"Obviously we think that having more record stores is a great thing," Michael Babin told ALXnow in July. "It makes the whole neighborhood, and certainly those two blocks of Mount Vernon Avenue a heck of a destination for anybody who cares about music and vinyl records."
Babin is a principal at Neighborhood Restaurant Group. When he said that, his company was about to open a record store in the same stretch where a flooded-out competitor had just signed a new lease. Two months later both shops were open, across the street from each other. A brewery taproom had opened on the same blocks a few weeks before them. None of this happened by accident. Each opening on the 2000 and 2100 blocks of Mount Vernon Avenue this fall assumed the business next door would bring people in, and each space is small enough that one stop rarely fills an afternoon.
A flood moved Crooked Beat up the street
The story starts in January. Crooked Beat Records was in a basement at 2417 Mount Vernon Avenue, and heavy flooding there destroyed about $60,000 worth of merchandise, according to ALXnow. A GoFundMe campaign recovered $23,500. The store reopened at the end of February with limited hours and kept that space going for a few more months. In May, owner Bill Daly closed it for good.
Crooked Beat has deep roots for a small shop. It opened in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1997, spent seven years in Old Town North, and moved to Del Ray in 2023. The new address is 2101B Mount Vernon Avenue, a two-story townhouse of 950 square feet that neighbors say had been empty for more than a decade. The store reopened there on Friday, Sept. 25.
"It's like the Twilight Zone, same colors, same atmosphere," Daly said in a video before the reopening. He called the new shop "a work in progress" and expected to be open full time within about a week. As of this writing, the Crooked Beat website still lists "Soft Open Hours": Thursday and Friday 3 to 7 p.m., Saturday noon to 7 p.m., and Sunday 1 to 6 p.m. Check the site before a weekday trip.
The move matters for more than the shop itself. Leaving the 2400 block put Crooked Beat in the middle of the restaurant group's cluster, which was about to add a record store of its own.
Mobius took over the play café space
Neighborhood Restaurant Group already had a large presence on these two blocks. Evening Star Cafe and Hi/Fi Tex-Mex BBQ are at 2000 Mount Vernon Avenue, and Planet Wine is at 2004. In July the company closed Mulberry Lane Play Café at 2016 Mount Vernon Avenue. Its last day was Friday, July 10. Shorty's Deluxe, the sandwich shop attached to that space, stayed open, and so did the coworking office upstairs.
Babin said he contacted Daly as soon as Crooked Beat announced its new location. "He said the more the merrier, and it'll only make it more of a destination, which is exactly what we thought," Babin told ALXnow. He and Nate Anda, the group's culinary director, are longtime Crooked Beat customers. Between them they own about 5,000 records, and they helped connect Daly with WeMakeDC, a partner store on Connecticut Avenue.
Mobius Records opened at 2016 on Sept. 12. It's a partnership between founder Dempsey Hamilton and the restaurant group's Babin, Anda and Greg Engert. According to The Alexandria Brief, the shop sells new releases, reissues and used records in every genre, on vinyl, CD and cassette, along with posters, T-shirts and other music merchandise. Hamilton told The Zebra that younger customers are driving interest in CDs and tapes as well as vinyl.
That gives the two stores different strengths. Crooked Beat has nearly 30 years of history and a following that paid to help it survive a flood. Mobius has a restaurant group's real estate around it, plus the venue upstairs from Evening Star. Someone browsing on a Saturday can visit both shops without crossing more than one street.
The taproom between the record stores
Crooked Run Fermentation's Del Ray taproom at 2003 Mount Vernon Avenue opened at 11:30 a.m. on Aug. 28, two weeks before Mobius. It took over the space left by Dolce & Bean, the chocolate shop that closed in spring 2025, after a three-month interior renovation.
The taproom is small on purpose. "We were looking for locations under 1,000 square feet and this spot came up," co-owner Lee Rogan told ALXnow. It has more than 20 seats inside and eight outside. The menu includes Crooked Run's beers, wine and cocktails, plus bar food such as chicken tenders, pita with hummus, and mozzarella sticks. Rogan said the taproom will be family friendly, and he wants a stroller parking area in a nearby alley.
