Oh, goodness.
I really thought I had left a review for this place a long time ago, and am shocked to realize I haven't. Oh well. The review would have been a LOT better then, anyway.
Let me preface my review with this: we (my boyfriend, our friends/co-workers) have been going to Ivan's for about two years now, on a..... let's say weekly basis. There are times we go multiple times in a week, and occasionally skip one or two. It probably evens out. I loved Ivan's. It's the quintessential dive bar-- which is to say, perfect. No one is there to hassle you, everyone seems to be a regular, there's a jukebox, and the drinks are dirt cheap. There aren't many places I go to here on the regular, but Ivan's is one.
BUT. Not sure how often it's gonna be now. And I'm editing my earlier review to eliminate some details but the gist is this: one of the "newer" bartenders came in on her night off last week, and she and a female friend proceeded to get so hammered (possibly arrived drunk, which would explain the deterioration of their states) that they walked over to the table my friends and I were sitting at, and essentially pick a fight. It had started with the two girls leaving their own group to walk over in order to pointedly started putting things on our table, or elbowing a few of the guys with us "accidentally". The rest of us would exchange confused glances but carried on, because it seemed the girls were playing darts and too drunk to realize they were being kind of rude. But we assumed they were harmless.
A friend at my table accidentally sloshed some of her drink onto one of the girls-- largely because the tabletop was small and crowded with not just the drinks of the people sitting at it, but also the cigarettes and drinks of the girls who had just wordlessly reached past us to set them on there, which was all they needed to explode in a torrent of expletives. They challenged my friend, then one of them started mocking my confused expression, and started trying to provoke a reaction from me (I really and truly believe the bartender's friend LOOKING for an all-out brawl); virtually ALL of us at the table, male and female alike, were called "the b-word", and they started screaming that our table was THEIR table (newsflash: this is not Central Perk), at which point the bouncer yelled at them and dragged them away, then assured us he knew the girls were in the wrong, not us.
That's it in a nutshell: There is someone that works there, and on her night off, comes in and gets so hammered that she tries to pick a fight with an entire table of people for zero reason. Like, this is someone who comes in with her friends to her place of work, and then proceeds to be incredibly rude and abusive towards existing customers. Never mind how bad that looks for the bar itself, and the owner (who by all accounts seems like a nice guy), let's consider how staggeringly horrible it makes HER look. It goes beyond unprofessional. She--and her hotheaded friend-- looked like complete imbeciles... though it's been hilarious to make fun of them since. I think I have a new catchphrase, ("What's with your face? It's f----ing STUPID.") and for that I will be forever grateful.
I mean, I still like the bar and had NEVER had a problem with the patrons before. But if I were anywhere and a psycho barfly accosted me, I wouldn't really want to go BACK. I'm not a child. I don't have the time nor the patience to put up with children. So it's especially off-putting to me that one of my favorite and preferred bars in town has someone in its employ that acts like such a fool. So it's worth noting; someone who acts like that has probably acted like that before, and will continue to do so, and who's to say it won't happen while she's behind the bar? Blegh. read more
