Two floors of fine beer (over 10 on tap), great food, and monitors tuned to local sports. - sys, 05/10/2001
Last night was perhaps, the worst bar/ club experience I have ever had. John Barleycorn is a cross between a bad frat party (way too many unattractive trashy guys) and a wannabe night club (many, many bouncers with earpieces and tight shirts who treat the customers like they are animals). One of the bouncers between the first and the second floor was completely rude to me, and yelled (not in the music-is-too-loud sense, but rather in the get-out-of-the-way-you-are-a-liability sense) at me to get back in line, unnecessarily. He then took a very harsh and unprofessional tone with me when I apologized for not knowing there was a line. To be honest, I can understand crowd control problems with large numbers of people, but I approached him alone when my friends were far behind me and there was no one else even talking to him at the time. Furthermore, I am a 5'5", 120-lb female, so it felt particularly threatening being yelled at by an, at least, 200-lb bouncer at an elevated position over me. Though I wanted to leave at that point, my friends wanted to stay anyway--I wasn't about to be the person to ruin the night for everyone, so I tried to make the best of it and we got in line to go upstairs. When I spoke to a "manager" about the bouncer incident, he patted my shoulder, and offered me a shot (in, not surprisingly, a very patronizing and dismissive tone. It was much like how you treat people in college when they are so drunk that you will say anything just to get them to go to bed and stop causing trouble, but I was completely sober). However, he did not actually address the problem. The bartender downstairs was slow and also quite unfriendly. The music selection was the only saving grace, though the entire dance was simply a meat market. The ratio of men to women was perhaps 70% to 30%, which meant that every female had at least two guys drooling over her. That might have been fine if they were at all attractive, but they were not. And finally, when the evening was over more of the staff yelled at us to "get out" (there is a great difference between being assertive/ authoritative and being rude). I will never visit this establishment again and will be sure to prevent anyone I know from going to this place in the future. I actually can't remember the last time I was treated so poorly and am totally appalled. - Michelle, 04/21/2007
