The 25 Douchiest Bars in Philadelphia

Image via Complex Original

Address: 1100 Pattison Ave.
Website: xfinitylive.com

This monstrosity, basically six sports bars crammed into one venue, opened at the end of March. XFINITY Live! Philadelphia, in addition to being much fun to write out, is a place for bros to chill before sporting events, and then return to to get angry-drunk after said (sad) sporting events. The opening of this venue featured concerts by Bruce Springsteen, who, along with Jimmy Buffett, Bon Jovi, and Steve Perry, comprise the faces on a musical Mount Rushmore, where instead of inspiring patriotism, the music of each mug inspires nerve-wracking singing from men who can't express affection for each other by normal means. There is too much douche to take in here: a mechanical bull, beer wenches in ass-less chaps, unreasonably loud bro tunes, bottle service, and an endless array of plasma TVs. In time, this place will give Philly douche heavyweights a serious a run for their money. Don't sweat being all the way down at the bottom, XFINITY Live! Philadelphia—you are Rookie Douche of the Year!

Address: 460 North 2nd St.
Website: litultrabar.com

That's right, y'all: upper case “L,” lower case “I,” upper case “T.” Is it the extra capital T that makes this bar ultra? It's hard to judge, standing in the long "members only" line, the promise of bottle service dancing above everyone's head like Ed Hardy's idea of sexy angels and devils. LiT has been open little more than a month; it's still finding itself. This spot used to be Vault Ultra Lounge, one of many such lounges that have been douching up cities all over the U.S. with neon lights and “lounging mattresses." Nothing says “Ultra” quite like “lounging mattresses.” Nothing says you'll have a bad time quite like LiT.

Address: 1501 Spruce St.
Website: foxandhound.com

Any bar that that advertises itself as a UFC destination instantly gains douche cred. The Fox's tagline on the subject? “You don't have to hit Vegas to find hot ring girls, up-close action and beverages a'plenty. We don't just show UFC…we do UFC.” Thing is, you should have to hit Vegas for those things. Or at least the ninth circle of Hell. If you're a total douche, join their "All Star Brew Club,” where you can find pix of attractive women pouring beers for the flashing camera. Imagine the lonely douche who masturbates to this. Just, you know, don't imagine to the point of sympathy.

Address: 111 Cotton St.
Website: jdmcgillicuddys.com

The above photos are taken exclusively from a gallery on the bar's website labeled “Partyin' @ The Cuddy!!!” Giving your own bar a nickname is like giving your dog a sweater. It's an awful thing to do and we'd feel bad if we didn't say anything. But we need not say anything else. The photos are worth plenty words. Words like "please" and "make" and "it" and "stop."

Address: 125 South 2nd St.
Website: recesslounge.com

There are many douchey “members only” nightclubs all over Illadelphia. It is true that each establishment attracts men favoring a certain brand of t-shirt and ladies packed into dresses like sausage casings. But douche connoisseurs understand that each spot is unique, has its own musk. For instance, Recess is a concept bar. This place takes the idea—no, the essence of—“recess” and nails it into the sweaty, liquor-and-come soaked ground. Recess bills itself as “Philadelphia's most exclusive playground.” You see, not only do they have bartenders wearing nerd glasses, they also have a set of “rules” posted on a chalkboard. Cool, so douche culture and To Catch a Predator have finally met.

Address: 1150 Filbert St.
Website: fieldhousephilly.com

If the 50 one-star reviews on Yelp! aren't enough to dissuade you, perhaps perusing the bar's press page will help. It seems that the sum total of the positive press written about Field House is three lines, including a mention of an “awesome band/DJ” (Other bands with DJs: Limp Bizkit, Incubus, Linkin Park, ohgodwhyistheresomuchbloodpouringfromyourears?) and a guarantee that they will “definitely be back this year, a lot!” This spot is a straight up douche haven, a lot!

