Not that a basic vodka-soda should ever dare to appear in print on the craft cocktail list at year-old Bar Betsie, but if it did, its name would be written in big black block letters, back-lit, on a marquee behind the 14-seat bar, with its ingredients – Tito’s, seltzer water – sitting visible on a shelf above.

Inviting and intimate, and with that arresting visual representation of cocktail ingredients along the wall, Bar Betsie has brought its vibes-forward approach to a dynamic corner of bustling Union Market. The sophomore effort from owners JP Sabatier, Ralph Brabham, and Drew Porterfield, the trio took a different tack at Bar Betsie than at their other, older (though not by much) 14^th Street bar, Jane Jane.

Bar Betsie allowed Sabatier, Brabham, and Porterfield to expand their creativity. The three first connected several years ago, when JP was manager of Maydan and Brabham and Porterfield owned Beau Thai and BKK Cookshop. Immediately hitting it off, they dreamed of opening a bar together and in 2021, it became a reality, in the form of Jane Jane.

Featuring a short list of craft, rotating cocktails and shareable bar snacks, Bar Betsie is Jane Jane’s “grittier, edgier” sister. While Jane is named after Porterfield’s mother, Bar Betsie gets its moniker from Sabatier’s mom.

“While Jane Jane is going on a field trip, Bar Betsie feels like you’re skipping school,” says Brabham. Bar Betsie brings more of a party vibe, he says. They landed in the Union Market neighborhood after thinking through what a second bar might feel like: not a carbon copy, but an atmosphere unique to its physical space and surroundings. Union Market and its transitional nature translates to the bar’s interiors: its mood lighting regardless of time of day, the crushed-velvet booths, the blood-red curved curtains to the bathrooms and kitchen, and the air of timeless mystique contrast to the elevated, buttoned-up cocktail bar that is Jane Jane. No one would bat an eye if a cabaret broke out on top of the bar. When in Bar Betsie, they say, it’s as if the warm lighting cuts through the vibe (and the stories) of 50-year-old cigarette smoke in the air.

They decided to make the cocktail menu more concise: 12 to 15 signature drinks at a time. Tequila and mezcal lead the program (again, a nod to mom Betsie, who prefers agave-based liquors). Drinks rotate seasonally (a cocktail flip is happening this month) and are developed committee-style to ensure that the whole team has input. The Clover Cult has been especially popular, with bluecoat gin, raspberry, vermouth, and lemon, but passed through a high-speed blender that whips the drink into a frenzy: it’s a “yummy, sweet cocktail with foam with a beautiful pink color,” says Brabham.

Beers feature locally brewed options, like from DC Brau and Atlas, alongside a wine program featuring skin-contact wines. And hewing to that party-forward vibe, there’s a host of shooters like the blackberry firing squad with tequila and lime.

As for the food, Bar Betsie has a true kitchen, allowing Sabatier to stretch his cheffy wings (he attended the Culinary Institute of America). Bar snacks are plentiful, including Buffalo chicken dip, a giant pretzel with beer cheese, and chicken tinga nachos that are “fucking delicious” says Raplh. “We’re aiming for food that’s snacky, salty, crunchy, and tasty to pair with the drinks.” Guest chefs show up on Sundays for kitchen cameos.

Since opening Bar Betsie, the trio has welcomed some additional acclaim. They’ve begun to set up activations with other bars; last month, they held a pop-up at new cocktail den Frank’s Wild Years, and there’s an upcoming collaboration with Death &Co, the famed bar in Blagden.

Bar Betsie occupies a unique place in the city’s pantheon of drinking destinations. All three owners are gay, and yet this (like Jane Jane) is not a gay bar.

“We never hide who we are,” say Brabham and Porterfield. “There’s always the recognition of the community we come from, and love, and want to celebrate.” 

They want people to know who they are and what they stand for, showing that by being inclusive and open in their support of the community. They work to ensure that the staff is diverse and inclusive as well. They also dropped an exclusive Easter egg: behind the medicine-cabinet mirrors in the bathroom is a video screen playing footage of drag queens either getting ready, fixing, or removing makeup and wigs. “It’s a little IYKYK moment, something fun and true to who we are as a queer-celebrating and owned space,” they say.