Rogan and Jake Endres founded the company in Leesburg in 2013. It also has taprooms in Sterling and Northeast D.C., and the plan is to reach six around the region. Rogan described the Del Ray location this way: "We're not trying to come in and be 'the place' in Del Ray, because that's not what Del Ray is all about. It's about little places that people can go to and shop in and enjoy, just a local neighborhood spot."
That quote fits the whole block. Crooked Beat has 950 square feet, and Crooked Run has under 1,000. None of the new spaces is big enough to fill a whole evening alone. That's why the block works as a walk from door to door.
Crooked Run's Del Ray page lists hours of 3 to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. The Sunday hours posted there look like a typo, so confirm before a Sunday visit.
Where the block goes after dark
The Zebra describes Mobius as part of a group of the restaurant group's businesses around Mount Vernon and Howell avenues. The most important piece for the record store is The No. 9, the lounge upstairs from Evening Star. The partners plan live performances, record-release listening parties and themed vinyl nights there. They also want to give emerging musicians a place to play, build an audience and celebrate new releases.
The Mobius calendar already shows that plan in use:
- Thursday, Oct. 8, 7 p.m.: A listening party for the Fontaines D.C. album "Dopamine Chamber" at No. 9 Lounge.
- Thursday, Nov. 12, 7:30 p.m.: A NØ MAN record-release show at No. 9 Lounge. Tickets are $15, and the show is all ages.
This is what sets the block apart from a record store that happens to sit next to restaurants. On these nights, someone could pick up an album at 2016, have dinner downstairs at Evening Star, and then go upstairs to hear the same music played to a room. Crooked Beat, across the street, has years of in-store shows on its record, though its site hasn't announced any events at the new location yet.
A few blocks south, the same idea on a smaller scale
The pattern doesn't stop at Howell Avenue. Cubbies, a Chicago-style sausage and hot-dog spot, held its grand opening in July upstairs at Del Ray Public House, 2218 Mount Vernon Avenue. HomeGrown Restaurant Group's seasonal pop-up, Nightmare on the Avenue, opened Sept. 19 at 2312 Mount Vernon Avenue and runs through Sunday, Nov. 1. It took over from a dive-bar pop-up that ran for four months.
Hypergoat Coffee Roasters co-owners Rodrigo Ramos and Deborah Joos are working on a second cafe at 2423B Mount Vernon Avenue, on the same stretch Crooked Beat left. As of ALXnow's Aug. 19 report, there was no estimated opening date.
The businesses are different, but the formats are similar. Cubbies took an upstairs room inside an existing pub, and the pop-up rotates through a single storefront. Across the corridor this year, operators have been adding small pieces to existing traffic rather than opening one large anchor.
The next few weeks on Mount Vernon Avenue
- Thursday, Oct. 8: The Fontaines D.C. listening party at No. 9 Lounge, 7 p.m.
- Sunday, Oct. 25: Del Ray's 30th Halloween Parade starts at 2 p.m. at E. Bellefonte. Registration for the stroller, wagon and pet contests is at Mount Vernon and Howell, on the same corner as the record stores.
- Sunday, Nov. 1: The last day of Nightmare on the Avenue at 2312.
- Thursday, Nov. 12: The NØ MAN record-release show at No. 9 Lounge, 7:30 p.m.
The parade is the date most likely to bring big crowds to the block. Contest check-in at Mount Vernon and Howell means a stream of costumed families will pass between Mobius, Crooked Beat and Crooked Run's tables that afternoon. Art on the Avenue on Oct. 3 closed the 1900 through 2900 blocks to traffic for more than 300 artists. That was the first big festival since the new block filled in.
Mobius hasn't published regular weekly hours yet. Crooked Beat's hours are still labeled as a soft opening. Anyone planning a crate-digging Saturday should check both stores' pages that morning.
Small storefronts like the ones on the 2000 and 2100 blocks show how a commercial street gets its character, and that character affects homes within walking distance of it. If you're weighing what it's worth to live a few minutes' walk from Mount Vernon and Howell, Joshua Odmark can go through that with you, block by block. Let's Connect.
