InTheCapital

inside the @Uber_DC scrum at Shadow Bar. video down below.

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

Last night, literally hundreds of DC residents crammed into Shadow Room on K Street to show Uber’s DC branch some serious love. As we’ve been covering extensively over the past few weeks, Uber, the popular app and company that allows you to find town car-style sedans, has come under fire from the DC cab commission for ‘operating illegally’. We’re kinda biased here at InTheCapital, but to us we read ‘operating illegally’ as ‘stealing business’. But that’s a story for another day. 

The fight between Uber and DC city government has picked up serious traction in papers and magazines and websites both local and national. The support from District residents has been very vocal as well. On a recent call with Twitter’s DC Government liaison, Adam Sharp, he noted that Uber fan response on Twitter was one of the best instances he’d seen of “a customer base reaching out in their defense.”

Hoping to capitalize on this, Uber was savvy enough to invite folks to come out last night to the swanky club, Shadow Room and drink at their open bar from 6 to 8:30pm. The only caveat? They’d have to listen to a presentation from Uber Founder, Travis Kalanick. The people came and the booze flowed heartily. Here is some video proof:

Uber CEO Travis Speaks to DC from InTheCapital on Vimeo.

Takeaway: Travis gave a stellar presentation to an absolutely rabid crowd of younger, yuppies. It wasn’t exactly clear whether the partygoers absolutely LOVED Uber or completely HATED the DC cab commission (we think it’s a mix of both), but the love showered down on Uber so heavily that Kalanick joked at one point, “I wish I could just live in this moment forever.”

Uber further endeared themselves to their target audience of younger, accomplished working professionals with some free booze and pizza, and that support will be important down the line. Uber’s DC General Manager, Rachel Holt told us that they had to cap the event at 700 people and received loads more emails and calls requesting party invites. Travis will be back in town on Valentines day for a meeting with the DC government. You can bet we’ll be there to watch as it all goes down. For now though, we think that with fans as loyal as they were last night, Uber will be here to stay in DC.