New Era: Hot Time for D.C. : Trends: The younger, hipper Clinton crew may not have jump-started the economy yet but they’re pumping new sizzle (and dollars) into Washington’s once-stodgy night life.

Washington is hot --in a cool sort of way. Art types, beat types, jazz types, rock ‘n’ roll types--they’re all rolling into town.

Back into downtown, preferably the funky neighborhood of Adams Morgan. So says the deluge of dudes and dudettes swarming into the city, either as part of the new Administration or as followers of its relatively youthful image of vitality and change.

Starchy conformity is wilting in the shadow of a President who prefers bomber jackets to traditional trench coats--to be replaced by twentysomething attitude types who see political implications in the way they boogie.

Lori Johnston grins as she recalls what happened one recent Friday night at Soul Brothers Pizza--a new restaurant in Northwest Washington:

The 27-year-old ice cream store manager was having dinner when “suddenly the lights went dim, the owner cranked up the music, and people just started dancing.” The scene would have raised eyebrows just a few years ago in this traditionally uptight city.

But lately, such tales have become more common, and hint at a new perestroika.

Except for a surge of activity during the Kennedy years, the District has long been detested by many American and foreign officials for its dreary lifestyle. As soon as functionaries finished essential business here, most fled back to homes in or near New York.

One bewhiskered 19th-Century British ambassador, Lord Lyon, found provincial Washington so slow that he lamented in a message home: “A terrible place for young men; nothing whatsoever in the shape of amusement for them.”

A hip crowd has lurked on the fringes of Washington society for decades, frequenting a handful of alternative restaurants and underground clubs. But they were never in . Life here, particularly during the Bush-Reagan years, revolved around high-priced restaurants or conventional bars with Irish last names on Pennsylvania Avenue or Capitol Hill.

Now the fringe is coming in from the cold.

“The Bush Administration people were very nice,” says Janet Williams, manager of the Peasant Restaurant and Bar, an established white-tablecloth joint where President Clinton popped in to eat recently. “But (Clinton’s people) tend to be a tad bit younger and a little more relaxed and laid back.”

Agrees Alan Jirikowic, owner of the nightclub Chief Ike’s Mambo Room: “These people don’t feel forced to create an impression by going to very expensive bistros. They have a real feeling for the casual.”

Nowhere is that feeling more evident than in polyglot Adams Morgan. There are no American steakhouses here. Zestful Salvadoran, Ethiopian and South American restaurants dominate, intermingled with college-student and yuppie bars, Cuban and West African dance clubs, art and antique emporiums, and health-food stores.

Consider three clubs recently opened on one corner: Chief Ike’s, Pandemonium and Chaos. On Saturday nights, droves of Clinton aides, new congressional staffers and budding lobbyists converge on Chief Ike’s--named after President Dwight D. Eisenhower--to cut loose after grueling 80- to 90-hour work weeks.

In front of a psychedelic mural depicting a stumbling General Ike harassed by various New Age characters, golden-brassiered disc jockey Stella Neptune hypes the crowd.

“When Bill and Al (Gore) became President and vice president, there was a great breath of fresh air,” says Jirikowic. “The dominant themes of bars such as Bullfeathers and the Occidental were oak, brass and glass. Now what we’re seeing is drama, theater, color, poetry and movement. . . . It was something just waiting to break.”

Jirikowic had owned a downtown rock club, which for several years had been the lone outpost for out-of-the-mainstream music and the people who thrive on it. But last year he closed it when the area underwent massive renovation.

“Times are now catching up with me,” he says with satisfaction.

Just down the street from Chief Ike’s, along the U and 14th street corridors, catching up has meant the opening of a dozen grunge-rock bars and experimental restaurants in the last four months, mostly by twentysomething entrepreneurs.

Soul Brothers Pizza is but one example: Owner Todd Johnson, 29, celebrated his opening Feb. 15 by painting a colorful mural on his wall, which shows a street party where African-Americans are singing and dancing jubilantly.

“I call that the U Street jam,” says Johnson, explaining that the euphoric scene represents his sense of victory about being able to restore the black presence in the area, which was famous in the 1950s for its jazz and blues clubs.

A block from Johnson’s restaurant, sipping tea in the Zig-Zag Cafe, 25-year-old Alex Starr relaxes with colleagues from the New Republic, where he is associate literary editor. To Starr’s left, an antique black telephone sits on the table as a decorative toy. A dollhouse, also for customers to play with, is nailed to the wall nearby. More toys adorn various tables, and hulking over all is a couch that is about two feet higher than the surrounding furniture.

“I like the comfy sort of kindergarten-parlor atmosphere (at Zig-Zag), but it’s almost just a little too much sometimes,” jokes Starr.

Members of the Administration are not only partying in the District, they’re likelier to live here too. While those in past Administrations tended to ditch the city in favor of white-bread suburbs in northern Virginia or Maryland, Clinton cadres are moving into the lower-priced loft apartments in Adams Morgan and other neighborhoods. And they are renting, not buying.

Paul Chiland, owner of the Zig-Zag, says the influx is snowballing as more nightclubs and coffeehouses open to meet increased demand--which in turn lures even more urban pioneers to the city.

And once they’re here, they have one thing on their minds. “All they talk about is politics,” says Meshelle Bain, manager of Cities, an Adams Morgan restaurant-bar that Bain says all-too-hip White House communications director George Stephanopoulos has frequented.

One recent Saturday night, 29-year-old Tracey Donner, deputy press secretary for Clinton during the campaign, was still at Chief Ike’s at 3 a.m. handicapping her odds of landing a job in the new Administration.

A native New Yorker and USC graduate, Donner took note of the stream of other New Yorkers who are moving to Washington share in the excitement of the Clinton revolution.

“The best place to meet high-level people is on the New York-D.C. shuttle,” she says.

Before, New Yorkers shunned the capital for the uncool place it was. The Bush and Reagan cabinets boasted only one native New Yorker over the entire 12-year period--HUD’s Samuel Pierce, remembered by few. But Clinton’s bandwagon is loaded with prominent New Yorkers, including Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, chief economic adviser Robert Rubin and Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman.

Now, other New Yorkers are scratching their heads: Is Washington actually worth . . . living in?

It’s come to such a point that one New York writer recently expressed concern about the alarming invasion of Washington items on New York’s gossip pages.

Hinting at a potential eclipse, the title of his story fretted: “Will civilization shuttle south?”

“They’re afraid, for good reason,” snickers Alan Jirikowic. “As American capital begins to reinvest itself in various cities, Washington is going to benefit. . . . Washington will establish itself as a cultural center.”