It all started back at the Telluride Film Festival, where “Moonlight” had its world premiere in 2016, kicking off a successful awards season run. It instantly became the year’s critical darling, and it wound up winning three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay (for Jenkins), and Best Supporting Actor (for Mahershala Ali.)

But there’s a world where an independently made film like “Moonlight,” featuring an all-Black cast with mostly unknown actors, and a story exploring how queerness intersects with toxic masculinity and race, gets easily overlooked. The fact that the film won Best Picture on Hollywood’s biggest stage not only cemented its place in film history, but helped the story reach more Black and queer people.

Adapted from Tarell Alvin McCraney’s unproduced, autobiographical play “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,” Jenkins follows a boy named Chiron, introduced to the audience as Little, over the course of three pivotal moments in his upbringing. Set in Miami, the film tracks Chiron’s days as an outcast struggling to make it through elementary school, to his first sexual encounter with another boy, to his adult days making a living as a drug dealer. Chiron suffocates while living with his abusive, drug-addicted mother (Naomie Harris) and eventually finds refuge and safety in the home of surrogate parents Juan (Ali) and Teresa (Janelle Monáe) as he struggles to reckon with his queerness.

Jenkins’s images instantly became iconic: Juan holding Little in the ocean, a moment reminiscent of a young boy’s baptism; Chiron resting his head on Kevin’s (André Holland) shoulder as the two reconcile their love for one another; Little looking back at the audience as the waves crash.

The film mainly features locals from Miami. One of the smartest choices Jenkins and his casting director, Yesi Ramirez, made when shaping out Chiron’s journey was casting three different actors (Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes) to play the character as he physically comes of age. Jenkins deliberately never had the three actors meet despite portraying the same character — quite the atypical approach to casting.

“I wanted [that decision] to be a comment on the way of the world we live in, and how society has this effect on these young men who grow up in a community like the one depicted in the film,” Jenkins said in a Creative Screenwriting interview in February 2017. “To me, the best way to show that was to illustrate this change in the character, and what happens to the people who are playing him at each stage.”

In the decade since “Moonlight”’s release, dozens of filmmakers cite Jenkins as one of their biggest influences, including Joe Talbot (“The Last Black Man in San Francisco”). And you can see his film’s footprints all over “Nickel Boys, If I Go Will They Miss Me” and “Waves,” all films that use evocative imagery to tell grounded, Black-led stories.

To date, “Moonlight” remains the lowest-budget film to ever win Best Picture, made for a mere $1.5 million dollars. It was also the first film that A24, the indie distributor that was still building a name for itself back in 2016, fully financed and produced itself. “Moonlight” went on to gross over $60 million at the global box office, largely thanks to the Oscars platform.

In our current political and media landscape under the Trump-Vance administration, “Moonlight” has the potential to save even more lives. In the early days depicted in Chiron’s upbringing, he is taught to live with shame, to keep his head down at school. It’s all about survival. But by the end of the film, Chiron reconnects with Kevin and finds himself remembering all the emotions he felt after being touched by a man for the first time. It’s a small step, a small embrace, but a crucial one for Chiron to start coming to terms with himself.

Jenkins still gets emotional when watching scenes back from the film now. Speaking with Vanity Fair at this year’s Telluride Film Festival, where “Moonlight” screened for its 10th anniversary, Jenkins admitted he was a “crying mess” when revisiting the last 15 minutes of the film earlier in the year.

“Maybe over the next few months I’ll get some more understanding of it, but I think it was just how meaningful it was that we created this thing,” Jenkins said. “It’s not about the film itself, but just how meaningful it was that we actually did it.

In the decade since “Moonlight”’s release, Jenkins went on to direct another acclaimed film, “If Beale Street Could Talk,” and recently made “Mufasa: The Lion King.” He’s set to return to his more independent roots with “Be My Baby” starring Zendaya, which will also be distributed by A24, and an Alvin Ailey biopic. The Oscar winner continues to mentor emerging filmmakers and writers through the Sundance Labs, visiting colleges around the country to teach what he learned from making his breakout film.

Now that “Moonlight” is back in theaters, it’s the perfect opportunity for queer and Black people to experience this tender, intimate, nuanced film on the big screen. It’s a modern classic with the potential to continue making people feel seen and embraced for every aspect of their identity.

