It’s last call for legendary Park Slope dive bar Jackie’s 5th Amendment.
The long-standing watering hole on Fifth Avenue at Seventh Street is set to serve its last round of brews on Sept. 14 — but not because the old-school joint cannot keep up with the affluent neighborhood’s skyrocketing rents. Owner Harold Costello has fallen ill and is ready to throw in the bar towel.
“[Costello’s] health isn’t great,” said bartender Rebecca McCarthy. “He just wanted to see [the bar] go out on his own terms.”
The bar will leave behind a dedicated clientele who come for the cheap prices — a bucket of a half dozen seven-ounce “pony” beers will run you $10 — and the odd hours. Jackie’s has long opened at 8 am, making it a destination for morning barflies getting off of work on the night shift.
“The shift workers are not happy,” said longtime bartender Linda, who declined to give her last name.
Jackie’s beer-and-a-shot vibe has come to feel out of place in Park Slope as the neighborhood has become a mecca for mixology and puppy pedicures, so much so that the dive bar petitioned in 2011 to secede and become its own neighborhood.
The Slope saloon is named for Costello’s late wife, Jackie, who suffered a fatal heart attack in 2005. The couple took over the bar from her parents in the 1970s when it was called Tyson’s, renaming it Jackie’s 5th Amendment because what happens at Jackie’s stays at Jackie’s.
Bereaved Jackie’s barflies may have to go elsewhere for grandpa’s cough medicine, but the doctor kind will still be close at hand. Slope Drugs & Surgical Supply, the next-door pharmacy, will be expanding into the pub space, which is said to have been operating as a bar since the end of Prohibition.
Calls to the pharmacy’s owner were not returned by press time.
Reach reporter Natalie Musumeci at nmusumeci@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-4505. Follow her at twitter.com/souleddout.r