Address: 100 Spring Garden St.
Website: zee-bar.com

Zee Bar's website boasts “unleashed dancing” and “undisturbed chilling” in “a stratosphere of unprecedented luxury.” And Pamela Anderson has “sipped Dom Perignon” there before. Though all of this is enticing, we'll stick to a tip we got from a neighborhood local: “It's right next to Delilah's, the local strip joint. Go there instead, dawg.”

Address: 1528 Sansom St.
Website: ladder15philly.com

There comes a time in every Philly douchebag's life when clinging desperately to the glories of your frat years no longer cuts it. Maybe you landed your first job in banking, and it's time to walk your loafered feet into the field of dreams that is Wells Fargo. Maybe you just opened your acceptance letter to the Wharton. Maybe you switched from polos to button-ups. No matter what forced your transition from douche-boy to douche-man, Ladder 15 is here to welcome you with open arms. After all, they host corporate events and place flowers in cute glass cubes on the tables.

Address: 123 Chestnut St.
Website: ploughstars.com

This Irish pub illustrates the great paradox of Philly nightlife. On a Wednesday night, this is a mild-mannered bar populated by middle-aged folks enjoying a nice dinner while listening to the sweet sounds of accordions and fiddles at the same (damn) time. But when Friday night comes, party vans equipped with splashing neon and stripper poles pour across the bridge from Jersey, the beer tub wenches man their stations, and epic douchery ensues. Flee Old City on Friday nights! Don't make us say we told you so when you're lying in a gutter, overwhelmed by the smell of cheap cologne and various hair products.

Address: 4120 Main St.
Website: manayunkbrewery.com

While young post-grad douchers frequent most of the bars on Manayunk's main drag, their older siblings can be seen at this brew pub. This is where you go when Nickelback gets too loud, when it's time to mel-bro out with some Jimmy Buffett or late-period Bruce Springsteen ("The Rising is such a good record for relaxing.") A former employee offered the following: “There's always a group of power suits who act like they just had the roughest day in the office and it's all they could do to get to the brew pub to drink their strain away.” [S]he also informed us that the MBC boasts an in-house magician. That is not a typo or a mistake. Well, it is a mistake, just not on our part.

Address: 1050 North Hancock St.
Website: facebook.com/pytphilly

PYT tries and succeeds at self-parody. This hipster bar/restaurant is known city-wide for its laissez-faire service and obnoxious song selection. The joint gives off the oppressive atmosphere of believing that they are doing you a favor just by being open. PYT would suck anywhere, but as it is nestled in the over-priced yuppie gentrification experiment that is the Piazza, it sucks that much harder. See, the Piazza is a self-described “five minute neighborhood,” a community-complex where you can live, drink, shop, and do yoga without having to leave your building. This is how the world ends. Or the plot of a David Cronenberg movie where the world ends. Either way.

Address: 247 Market St.
Website: lucys215.com

Our experience on $0.75 High Life Thursdays was not unlike a Dionysian orgy. For those of you that napped through Ancient Lit., this translates to: "Bitches wildin." Within minutes of walking through the door, we had our junk grabbed by one drunk “lady,” while actually being shoved and challenged to a fight by another fun-seeker. While the siren song of the $0.75 cent High Life is compelling, just know that you will find yourself wrecked upon these douche shores in short order. Better to tie yourself to the mast...of at-home alcoholism.

Address: 150 South St.
Website: paddywhackspub.com

Oh, the grace and class of the Philly sports fans! Whether it be vomiting on children or assaulting Santa Claus, Philly owns a long tradition of excellence. Thus, the small jail cell and court room installed in Veteran's Stadium. As an official sponsor of PSN (Philadelphia Sports Network), Paddy Whacks is the inglorious epicenter of Philly sports shittiness. So, yes, expect your fair share of flat-brim Phillies hats, Michael Vick jerseys, and puking/punching. This spot would be higher on the list, but we all know that “the game being on” distracts the douche from fist-pumping.

