I'm having trouble reviewing this. Expect the stars to change a few times. We'll start at 3.
"Let's Get Quizzical," the biweekly Thursday trivia has since been CANCELED, because Pelvic Thrust kept winning.
I'm kidding, I'm not bitter because my team has won on more than one occasion, very little thanks to me except for one creepy celebrity eyes round and another round dedicated to either a chef or fat kid. Thing is, my team was usually comprised of the same folks under a different name...so I have no idea what our names would have been. Let's Get Quizzical has actually been suspended, soon to be relocated (I'll update this review when I know where!) because the owner is a bipolar jerk. I'm not calling the owner a jerk because he canceled it - he didn't; I'm calling it like I see it and like the hosts saw it. Brian and Jess had been telling us to expect a venue change for months, but chose instead to honor their preprinted postcards that had a schedule lasting into November, until enough was enough.
I've seen the owner be nice...once? and be a colossal douche most other times. Usually it's over nothing relevant to the moment. Lesson: Don't take your bad mood out on customers. The regulars will eventually stop coming by at all.
Trivia was the reason I'd started going to Tippin, but I'd often walked by and admired the decor. Any stars that are left at the end of this review are ONLY for the food, and for Jillian. Full disclosure, I've had some friends tell me Jillian is great, and others tell me she's not. Her service might have been better because post-Sandy, the bar was pretty empty and easily managed.
The last time I was there, on Halloween night, she was the sweetest. She remembered me from trivia, even though I'd spoken to her but once, and had never ordered a drink - alcohol and I aren't friends, as much as I sometimes wish we were. She chatted me up, even managing to get a few words out of my normally antisocial/pathologically shy friend; made me a handful of pineapple margaritas; and handed me a free drink after I'd gotten a couple of my own. I'd never had a pineapple margarita before, but she suggested one after seeing I was hesitant to drink on account of having a girl's flavor tolerance and a guy's liquor tolerance. Drinking is usually expensive and yucky. Success! I had 5.... We left before closing, though, because some guy was poking us with a stick (plastic trident), trying to get us to dance with him. Choice quote from my then-drunk friend: "If I had a stick, I'd hit you with it, too!"
Said friend and had I wound up here looking for somewhere quiet. On the other hand, every other bar on Broadway was packed with people in and out of costume (I was out of costume, Futurama's Turanga Leela has limited visibility and depth perception in the dark...being a cyclops and all), so you've got to wonder why Tippin was noticeably deserted. Courtesy counts for a lot at an establishment. We're back at 2 stars, because Brian and Jess know they're stars in my eyes ;) without this review, and the more I think about how the owner has treated his clientele, the more it hits me I am probably never going back, despite the tastiest chicken fingers I've had to date, and I'm not usually into chicken fingers.
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Pseudo-update 1/25/2013 for all you trivia fans:
Let's Get Quizzical has been revived, as promised at a new location: Maggie Mae's in Sunnyside. It re-debuts 8:30 p.m. Thursday, February 7! read more