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'Please for the Love of God Stop Playing Prince!' Bartender Says to Poseurs

By Nicole Levy | April 28, 2016 6:13pm

This Bay Ridge bar is so over Prince.

"Please, for the love of god, stop playing Prince!" pleads a sign affixed to the jukebox at Johnny Pumps Café since Friday.

The desperate request came from bartender Jessica Bannon, whose patrons at the bar at 7518 5th Ave. played the iconic singer's top three songs non-stop during her night shifts after news of his death at age 57 broke Thursday morning.

"It makes you never want to never hear the artist again as long as you live," Bannon said of a phenomenon that bedevils bartenders every time a famous musician dies.

"No disrespect to Prince intended, absolutely not — he was wonderful, one of the greatest half-time Super Bowls I’ve ever seen — but you never played him while he was alive, stop pretending you’re a superfan," she said, spelling out the subtext of the handwritten sign she posted last week.

 

Bay Ridge is OVER #Prince.

A photo posted by Mike Feeney (@iammikefeeney) on

Patrons who selected "Kiss" or "When Doves Cry" or "Purple Rain" on the electronic jukebox thought their picks were original, Bannon explained.

"They all think they’re the first to do it and they don’t realize that 15 minutes ago, somebody else thought they were the first ones to do it too and 15 minutes before that somebody thought they were the first ones to do it, too."

After the sign went up, patrons were respectful of Bannon's entreaty to pause the Prince playlist. 

"I put the sign up last Friday and I haven’t heard a Prince song since," she said. "It was very effective."

The sign itself is now a makeshift memorial to the Purple One, who will be honored with a tribute event in Fort Greene Friday night.

"Everybody finds it quite funny," Bannon noted, "so we’ll it leave it there for another week or so."