Sam Adams stein in hand, twelve dachshunds line up on District Pier for the Wiener 500. Twenty-four hours later, on the same stretch of Southwest waterfront, a few dozen people gather outside St. Augustine's Church with tickets to walk through row houses and mid-century towers most of them have only seen from the sidewalk.
That is the first weekend of October at The Wharf this year. Saturday, Oct. 3 is Oktoberfest, complete with the Wiener 500 Dachshund Dash and a Sam Adams stein-hoisting competition on District Pier. Sunday, Oct. 4, from 1 to 5 p.m., is the 9th Annual Homes of the Southwest Waterfront Tour, a self-guided walk through the neighborhood's architecture that starts at St. Augustine's Church. Same 24 acres of waterfront. Two entirely different registers.
What Saturday Actually Looks Like
Oktoberfest at The Wharf runs the way most of its festival programming does: sponsor-backed, built for crowds, no ticket required to watch. The Wiener 500 is free for spectators, though any dachshund who wants to race has to register and pay an entry fee on Eventbrite first. MINI of Alexandria has a vehicle on display. Rural Dog Rescue brings adoptable dogs. Restaurants around the property spend the week before running their own stein-hoisting qualifiers, with winners funneling into a Saturday championship on District Pier. There are no fireworks this time, which puts it a notch below some of The Wharf's bigger festival dates on the noise scale, but it is still built as a destination event, the kind designed to pull people in from outside the neighborhood for an afternoon.
The mechanics matter here because they tell you who the event is for. Alcohol can only be consumed inside restaurants, licensed patios, or the event footprint on District Pier, since drinking in DC's streets and parks is against the law everywhere else in the city. Chairs and coolers aren't allowed. It's a ticketless, walk-up kind of day, easy to drop into for an hour or to stay through the championship rounds on District Pier.
What Sunday Is Actually For
The Homes of the Southwest Waterfront Tour runs on a different set of rules entirely. It's organized by Waterfront Village, a nonprofit that supports older adults aging in place in Southwest DC and Navy Yard, and it's been running long enough that this year marks its ninth edition. Tickets are sold, not free, and the money goes back into the organization's programming rather than to a beer sponsor or a car dealership. The walk itself starts at St. Augustine's Church and moves through a mix of styles that a past year's version of the tour described as spanning decades, from Wheat Row's 18th-century brick to the neighborhood's mid-century towers and newer waterfront condos.
That contrast is the part worth sitting with. The Wharf's festival programming celebrates the waterfront destination, the one with a dachshund race and a rooftop bar. The Home Tour spotlights the neighborhood that was already here, the row houses and mid-rises that predate the marina by decades, and it supports the kind of services Waterfront Village provides to older neighbors. Both events happen on the same 24 acres, and each one shows a different side of Southwest.
| Oktoberfest | Homes of the Southwest Waterfront Tour | |
|---|---|---|
| When | Saturday, Oct. 3, all day | Sunday, Oct. 4, 1 to 5 p.m. |
| Starts at | District Pier | St. Augustine's Church |
| Run by | The Wharf, with Sam Adams and MINI of Alexandria as sponsors | Waterfront Village, a nonprofit serving older adults in SW DC and Navy Yard |
| What you're buying | A dachshund race bib, a shot at the stein-hoisting bracket, festival beer | A self-guided walk through the neighborhood's row houses, mid-century buildings, and waterfront condos |
For anyone who's lived at The Wharf long enough to have opinions about both, this weekend is basically the neighborhood's split personality laid out on a two-day schedule.
The Week That Wraps Around Both Days
Neither event happens in isolation. The same week carries the last of a run that's been going all season. Salsa dancing on the waterfront, presented by Heineken, has been happening every Thursday at M Street Landing since Sept. 10, and it wraps for the year on Thursday, Oct. 8, four days after the Home Tour closes. The Farmers Market SW, also at M Street Landing, keeps running on Saturdays through November, so it's open the same morning as Oktoberfest before the festival crowd shows up. And on Sunday afternoon, while the Home Tour is still in progress across the neighborhood, the Too Much Talent Band plays Market Square from 4 to 6 p.m. as part of The Wharf's recurring Sunday live music slot.
Later in the month, on Oct. 18, Maum Market brings a pop-up of Asian-owned brands to The Wharf, a smaller, single-day event that doesn't carry the same scale as the first weekend but adds another data point to the same pattern: some of what's on the calendar is built to draw a crowd, and some of it is built to spotlight something specific to the neighborhood's own businesses and residents.
Read together, the first week of October isn't a random cluster of programming. It's the tail end of a full summer of weekly rhythms (the salsa nights, the farmers market) closing out at the same time the neighborhood runs its most contrasting weekend of the year.
Where to Land After Either Day
The restaurant lineup at The Wharf gives you a real choice depending on which day you're coming from. After Oktoberfest, Kinfolk Southern Kitchen at 685 Wharf St SW is built for exactly that kind of afternoon: Halal barbecue, bourbon, and a menu leaning into Southern comfort food, the sort of place that can absorb a crowd that's already been drinking stein for stein since noon. Whitlow's, the neighborhood watering hole that finally landed at The Wharf after years elsewhere in DC, works the same way.
Coming off the Home Tour is a slower kind of hungry. Hank's Oyster Bar and Del Mar both sit closer to the quieter end of the property, with Del Mar running a two-level Spanish and seafood menu that suits an afternoon spent looking at row houses rather than racing dachshunds. Officina, which added lunch service earlier this year, works for either a late tour stop or an early dinner. Limani, the Wharf's Greek waterfront restaurant, is the other option if the Home Tour crowd wants a table with a view rather than a bar stool.
None of this requires picking a side. The point of the weekend is that both versions of The Wharf exist at once, a few hundred feet apart, and the neighborhood's calendar just happens to schedule them one day after the other.
If you're the kind of resident who's already picked a favorite between Saturday's noise and Sunday's quiet, that's worth knowing about yourself and about what you'd actually want out of a next move in this neighborhood. T&G Real Estate Advisors knows the blocks behind both versions of this weekend. Request a Home Valuation when you're ready to talk about what either side of The Wharf is worth right now.