Address: 537 North 3rd St.
Website: finnigans.com

Poor Finnigan's Wake—you are so close to being epically bad. But your owner fucked you by erecting you near McFadden's, a gaping-asshole eclipse of a bar that obscures everything around it. If McFadden's were to go down in hair spray and spray-on tan ignited flames, then perhaps you would be king. For now, however, your weekly beer pong tournies, your excruciating cover bands, your obnoxious bachelorette parties, and your infuriating Q&A section on your website (sample question: "Did you know that Finegan's [sic] Wake is a famous novel written by James Joyce?") only make you top-15 material. Get roofie dispensers in the bathroom and then we can talk top 10.

Address: 31 South St.
Website: fat-tuesday.com

With the douchey dream of bringing the hedonistic stereotypes of Mardi Gras to various U.S. cities, as well as potent daiquiris in 7-Eleven-style to-go cups, Fat Tuesday is the douchiest business venture this side of Hooters Air. The Philadelphia location is certainly the douchiest, as the other locations are in warm-weather locales where daiquiri culture makes some sense. Pasty white bodies writhing for beads (that you pay for) while pouring alcoholic slurpees down their throats is, basically, a nightmare.

One Yelp reviewer summed it up: “It's places like this that have the entire street under lock-down on Mardi Gras. It's places like this that get the people so drunk and obnoxious that they make my walk down and around South Street pure misery. And it's places like this that serve people so much drink that they wind up punching police horses.”

Where can we buy tickets to watch this happen? If we opened a bar, it would be next door to Fat Tuesday and would include open-air seating where you could sip a beverage and watch the troglodytes punch police horses.

Address: 124 Market St.
Website: drinkersphilly.com/drinkers-tavern

Why is this the douchiest of the three Drinker's locations? It's a matter of geography, really. This bar sits across the bridge from New Jersey, which makes it the preeminent outpost for the Bridge & Bridge crowd from the Garden State. This is the pro-sport-team-fitted-hat-wearing douche-spot par excellence. Please enjoy the basement dance floor; it does its best to serve as a historical re-enactment of your time at the SAE house in college.

Address: 951 Frankford Ave.
Website: facebook.com/thebarbary

This is the pinnacle of hipster douchery in Philadelphia: It's amazing how this joint is able to combine the uniquely pretentious quasi-ironic slumming of a Bushwick warehouse party with the more head-on experience of sweating in between two orange-tinted biceps in a dance club, making for one impossible-to-stomach cocktail. There are much better bars in the Barbary's Fishtown neighborhood. Head to Loco Pez (2401 East Norris St.) for tacos, or to the Handle Bar (1102 Frankford Ave.) for biker karaoke. Get to E.G.G. (200 East Girard Ave.) for tasty-ass brunch, or to Johnny Brenda's (1201 Frankford Ave.) to get so drunk you can't feel your face. Regardless, skip the Barbary. It sucks.

Address: 1712 Walnut St.
Website: whisperclub.com

Sometimes a name says it all, no? But the details are worth stating in order to save the curious. This club goes to great lengths to maintain an elite and enigmatic pose. In addition to the nondescript entrance (we walked by twice trying to find it early in the night), first time guests are required to fill out a membership form. The cover is $20, but bouncers are reported to slide that number up the scale at their discretion. Use your discretion, and go anywhere else.

Address: 111 South 17th St.
Website: thebestlounge.com

Yet another velvet rope and bouncer restricted club that pays girls in lingerie to hang out and pretend to be your friend. What separates this place from a Whisper, Zee Bar, or LiT UltraBar you (probably would never) ask? This place boasts an extremely large wall of screens that display varying patterns like in Magic Eye books, or on Windows 95-era screensavers. Cool, right? It's also very expensive. Losing!

Address: 417 North Columbus Blvd.
Website: theriverdeck.com

Have you always dreamed of a beachy bar where drinks are served in plastic cups and you can bounce to the beats of Top 40 tunes? No? What if we told you this party overlooked the Delaware River? Still no? What if we told you the average price for a beer was $6? Wait, wait—hold on. What if we told you they have portable toilets for bathrooms? That motion you're making with your hand—you want us to stop? Okay.

