Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Should A Bar Secede From Park Slope? One Bartender (Sort Of) Makes The Case
Posted by Virginia K. Smith on Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 11:58 AM
What is the meaning of this, besides providing us with lots of good excuses to make "War of Brooklyn Aggression" jokes, and inciting yuppie backlash against perceived yuppie backlash? We talked to the bartender behind the petition to find out, and really, it's pretty straightforward.
"Someone told me about East Williamsburg trying to secede from Williamsburg proper and I thought we had a considerably better case for secession," said Becky McCarthy, 23, who's been working behind the bar at Jackie's for the past year or so. "I thought it might be a good publicity stunt but I had no idea it was going to get this much attention. It's pretty clearly a joke, but now it's got all these people yelling about how we're just a bar and we can't secede. Obviously we're not actually seceding. It's a joke. Everyone just calm down."
There is one obvious potential perk, however: "There are bars [and competition] everywhere in Park Slope. I guess we'll be the only one in the neighborhood if we secede."
McCarthy, who first showed up for work at Jackie's after being "hired" by a regular as a joke (she was then hired-hired by an actual manager), says of the clientele, "The ideal patron is just a decent human being. By which I mean anyone who can talk to the regulars without treating them like they're some sort of weird novelty act. I don't actually have a problem with Park Slope,we do have regulars in their 20's and 30's from the neighborhood and they're great [...] But people seem pretty defensive about The Bar, as a whole, hating Them, as a whole, which is pretty dumb. Without a doubt, some of our regulars are assholes, probably some of you reading this are too, but you've got to know a person to know they're an asshole."
All of which means that if the petition actually gets it's 25,000 signatures (right now there are about 27 total), secession is still, uh, unlikely. "[I'd] apologize to the President, probably," says McCarthy. "And make it clear that I never had any intention of seceding from the actual United States. You know, preserve the Union and all that."
A Union of probable assholes who just want a place to get a drink on the cheap. As we assume the founding fathers intended.
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.
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About The Author
Virginia K. Smith
Virginia K. Smith is the Assistant Editor at The L Magazine and a Bushwick resident. Her profile picture was taken at Summerscreen, because she is a real team player.
