"He said the more the merrier, and it'll only make it more of a destination, which is exactly what we thought."
Michael Babin is the principal at Neighborhood Restaurant Group. He gave that account in July, after calling Bill Daly, the owner of Crooked Beat Records. Babin was about to open a record store one block from where Daly planned to reopen, and he called Daly right away. Both shops are now open on Mount Vernon Avenue. Their arrival is a planned cluster. Two owners on neighboring blocks decided that two stores would pull more people to that part of the Avenue than either could alone.
ALXnow called it a vinyl boom. Look closer and the boom is actually two stories that met on the same block. One is a shop that lost its home. The other is a neighbor that had a storefront to fill.
A Shop That Had to Find a New Address Twice in One Year
Crooked Beat was not looking to move. In January, serious flooding hit its basement shop at 2417 Mount Vernon Avenue. The store lost an estimated $60,000 in merchandise, and a GoFundMe campaign recovered $23,500 of that. It reopened with limited hours at the end of February and kept going for several more months. Daly closed that location in May.
The store has moved before. Crooked Beat first opened in Raleigh, N.C., in 1997. It spent seven years in Old Town North before coming to Del Ray in 2023. The new home is 2101B Mount Vernon Avenue, a two-story townhouse of 950 square feet that neighbors say sat empty for more than a decade. After a flooded basement, a building that had been vacant that long was a real find.
Daly promised regular customers they would recognize the place. "It's like the Twilight Zone, same colors, same atmosphere," he said in a video before the reopening weekend of September 25.
The Neighbor Who Picked Up the Phone
While Crooked Beat was looking for a building, Neighborhood Restaurant Group was rethinking one of its own. NRG closed Mulberry Lane Play Café at 2016 Mount Vernon Avenue after July 10 and decided to put a record store in its place. The coworking office upstairs and the attached Shorty's Deluxe sandwich shop stayed open.
The connection between the two stores runs deeper than the phone call. Babin and Nate Anda, NRG's culinary director, are longtime Crooked Beat customers. They helped Daly connect with WeMakeDC, an NRG partner. Between them they own about 5,000 records, and the new store would sell new and used records.
That store became Mobius Records. It opened Saturday, September 12, with records, CDs, and merch, and NRG threw a party on its corner of the Avenue for the occasion. Two weeks later, ALXnow described Crooked Beat as opening "across the street" from Mobius.
Many of the new arrivals sit within a few doors of each other. Here is the stretch by address:
- 2000 Mount Vernon Avenue: Hi/Fi Tex-Mex BBQ and No. 9 Lounge, both tied to NRG
- 2003a: Crooked Run Fermentation's Del Ray taproom
- 2004: Planet Wine, also NRG
- 2016: Mobius Records, which shares space with Shorty's Deluxe
- 2018: Rosie's Tavern, with a proposed November 2026 opening that has not been confirmed
- 2101B: Crooked Beat Records
NRG's Evening Star Cafe is also in Del Ray. When Babin talked about making "those two blocks" a destination for music and vinyl, he had a whole corner to work with, not just one storefront.
A Corner That Now Has a Show Calendar
Because the corner shares an owner, Mobius has a performance space just steps away. The store's event listings point to No. 9 Lounge at 2000 Mount Vernon Avenue. Shopping the bins and seeing a show can now happen at the same address.
| Date | Event | Where | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thursday, Oct. 8 | Fontaines D.C. "Dopamine Chamber" listening party | No. 9 Lounge, 2000 Mt. Vernon Ave. | 7 p.m., free |
| Saturday, Oct. 10 | Mobius & Signal//Noise Stage at Snallygaster Beer Fest | Penn Ave. NW, downtown D.C. | With Keep, Tosser, DJ Themsee and DJ Brainpat |
| Thursday, Nov. 12 | NØ MAN "Between The Sword And The Neck" record release show with Loose Leash | No. 9 Lounge, 2000 Mt. Vernon Ave. | Doors 7:30 p.m., show 8:30 p.m., $15 |
The Snallygaster date takes the Mobius name across the river. The November show is co-listed with DC Grind Guild and is a benefit for Gaza Soup Kitchen. A free listening party for a new album is a classic record-shop event. Holding it on the same corner as the store puts the people who will buy that record a short walk from the bins.
