. We’ve become great friends. He’s a miracle to watch on stage. And Awa [Sal Secka], a D.C. local, is great. Every night the audience falls head over heels for her. When this show goes to New York, Awa will, no doubt, be a giant star.
BLADE: Do you think “Chez Joey” might be Broadway bound?
CAHOON: I have a good feeling it is. I’ve done shows out of town that have high hopes and pedigree, but don’t necessarily make it. “Chez Joey” is a small production, it’s funny, and audiences seem to love it.
The Capital Pride Alliance held the annual Pride Reveal event at The Schuyler at The Hamilton Hotel on Thursday, Feb. 26. The theme for this year’s Capital Pride was announced as: “Exist. Resist. Have the audacity!”
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Love or fear flying you’ll devour ‘Why Fly’
Out actor Kevin Cahoon on starring role in ‘Chez Joey’
PHOTOS: Pride Reveal
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