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Jay Barry Group
When Neighborhood Restaurant Group decided to open a record store in Del Ray, the company's principal, Michael Babin, reached out to the owner of the record store already there. As ALXnow reported, Babin said, "He said the more the merrier, and it'll only make it more of a destination, which is exactly what we thought."
That exchange explains this fall on Mount Vernon Avenue. Between late August and late September, three businesses opened within about a block of each other on the avenue. All three took small spaces, and two of them sell the same thing. None of them is trying to be the anchor of the block. They're betting that the block as a whole is the draw.
Here's what opened and what each space held before:
| Business | Address | Previously | Opened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crooked Run Fermentation taproom | 2003a Mount Vernon Ave. | Dolce & Bean, closed spring 2025 | Planned for Aug. 28 |
| Mobius Records | 2016 Mount Vernon Ave. | Mulberry Lane Play Café | Sept. 12 |
| Crooked Beat Records | 2101B Mount Vernon Ave. | A townhouse that neighbors say sat vacant for more than a decade | Soft opening Sept. 25 |
Size is what these three have in common. Crooked Beat's new home is a two-story townhouse of 950 square feet. Crooked Run co-owner Lee Rogan told ALXnow that the brewery was looking for spaces under 1,000 square feet when this one came up. The taproom has more than 20 seats inside and eight outside. Mobius didn't get its own building. It shares a room with Shorty's Deluxe, the sandwich shop.
Mobius makes more sense once you see what else its owner runs nearby. Neighborhood Restaurant Group also owns Evening Star Cafe, Hi/Fi Tex-Mex BBQ at 2000 Mount Vernon Avenue and Planet Wine at 2004 Mount Vernon Avenue. With Mobius at 2016, the group now has four businesses within a few doors of each other. A record store there gives people one more reason to come for a sandwich, stay for a bottle of wine and then flip through vinyl.
For Crooked Beat, a second record store across the street could have looked like a threat. Owner Bill Daly saw it differently. In July, Babin told ALXnow that Daly supported Mobius opening because it would make Del Ray more of a destination for record shoppers. The two shops are now about a block apart.
Crooked Beat isn't new to Del Ray. The shop first opened in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1997, spent seven years in Old Town North, and opened an underground shop in Del Ray in 2023 at 2417 Mount Vernon Avenue.
ALXnow reported that the basement location flooded in January 2026. The store reopened with limited hours at the end of February and closed that location in May.
Crooked Beat stayed on the avenue, moving to 2101B, a building neighbors say had been empty for more than a decade. Daly described the new shop in a video quoted by ALXnow. "It's like the Twilight Zone, same colors, same atmosphere," he said.
The move put the store a block from Mobius. The old 2417 address was "up the street," in ALXnow's words, from where the shop is now. Crooked Beat is still running on what its website calls "Soft Open Hours":
Because Crooked Beat is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays, a visit to both record stores works best Thursday through Monday.
The last piece of the block is Crooked Run Fermentation. Rogan and Jake Endres founded the brewery in Leesburg in 2013, and it already had taprooms in Leesburg, Sterling and Northeast D.C. Rogan told ALXnow they plan six taprooms across the region. Crooked Run's website calls Del Ray its latest location and lists the address as 2003a Mt Vernon Ave.
Rogan made the same point the record store owners made. "We're not trying to come in and be 'the place' in Del Ray," he told ALXnow. "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."
The plan matches that. Along with Crooked Run's beers, the taproom serves wine, cocktails and a short bar menu of chicken tenders, pita with hummus and mozzarella sticks. Rogan said it will be family friendly and that he wants a stroller parking area in a nearby alley. It's a place to stop for one drink between record shops, not to spend the whole evening.
On Saturdays, all of these businesses keep hours that overlap. Here's one way to put together an afternoon from the hours each business currently posts:
Three of those five stops opened at their current addresses between late August and late September of this year.
Between now and the end of November, the calendar gives several reasons to walk this stretch of Mount Vernon Avenue:
Record Store Day's Black Friday release falls the day after the Turkey Trot.
When a long-empty building on your street gets a tenant, it's fair to wonder what that means for your own home. If you own in Del Ray and want to know where your home stands this fall, the Jay Barry Group can walk you through it. Get a Free Home Valuation, and we'll base it on Del Ray block by block, not on Alexandria as a whole.
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Jay Barry Group