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O’Connor’s: Park Slope’s Classic Dive Bar

Updated: Jun 22, 2011 10:39
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The world needs O’Connor’s more than O’Connor’s needs the world.  I say this because O’Connor’s lets us believe that there are still some things worth romanticizing.  How else would you describe a bar that opened in 1931 (prohibition wasn’t repealed until 1933) and who, as of a few proprietors ago, was owned by a Brooklyn native named Dutch Joe? The last time I hung out here, the bartender was a guy my age who seemed like he unintentionally dressed like James Dean and looked like he could’ve been a bartender in any decade from the 50’s on.  The only songs he played on the speakers was early soul music and he was cool in the traditional sense of the word, never smiling but not unapproachable.

O’Connor’s feels like a Jim Jarmusch movie, both strange and wonderful.  While the place gets crackin on the weekends, I prefer to spend my time with the old timers who come here during the week and talk about all the great New York City bars that have come and gone.  The drinks are cheap, so its easy to sit here and talk all night.

O’Connor’s
39 5th Ave. btw Bergen & Dean Sts.
[Park Slope]

photo from Manny F. on Yelp

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Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

Stuart Schuffman, aka Broke-Ass Stuart, is a travel writer, poet, TV host, activist, and general shit-stirrer. His website BrokeAssStuart.com is one of the most influential arts & culture sites in the San Francisco Bay Area and his freelance writing has been featured in Lonely Planet, Conde Nast Traveler, The Bold Italic, Geek.com and too many other outlets to remember. His weekly column, Broke-Ass City, appears every other Thursday in the San Francisco Examiner. Stuart’s writing has been translated into four languages. In 2011 Stuart created and hosted the travel show Young, Broke, and Beautiful on IFC and in 2015 he ran for Mayor of San Francisco and got nearly 20k votes.

He's been called "an Underground legend": SF Chronicle, "an SF cult hero":SF Bay Guardian, and "the chief of cheap": Time Out New York.