Courtesy of Punjab Grill
DCFEED
D.C. gains a fine dining Indian restaurant this fall with Punjab Grill coming to 1001 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. The menu is rooted in Punjabi cuisine but includes some twists like butter chicken with Thai basil, lemongrass, and kaffir lime.
A Two-Hour Tour
Laura Hayes
High jinks ensue on Boomerang Boat Tours’ cruises on the Potomac.
By Laura Hayes If there’s one sound you don’t want to hear on a party boat it’s a thud. Followed by another thud. And a third in rhythmic succession. Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina” is pulsing from DJ Blue Magic’s sound-
young & hungry
system aboard a Boomerang Boat Tours sunset cruise on a recent Friday, but the thuds are even more powerful than the bass. It turns out that one of the passengers is merely doing the worm on the top deck of the boat. Moments before, the woman who executed the difficult dance move and her friends were toasting with $25 bottles of Champagne while they watched others take the spotlight in the
impromptu dance circle linking all ages and races. Something about being off solid ground acts as a party starter, setting fire to inhibitions and bringing a diverse group of strangers together for two hours that feel like a prom with gin and tonics instead of hidden flasks. “It’s like a sociology experiment,” says Nikki DuBois, who co-owns Boomerang Boat Tours with her husband, Dave. “The boat at-
tracts every demographic.” All Boomerang cruises depart from the Georgetown waterfront. Unless you’ve shelled out for a private charter for your law firm’s summer associates, your float on the Potomac will feature a wide variety of people. Think birthday parties, college reunions, date nights for older couples trying to get their grooves back, and solo customers shooting video for their YouTube channels with a blur of monuments in the background. After seven seasons of sailing, DuBois can confidently say her passengers are by and large local. “When we opened, I thought it was going to be tourist-based,” she says. “We put flyers in all of the hotels and focused on things that would attract outsiders.” Then she kept seeing the same faces and changed course to target Washingtonians looking for a work happy hour, birthday celebration, or unconventional bachelorette party. DuBois estimates that marriage proposals happen five or six times a year. Cruise tickets cost between $20 and $45, depending on the time of day, and despite the captive audience, cocktails are priced to sell on the sunset cruise. The most popular drink is the Pirate’s Punch—a sugary smack of spiced rum, coconut rum, pineapple juice, and cranberry juice for $9. Rail liquor drinks are $7. Beers are $5. There’s also a $20 “shotski” that allows four passengers to simultaneously shoot Fireball Cinnamon Whisky from a wood plank. But DuBois doesn’t like calling her business a booze cruise—a misnomer frequently applied to her business. “It’s not open bar,” she says. “It’s not like you’re in Cancun. You can come on and sip on a beer or a glass of wine. If you want to do shots, you can do that too, but not everyone is throwing up or going overboard.” She’s taken steps is recent years to cut down on anything that could pose an alcohol-related risk, even though it cuts into her business’ bottom line. They pay to have security aboard all cruises for ID checks and crowd control. If a passenger proves unruly, the boat returns to the dock. They turn down college parties. And the cruises are now two hours instead of three. “When they get to the point where they shouldn’t be consuming anymore, they’re getting off anyway,” says sales director Kelly Johansen. “Who needs a three-hour tour? Gilligan ruined that for all of us.” No one turned green or jumped ship on the Friday night City Paper boarded Boomerang’s party yacht, but DuBois admits they had a jumper about four years ago. It was a total buzz kill. “When someone jumps overboard,
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