The Night After

New Year's Day is perhaps the most dreaded 24 hours for almost every bar on the planet.

January 1st is the day that keeps even the most ardent tavern regulars sequestered safely indoors, nursing those oh-so-special hangovers, vicious headaches and sour stomachs that can only come from a non-stop cavalcade of holiday drinking.

It is during this post-holiday blight that a bar discovers its true believers; the loyalists, the diehards. But on this particular Saturday, Park Slope was failing miserably, a veritable no-man's land on an unseasonably warm evening.

Quarter Bar was dead on arrival, and the was on life support. Even , an ever-reliable spot for Saturday night revelry, saw its crowd significantly reduced. Repeat for . And for .

And then, like a beacon piercing through the dead of night, there was Jackie's 5th Amendment.

Let's not mince words—Jackie's is a dive. Jackie's might, in fact, be the dive to end all dives. The space is cramped. The lighting is a combination of neon beer signs refracting off the windows and an explosion of blinking, multi-colored Christmas lights. The only decorations on the walls are your standard alcohol related paraphernalia, coupled with a garish multi-hued digital jukebox playing only the best Top 40 radio hits from 2005 and earlier, and a few dim television sets.

There is no beer on tap, only an offering of ice cold 8oz bottled domestics, including Bud Light, Coors Light and Miller High Life. Buckets of these little monsters are available for $7.

The joint opens at 8 a.m., because that's just the kind of old school, 70s-era locale that it is, catering primarily to native Brooklynites, all a little rough around the edges, their thick accents infusing every word with measured authenticity.

The most impressive thing about Jackie's is how unconcerned it is with impressing anybody; the bar does not offer any of the distractions of other area pubs. Jackie's is for two things: drinking and talking, and as long you're not causing any trouble, the place really doesn't care who you are, what you look like or where you come from.

It's the type of spot many Slopers have never once entered (afterall, there is not a single local brew on tap), but that is precisely what will ensure that Jackie's 5th Amendment remains one of Park Slope's best-kept secrets.

"It's a good, quiet dive bar. We can hear each other talk," said Katherine, who braved the post-New Year's doldrums so she could have one last hurrah with her friends, a university study abroad group in the midst of a reunion.

Katherine is also from Canada. "I have to catch a Greyhound at 7 tomorrow morning. I really need to be wasted, and this place sells $7 buckets of beer."

She then took a swig from her (now room temperature) High Life, grimaced a bit, cursed the brand, and then immediately went back for more.

Because that is just the kind of place Jackie's is, a bar old and established enough that it has vanquished any notion of pretension. It is, one could say, the new Democracy of drinking, a bar that gives everyone equal merit no matter what.

So sadle up, sit down and order a cold one, and right when RuPaul's "Cover Girl" starts blaring over the juke box, and you're asking, "Why did I do this to myself?" just remember why you left home to begin with.