Address: 6238 Bustleton Ave.
Website: bamboobarphilly.com

Bamboo Bar combines all of the worst elements of nightclub culture with the most exquisitely stupid aspects of the inexhaustible American beach fixation. This unholy alliance produces things like over-priced fishbowls of booze and foam parties. As if this weren't bad enough, Flirt and Roxxy are two “lounges” that are actually attached to Bamboo Bar. One need only glance at Flirt/Roxxy's “Celebrity Gallery” to see the iconic clientele who have entered this hall of mirrors, where even regular folks leave looking like they religiously trim their sideburns. From Jersey Shore cast members to LMFAO, a rogues gallery of douches, some famous, some famous in their own minds, and some Philebrities (of an entirely different category) have hit up this awful, awful spot.

Address: 4417 Main St.
Website: kildaresirishpub.com

Everyone knows that Kildare's has been running the douche-bar game in Manayunk for a minute now. They should retire pink polos and hang them from the ceiling here. Of course, they'd also need to hang a few kilts, too. Kildare's is another Jekyll and Hyde-type, the quiet dinner atmosphere turning ugly when the neighborhood douches get thirsty. This usually happens by Thursday ("Thirsty Thursday," the kids are calling it). Over the weekend, it transforms into an overcrowded house party, where all the dudes become Mr. Hyde. Also, the bar smells strongly of wood. Like, shop class aromas. Imagine a coffin half-full of a gently warmed beer and vomit. Imagine you clawing for space in the other half of that coffin while two dudes fist fight over a girl whose friends have already shuttled her away (said dudes were too twisted to notice). Throw a Kildare's sign over this travesty and we're set. That's a pretty picture, no Bob Ross.

Address: 126 Chestnut St.
Website: madriverphilly.com

For you non-Philadelphians, Manayunk—where Mad River lives and sweats and pukes—fills a space every metropolis needs. All major cities have that neighborhood where recently-graduated, upwardly-mobile college folks can be isolated from the grittiness of city life. Manayunk is the insulation from life and culture that these fragile climbers need to succeed. And when they need a break from networking, they get their kicks at Mad River. Glow dance parties are a great way to get much-needed kicks. The newly-instituted "Locals Only Tuesdays," the only way for "LEGIT INDUSTRY HEADS" to get "REAL DRINK SPECIALS," is another great kicks outlet. And us? We get our kicks at Mad River, too. We go there and kick as many shins as we can before the cops arrive.

Address: 1500 Sansom St
Website: rumorphilly.com

Rumor is a neon labyrinth, a place where douche culture ascends to the status of myth. Sure, instead of minotaurs you get women wearing carefully-positioned fabric scraps who are paid to be there and convince you that you don't suck—Fun Fact: You do suck—but it is just as harrowing. And weirdly impressive. There are seven, maybe eight different rooms (hard to recall, what with the bleeding eyes and all), each with its own heinous colored fluorescent light scheme. Don't care to watch zesty grinding under sickly green light? How about orange? Red? The room everyone wants to party in is called “The Vault,” because it's shaped like a vault. Cool! Also, you get to pay $20 if you want to get in! Double cool! And what would be triple cool? Having the opportunity to seal "The Vault" like a time capsule, setting the to-open date to some time long after it would take for the folks inside to starve.

Address: 461 North 3rd St.
Website: mcfaddensphilly.com

When you open a bar named McFadden's, you cultivate douchiness like moist cultures in a Petri dish. Indeed, the McFadden's locations in Chicago and New York made their respective lists. But please believe that this must be the douchiest of them all. With scantily-clad beer-tub wenches perched above the bar like so many fake statues on plastic-tub pedestals, and its damp floors covered with scuttling bros screeching along to songs TRL popularized 10 years ago, McFadden's is Philly's douche capital. Be sure to check out the weekly beer pong tournaments if you want to wring out your soul. Most of the sticky muck on the floor is soul-residue, not jizz (though there have been anonymous reports of sex on the dance floor: "She was in a long coat. He was in a jersey and backwards cap. The jersey covered most of it.").