Art All Night Meets Shop All Night: One Love at Abro Collective — Union Station

On Friday, September 11, from 6:00 PM until midnight, the Abro Collective throws open its doors inside Union Station (50 Massachusetts Ave NE) for an Art All Night Open House. Music starts at 8:00 PM with DJ Underdog and King Selassie I Sounds. There will be live local artisan goods, curated creative displays, and a room full of people who came for the vibe and stayed for the community. Free. Open. Yours.

That's the whole festival in miniature.

It Started in Shaw, 2011

Art All Night began as a Shaw Main Streets experiment: what if you activated public space after dark and just… let people show up? The inaugural event drew over 30,000 attendees. Nobody expected that. What they got was a blueprint.

The institutional scaffolding came next—the DC Department of Small and Local Business Development, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the DC Public Library, regional Main Streets programs, and Business Improvement Districts. Three strategic goals emerged, and they've held ever since: revitalize corridors, represent local culture, and drive real revenue to small businesses who desperately need foot traffic.

From Block Party to Citywide Engine

By 2014–2016, the festival had scaled across multiple Main Streets zones under the banner Art All Night: Made in DC. Dupont Circle. H Street. Congress Heights. In 2021, it expanded to 19 neighborhoods and stretched from one night to a two-night weekend. This year—the 15th—it features over 1,200 artists and draws over 250,000 attendees.

Then came Dine All Night, which extended restaurant hours, added curated menus, and pushed celebrations through Sunday brunch. And this year, for the first time, an official desktop and mobile mapping app lets you filter by performance type and build your own late-night itinerary. Because chaos is fun until you're standing on the wrong block at 1 AM.

Why Abro Collective Is the Whole Point

Abro Collective is an artisanal incubator and retail hub highlighting local curators, international fashion, handcrafted jewelry, and minority- and women-owned brands. It's a shop that functions as a launchpad. Which makes it a near-perfect microcosm of what Art All Night is actually chasing: Art ~ Community ~ Commerce.

Where to Go This Weekend

• Historic Anacostia — MLK Jr. Ave SE, under the 2026 theme "Good Trouble. Louder!" Spoken word, live music, visual installations.
• Downtown DC / Anthem Row — K Street and the Carnegie Library Lawn transform Saturday night into an open-air carnival: "District of Wonder," with circus-inspired arts.
• Shaw — Where it all began. Indoor/outdoor galleries, video projections, cabaret, fire dancing, 7 PM to 3 AM.
• The Parks Main Street (Riggs Park / Manor Park) — Private storefronts become public galleries Saturday evening. Interactive murals, live DJ sets, double-dutch, go-go headliners.
• Uptown & Petworth — Kennedy St, Upshur St, Upper 14th St, and Georgia Ave NW, with free maker marketplaces and multiple performance stages.

A handwoven Ethiopian scarf, one of the artisanal goods featured at Abro Collective. Photo courtesy of Kelem.

Fifteen Years of Leaving the Lights On

Participation is broad by design. Local artists and makers, restaurants, bars, lounges, and food trucks riding the Dine All Night wave are all welcome. The requirements are simple: register through the DSLBD network or your neighborhood hub, comply with late-night safety guidelines, and keep it free and open to the public. No velvet ropes.

Fifteen years in, Art All Night has proven something quietly radical: that a city can celebrate its culture and pay its artists in the same weekend. That corridors can come alive after dark without becoming unrecognizable. That the best economic development strategy is sometimes just unlocking a door and turning up the music.

On Friday night, go to Union Station. Find Abro Collective. Say hello to DJ Underdog. Buy something from a neighbor. Stay until midnight.

That's the love story. You're in it.

#ArtAllNight #AbroCollective #DineAllNight #DJUnderdog #KingSelassieISounds #MadeInDC #CulturalDMV

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