A Philly-Themed Bar Called Passyunk Avenue Has Won Londoners’ Cold, Cold Hearts

– Drew Lazor

Three isn’t quite enough. Eight is far too many. But that sweet spot between your fourth and seventh beers? That’s when the best bar arguments tend to occur.

I’m taking up a stool in Passyunk Avenue’s narrow front room, coated in the ruddy neon glow of a Budweiser sign on full blast. Firmly ensconced in the five-to-six-pints neighborhood, I’m trying hard not to catch you-look-drunk glimpses of myself in the mirrored back bar, a thrift-shop bit of carved wood decorated with an Eagles clock, a plush Phanatic, and a crumpled dollar bill on which someone has scribbled “TRUST THE PROCESS” in black marker.

“I come from the mystical Central Jersey region,” says Steph Parker, a Drexel grad from Princeton who’s inhabiting the stool to my right.

It’s a revelation that triggers bartender Joey Pasterino, a member of the Froggy Carr Wench Brigade, to prairie-dog-pop his Phillies-capped head up inquisitively. “Central Jersey does not exist.”

Here we go.

(Philadelphia, 2018, United Kingdom, <https://www.phillymag.com/foobooz/2018/10/19/passyunk-avenue-london-jp-teti/>)