“Some Like It Hot”
Through Nov. 8
Olney Theatre Center
2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Rd.
Olney, Md.
Olneytheatre.org

There’s reason to celebrate at Olney Theatre Center. Currently, they’re debuting their renovated Bernard Family Theatre while inaugurating the soaring new space with a regional premiere of “Some Like It Hot,” the musical adaptation of Billy Wilder’s classic 1959 comedy. 

Toying with this cinematic gem took some cojones, but it works. 

The film and the Tony Award-winning musical share similar plot lines: After witnessing a mob hit, Chicago musicians Joe and Jerry need to leave town. So, they don dresses, join Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopators all-female band, and board a train headed for warmer climes (Southern California). As Josephine and Daphne, they experience new slants on romance, gift giving, and the male gaze. It’s funny and illuminating. 

Helmed by out artistic director Jason Loewith, OTC’s exhilarating production is brimming with fun, feeling, and the musical’s focus on Black identity and gender exploration (recreated for Broadway by writers Matthew López /Amber Ruffin, and songwriting team Marc Schaiman/Scott Whittman).  

OTC’s Loewith embraces it all while masterfully bringing together big dance numbers, romantic interludes, slapstick, and what’s more, he makes it look easy.

It’s 1933, deep in the Great Depression, and no-nonsense bandleader Sweet Sue (the excellent Ashleigh King) sets the speakeasy scene with “What Are You Thirsty For?” (not an unusual inquiry during the Prohibition era).

Away from Chicago at San Diego’s glamorous Hotel del Coronado, matters become further complicated for Joe (Jacob Tischler) as he pursues the band’s irresistibly unreliable Sugar Kane, sensitively played by the talented Montria Walker. (A couple of her songs, including “A Darker Shade of Blue,” describe a rural Georgia, Jim Crow backstory.) 

Meanwhile, Daphne (nonbinary actor Tavis Kordell) is learning a new love language with impish root beer fortune heir Osgood Fielding III (terrific out actor Edward Juvier).

Drinking in a Mexican cantina not far from the hotel, Osgood tenderly serenades Daphne with “Fly, Mariposa, Fly,” a romantic number about metaphorically spreading wings, and transformation. The beloved’s powerful reply number “You Coulda Knocked Me Over with a Feather” is filled with emotional revelation.

In its examination of gender fluidity and self-discovery, the musical isn’t an indoctrination. Instead, audiences accept what’s happening on stage, and soon they’re seduced and painlessly invested in the characters’ wellbeing.

Frank Labovitz’s intelligent costume design is brimming with storytelling. Joe and Jerry’s quick change from guys to girls isn’t flashy — at first. It’s all drab colors, modest hem lengths…street clothes pulled from the Great Depression. Later it’s showbiz silver sequins. 

An adept and marvelous actor, Tishler does double duty as the straight and funny man. Even when dolled up for gigs, his Josephine destroys the look with men’s black socks, the dowdy wig, and cockeyed glasses, hilariously setting up a running gag of how Joe, as Josephine, looks so much older than the other girls in the band.  

For “Some Like It Hot,” Karla Puno Garcia’s wide-ranging choreography style ranges from those early 1930s flapper flicks (think the young manic Joan Crawford) to something more elegant, Joe and Sugar dancing à la Fred and Ginger in the show’s dreamy number “Let’s Dance the World Away.” Another highlight is the second act’s penultimate number “Tip Top Trouble,” a wild but meticulously staged, gloriously gender bending, sixteen-person, cops and robbers chase sequence. 

Top notch music director Christopher Youstra reliably delivers Marc Shaiman’s swinging, 1920s and 30s-inspired score played by a mostly hidden 10-piece band and mimed onstage by Sue’s lively Syncopators.

And in meeting the specialness of the challenge, scenic designer Ryan Douglass transforms the newly renovated theater into a good club setting featuring a colorful inlaid thrust stage surrounded by cabaret tables where just several short yards ahead of Row C, a contented couple is served a bottle of Champagne while settling in before the show starts. 

Today, the Bernard Family Theatre with its raftered ceiling and industrial vibe suggests past and promise for the future.  

For now, experience the revamped wild ride in a wonderfully redone space.