Bob & Barbara's is a South Street institution that invented or at least perfected the Philadelphia citywide special: a Pabst Blue Ribbon tall boy and a shot of Jim Beam for a price that barely covers the cost of either. The bar has been on South Street since 1969 and has accumulated the kind of patina — neon signs, red vinyl, Christmas lights year-round, a back bar that looks unchanged since the Carter administration — that cannot be manufactured. It is a genuine neighborhood dive that has survived long enough to become beloved.
Thursday nights are drag shows, and the community that has gathered around them has made Bob & Barbara's one of the friendlier LGBTQ+ spaces in South Philadelphia. Live jazz on Friday and Saturday nights. The crowd on any given evening is a reliable cross-section of the city: neighborhood regulars, people who heard about the citywide and made the trip, artists and musicians from the surrounding blocks, and visitors who wandered in from South Street and stayed. The citywide is mandatory; the company is unpredictable and usually good.