That Place bartenders make the best cocktails in town. They are reasonably priced and just the right liquor to mixer ratio. The staff is great and make you feel welcome and treat you like family. Â I meet the love of my life there and we have been married for 6 years now. I cannot say enough good things about That Place! It's the best bar on the southside! They also have great bands and super fin trivia on Tuesday night!
Review Source:Can't find anything that sounds good on the menu at That Place? Don't worry, you can just eat the thick cigarette smoke in the air!
This is pretty much a standard strip mall bar, but about twice the size. There are the usual strip mall bar characters:
-Older chicks with Hoosier Hair (that's what my mom has always called it) pounding beers, chain smoking, and hitting on young dudes.
-Guys in their mid-20's who wear Tapout shirts, have that thin chin strap beard, and get pissed off when you walk to the restroom and get in the way of their billiards game. "I got money on this, bro."
-The professional karaoke singers who will freak the hell out if someone sings "Sweet Caroline" before they've had their chance. That is their song. Everybody knows it. Â
-"Harley Guy," who wears a bandana, leather chaps, drinks Bud longnecks, and hits on the female bartenders who are 30 years younger and aren't interested anyway because they already have six kids.
-The cover band groupies who roll in to see their favorite acts. Apparently nothing drops the pants like hearing "Mustang Sally" for the 3,416th time.
Overall, this is an entertaining joint and is worth stopping in to from time to time. They have some decent specials ($2.50 bloodies on Sunday and $5 pitchers on Wednesday), a lot of TVs with every NFL game on, and four bar top game/trivia machines.
As I mentioned at the beginning, it definitely attracts the smokers. I think the bartenders moonlight (daylight?) as the Philip Morris Board of Directors.
I went to this place on the Saturday night after Thanksgiving with a bunch of my old high school classmates while I was home for the holiday. Â That Place was packed with Southside Indy party people out for a night of heavy drinking and LOTS of chain-smoking. Â Unlike much of the world outside of Indiana, the Hoosier state or at least Indianapolis still allows smoking in bars. Â The previous reviewer had it wrong. Â The ladies in the crowd weren't cougars, they were 20-something females that had been smoking since they were 13. Â But, I digress. Â The bar had a decent cover band playing songs from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Â However, I didn't stick around too long for fear of developing lung cancer or emphysema on the spot from the second hand smoke. Â All kidding aside, That Place is probably a very good bar for many people as evidenced by the large Saturday night crowd. Â It's just way too smoky for my taste.
Review Source:After years of working and hanging out in bars, I've learned one thing. You can tell everything you need to know about a place just by looking at the bouncers. When I saw the two HUGE & HULKING bouncers in lime green t-shirts hovering by the door, I knew this place was built for trouble. And by trouble, I mean fun -- the kind of fun that starts out fun, gets really fun and then turns to nothing but trouble. Both of these men could crush any guy in this place with one hand. I'd say the bigger one was 6'7 and weighs about 375. The other guy was almost as big. I love a big man but these boys scared me. One of them looks a bit like Sloth from the Goonies. My inner Chunk wanted to give him a Baby Ruth.
Once I made it past the bouncers I realized That Place needs to be renamed The Cougar Den. Oh yes. Lots of older ladies on the prowl looking for some sweet young cubs to take home and show them how to hunt. I went on a Saturday about 10 pm and the place was packed. I'd estimate 80% of the men were under 30 and 85% of the women were over 40. Full-disclosure -- I am 40, but not in the market for a boy toy. I went with two of my cousins who are 28 & 24. A few of their cutie-pie cub friends were there too. Several of the ladies were giving me looks along the lines of -- what the hell are you doing with 3 cubs when I can't even land one?! Finally, around midnight, a 43 year-old momma asked me who they boys were. When I told her they are my cousins she zeroed in on the 24 year-old. Meow!
Jagerbombs seem to be the drink of choice. The band was decent and played lots of songs from the 80's -- Simple Minds, Cheap Trick, Billy Squire -- all designed to fire up the cougars. While I'd like to think this place was in rare form, I bet this is the nightly MO -- lots of cleavage, tight pants, cheap make-up applied with a heavy hand and more than a couple of bad tattoos peeking out above bras & panties. Everyone (or so it seemed) was smoking. Between the booze goggles and the smoke haze, everyone looks a little better -- right?
I can't decide if I was more surprised by the 4 uber-pregnant women in the bar. 3 were patrons and 1 was working! Â Or, the two dudes camped at the bar from "the National Republic of Africa" who claimed their names were "Alfonse & Chocolate". Between the two of them they hit on every woman who walked by. I admire their tenacity, after 147 "no"s, they finally found a "yes".
It was a long night. I was there for over 5 hours and I had a blast. My clothes reeked so badly of smoke I had to wash them twice. The people watching was fantastic. The drinks were cheap and strong. I will be back.