For months now, everyone at Stranger HQ has been wondering when Stout, the new bar DIRECTLY ACROSS THE STREET FROM OUR FRONT DOOR (on the ground floor of the Sunset Electric Building at 11th & Pine) was finally going to open and let us go watch TV there in the middle of the day instead of working. Well, the answer was yesterday, Friday January 30, at 3 p.m. Our inside sources (Google) tipped us off that Stout's menu, which features the usual sandwiches, salads, and drinks, also offers a beer that cost $58! Needless to say, we were intrigued, so at the appointed hour, an away team—Books Editor Paul Constant, Copy Chief Gillian Anderson, Calendar Editor Krishanu Ray, Ace Reporter Heidi Groover, Film Editor Charles Mudede, Secret Sharer Zachary Peacock, Art Director Aaron Huffman, and Staff Photographer Kelly O—assembled and we swanned across the road like a gaggle of louche Amazon junior SEO specialists on a team-building exercise to check it out. What happened next, as they say in today's headlines, will ASTONISH YOU:

The place was doing a brisk lunchtime business considering it had only been in business for about 17 minutes when we arrived. Our party of nine was greeted and seated warmly, if quizzically, by a very tall maîtresse d'. We scoured the paper menus looking for our quarry and found it, quick as you like, at the bottom of the beers column. There it was, plain as day: Barrel-aged Old Rasputin Russian Stout XVII (Made in America). And sure enough, it cost $58. I wouldn't describe our server's reaction to the news that our large party wanted only one bottle with nine glasses as "psyched." He seemed to know exactly as much about Old Rasputin as we did, which was this: It was for sale in this establishment. But he was genial, and went off to place our order (no, thank you, not even water). I also wouldn't say that he brought the beer "right" out. But it was everyone's first time and so our intrepid staff used the opportunity to discuss the important issues of the day while taking in the menu, the massive TV screens, the new car smells, the handblown glass light fixtures, and all the other trappings of what appeared to be a perfectly nice sports and food pub the very existence of which would have seemed completely unthinkable within a mile of Capitol Hill as recently as five years ago. No telling who the clientele will be (though one has one's hunches), and as long as the lure of filthy tech lucre insists on turning the whole civilized world into a Flinger's dressed in Restoration Hardware drag, well, so much the better that it should be right across the street from work, mmm-kay?

At length, the Old Rasputin arrived, along with the glasses.

I poured it out, passed it around, and everyone took out their straws and got down to business.

Friends, I am no beer scholar (remind me to tell you about the time I, like the stupidest American imaginable, ordered a Black & Tan in Dublin), nor was anyone else at our table, which is good, because that meant we didn't have to hear anyone talk about beer. But I will say that I like a nice stout. The consensus among our cohort was that Old Rasputin was... I don't know, fine? Pretty good, I guess. Certainly not worth a month of wi-fi, even shitty CenturyLink wi-fi, which is exactly how much it cost the same as (before tax and tip). You want adjectives? Umm, stout? Stouty? Thick? Loamy? Rich? CIrcumfluent? Cold? It was on the bitter side, but then, It was a stout. The fact that it was aged in bourbon barrels sounds nice, but then, so is bourbon, which is a better value, and a nicer, more complex swallow. (The notion that the brew might have been aged in the jar that purports to hold the severed remnant of its namesake's famously massive shvantz was floated, but nobody really thought it tasted like that. Not that anyone present could possibly know what that would taste like, so it's difficult to say definitively.)

I know this is the kind of thing that people always say when they're trying to debunk this or that expensive or trendy concept, but I almost never have that impulse—though money's too tight (to mention), I will always be the person in any social group who longs to try the most expensive thing on the drinks menu, because the most expensive drink is almost always better—but SERIOUSLY: I've had better stout in a $6 can from QFC and "paired" it with Cheetos. And though I can guarantee that nearly everyone on this beloved publication's world-class staff will be heading over to Stout very soon for lunch, drinks, and maybe even dinner, I feel safe in saying that there is no possible scenario in which I or any of yesterday's drinking party would ever choose to order Old Rasputin again.

Bouches thus amused, my colleagues dashed back to the office (some people work for a living) and I stayed behind to settle the bill. Our server was a good sport on what must have been a tricky day for everyone there, and I left him a $12 tip, bringing the grand total to $75.

FOR A BEER.

And now I know what it's like to hang out on Capitol Hill in 2015.

*Full disclosure: In a separate, post-Rasputin transaction, I also ordered a Reuben sandwich to go. It was okay.