Planning an Afternoon Around Both Stores
To visit both stores in one trip, plan around Crooked Beat, which has the shorter hours. Its website still lists "Soft Open Hours":
- Thursday and Friday, 3 to 7 p.m.
- Saturday, noon to 7 p.m.
- Sunday, 1 to 6 p.m.
Daly said in September that full-time hours would follow "in about a week or so." The store's own schedule has not changed yet, though. The Zebra reported that a grand opening is planned for a few weeks after the soft open, with no date set. Check the store's site before you make a special trip.
The hours line up well with Crooked Run's new taproom. Its Del Ray page lists hours of 3 to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. It serves Crooked Run's beers and bar snacks. ALXnow's report on the opening also mentioned wine, cocktails, chicken tenders, pita and hummus, and mozzarella sticks. On a Thursday or Friday, Crooked Beat and the taproom are both open from 3 to 7.
Saturdays fit together easily too. The Del Ray Farmers' Market runs from 8 a.m. to noon at Pat Miller Neighborhood Square, at Mount Vernon and Oxford avenues. Its fall schedule continues every Saturday through November 28. Crooked Beat opens at noon, right as the market closes. Crooked Run starts serving at 11:30.
Farther up the Avenue are a few seasonal stops. Nightmare on the Avenue is the Halloween-themed Del Ray Pop-Up Bar at 2312 Mount Vernon Avenue, serving themed cocktails and bites through Sunday, November 1. The city's new Colasanto spray park at 2700 Mount Vernon Avenue opened September 10, and its fountain was planned to run through mid-October. That leaves only a week or two to try it before it shuts down for the year.
The Avenue's Biggest Sunday Is Coming
The block will see its biggest crowd of the fall on Sunday, October 25. The 30th Annual Del Ray Halloween Parade starts at 2 p.m. at E. Bellefonte Avenue and travels along Mount Vernon Avenue. It ends at the Mount Vernon Rec Center field with live music and awards. The Del Ray Business Association notes that USA Today named it one of the 10 best Halloween parades in the country.
There are a few new details and deadlines this year:
- Group/float contest: This is new for 2026. Check in at Mt. Vernon and Howell starting at 1 p.m., and register by 1:30. No motorized floats or vehicles are allowed.
- Stroller/wagon and pet costume contests: Both are free. Registration for both is due by 1:30 p.m. at Mt. Vernon and E. Howell avenues.
- Best decorated house and business: Nominations, for your own house or a neighbor's, close at noon on Sunday, October 18.
- Scavenger hunt: Find Halloween-themed items in decorated businesses and hand-painted windows along the Avenue. Five randomly chosen entrants win a $50 gift card to a Del Ray business.
Crooked Beat's soft-open Sunday hours are 1 to 6 p.m., so the shop should be open before, during, and after the parade if that schedule still holds. It will be the first parade for both record stores on their new block.
More is on the way. Rosie's Tavern, at 2018 Mount Vernon Avenue between Mobius and Crooked Beat, has a proposed November opening, though The Zebra found that date through local checking, not an official announcement. Hypergoat Coffee Roasters is building a cafe and roastery at 2423 Mount Vernon Avenue, and had no opening date as of September 7. Crooked Beat's grand opening also has no date yet.
The changes on this stretch of Mount Vernon Avenue are the kind of block-by-block detail we follow closely when we advise clients in Del Ray and across Alexandria. If you own a home near the Avenue and want to know what the street's current activity means for your property's value, Sullivan Brownell Partners can walk you through it. Request Your Home Valuation, and we'll put together an analysis built for your corner of Del Ray.
