The Occasional Joke


Nurse: Patient's name?

Centurion: Marcus Licinius Crassus

Nurse: And his date of birth?

Centurion: 115 BC.

Nurse: All right. And what is he here for?

Centurion: Cataphract surgery.


Friday, April 8, 2011

Fifth Quarter Closes

Update: Wrong again. Another Old Ann Arborite points out that the Fifth Quarter isn't the thing across from the Michigan Theatre -- it's where the old Fifth Forum theatre used to be, on 5th Avenue. My fault -- I glanced at the picture and it looked vaguely like the Old Nectarine Ballroom entry way, but I failed to do the necessary fact checking -- like carefully reading the first sentence of the article I cited, which gives the place's 5th Avenue address, right there in plain English.

I find it hard to imagine that anyone reading this blog cares at all, but the essentially forced closing of the Insane Clown Posse Fan Club Fifth Quarter night spot is at least interesting in that it sets some kind of bar (pun intended) for the amount of sheer bad behavior it takes to get a place shut down in Ann Arbor. I won't bother to copy the stats regarding fights and yoof drinking that went on (no "allegedly" here - no one's really denying much of anything,) but I did think it was telling that on October 25th., 2010, they called in twenty cops and still couldn't restore order.

Owner Jeff Starman pretty much sums it up: "90 percent of the nights were great and the 10 percent that were bad were bad." In other words, there were incidents of public drunkenness, disorderly behavior, battery, and underage drinking 1 night out of 10. I don't know if the place was open all week, but even if it skipped Mondays and a couple of major holidays, that's still a solid month of jackass behavior, right across the street from the Michigan Theater whatever it's right across from, for Christ's sake.