Jackie's 5th Amendment

I used to live on 5th Avenue and 5th Street, Brooklyn, New York.  USA.  Earth.

I mention the Earth because I firmly believe I could travel the length and breadth of the thing and I'd never find an odder bar than Jackie's 5th Amendment, a bar at the corner of 5th Ave and 7th St in scenic Park Slope, although I may be off by one street.  In an article in the Times today about dive bars I was sorry to see that it closed last year.

One Yelper offered ...

I'm pretty sure I got Hep C.  I've been to some pretty dive-y bars but this one really takes the cake.  

This made me laugh.  Here's her full yelp, if that's the word for a post on Yelp ...

I'm pretty sure I got Hep C.  I've been to some pretty dive-y bars but this one really takes the cake.  

Yes, they have cheap drinks but the selection is pretty limited and you kind of have to deal with the insanity that is the bar staff.  I wonder if it's legal to employ 80 year olds to serve drinks to rowdy hipster.

My low rating basically comes from the completely off-the-wall interaction I had with the 80-year-old barmaid wearing a Looney Tunes jacket.  So the bar is crazy busy (birthday party with like 50 people) and I go and order 3 drinks: 1 Gray Goose + soda, 1 vodka + cranberry, and 1 Jack + Coke.  She take about 20 minutes to find glasses for everyone before asking me to repeat my order again.  We end up getting the vodka/cran in a plastic cup, the Jack/Coke in a wine glass, and Goose/soda I think was just poured into the cupped hand of my friend. So she tells me that my order is $30.  Keep in mind that drinks have been $5 all night.  I totally don't mind paying $30 for these drinks because that's still pretty reasonable by NY standards but I just wanted to clarify why they were suddenly more.

Old lady suddenly blows her gasket and goes, "You ordered 6 drinks!  Those 3 whiskeys and the 3 vodkas!"

Wait...I can tell you the last 16 drink orders you made and you couldn't even finish pouring our drinks without asking me to repeat my order and you're accusing ME of not knowing what I ordered?  

Anyway, the drinks were paid for and I even left a nice tip but I can only tolerate so much when it comes to bars and being accused of stealing by someone obviously suffering from dementia is not acceptable!

I suppose, since I quoted her entire review, I should credit her as being somebody called Margaret T. from Brooklyn.

Me?  I frequent a higher end dive bar when I'm in New York.  A place known, as you probably already know, as the Peter McManus Cafe.  A couple of weeks ago, misinterpreting the word 'cafe' to mean that it was safe to eat there, a couple of my friends recently did.

"You ate there?" I exclaimed when they told me.  "Man, never do that."

My favorite part about Jackie's 5th was that you could order six Miller ponies in a bucket of ice for, like. almost no money at all.  This bucket of beer thing has now become a popular bar meme.  But Jackie's 5th was the place I saw it first.

Just for the record, I would never have eaten at Jackies 5th.  And I mean that as a complement.

Adios Campagnolo.