Bar #38: Mad River, 2nd and Chestnut
Our final stop of the night (yes, our night actually ended) was at Mad River, one of the more popular Old City bars among the kids over here at Penn. Now, Penn kids love some notoriously bad bars, but we really can’t knock their taste too much because we are, in fact, Penn kids ourselves. So I guess we expected to get some sort of guilty pleasure out of Mad River, or, hey, maybe we’d actually just enjoy it. What we found, however, was a bar full of pretty annoying 25-year-olds who thought they were still in college.
Last stop of the night at Mad River
Now, a few disclaimers: we’d (clearly) been out for a very long time, and were probably getting tired of it by this point. Also, it was around 1:15 or 1:30, so the people there had probably been at it for a while as well. Lastly, this is another bar that I might’ve enjoyed were it not for the clientele, and its hard to say how much the people at the bar actually say about the bar itself.
Either way, I’m just gonna say it: most of the people at Mad River seemed like tools. We were there for approximately 5 minutes before one of the workers accused me of throwing a beer bottle – really? Nonetheless, we headed to the bar to fill our one drink quota, and not even bothering with specialty drinks, each ordered a vodka soda with a splash of cranberry ($7).
Basically the less sweet version of what we had at Plough
Part of me almost likes Mad River for taking advantage of the people that I was so annoyed by, but $7 is way too expensive for a standard well drink. I will say that the bartenders were pretty quick with drink orders, and I give them credit for putting up with the crowd. But to end an already frustrating experience, they kicked everyone out of the bar at 1:45. I wonder if this is how nights end at Lucy’s too – they seem like pretty similar places. Ultimately though, I really don’t get the Mad River hype and advise Penn kids headed to Old City to venture elsewhere.
Mad River Ratings
The Bar Graph: Mad River
More to come, as always!
<3
Emily
