Home > Nightlife & Music > Great Lakes

Great Lakes

Critics' Pick

284 Fifth Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11215
at 1st St. See Map | Subway Directions Hopstop Popup
718-499-3710 Send to Phone

Reader Rating:
6.5 out of 10
|
2 Reviews | Write a Review
Scene: Live Music, Neighborhood Bar

Photo by Kate Attardo

Map Rate & Review

Hours

Daily, 5pm-4am

Happy Hour

Daily, 5pm-8pm; $1 off all drinks

Nearby Subway Stops

F, M, R at Fourth Ave.-9th St.

Payment Methods

MasterCard, Visa

Profile

A spacious bar filled with thrift-store furniture where Park Slopers go to discuss postpunk music, poetry, Iraq, poetry in Iraq, etc.--and where "everyone looks like someone you went to college with," says one patron. Justly celebrated for its excellent jukebox (the owners also helm Boat on Smith Street, the other great jukebox bar in this neck of Brooklyn).

6.5

"Recommended"
Average Reader Rating
on a Scale of 10

50%	Would you go back?
50%	Would you take a date?
50%	Would you go on business?

Cheap beer, great Jukebox and cool bartenders

serindav from 11215 | Posted on 11/1/07

Overall Rating: 10 (Highly Recommended)

This has been a local favorite of mine for years. Its a simple dive bar. The seats are old, the floor is dirty and the bartenders dont take crap from patrons with inflated senses of entitlement. Treat them right and you get the same back. The Jukebox is fantasitic home-made mixes of indie and punk rock, with some country and oddball choices thrown in for good measure. The drinks are fairly priced, and you gotta love the $3 High Life. If you are the kind of person who believes they deserve free drinks or wants their hand held, go somehwere else. Its just not that kind of place. The rest of us are all too happy to take your place. Brooklyn at its finest, this bar recalls the time before the condos began to pop up all over 4th avenue.

Worse than usual

Mark1973 from 11211 | Posted on 8/18/07

Overall Rating: 3 (Not Recommended)

An awful bartender ruins everything. This place seems to have a full stock of them (eventhough the old favs seem to stand by and observe). Stuck-up, nuevo Brooklyn dive. No irony, just jerks. These are what, as a neighborhood, I always thought we're trying to avoid. Too bad an old favorite had to go this way, hiring folks with the nasty attitude, when all we want is the old comfort. I, for one, say that we can do better. We want buybacks! We want friendly! We want BROOKLYN! Can't go there anymore. Hope you'll boycott until they can do better. Much better.

Read All 2 Reviews >>