Playboy's Jackpot? The bar is low.

If Raleigh has an underbelly, Jackpot qualifies as its hairy, protruding navel.

It squats on Hillsborough Street just down from Phoenix Tattoo, hunkering under a towering chartreuse mansion that looks ready to topple if you slam the door too hard.

Pabst Blue Ribbon beer costs $2 at Jackpot. Pool cues tend to be broken. Barstools are worn down to the foam padding.

It's a no-frills hovel perfect for scribbling out a bad novel on a napkin, or starting a band with the shaggy hipster smoking Parliament Lights down the bar.

Which makes this news all the more interesting: Playboy U has selected Jackpot as its college bar of the week.

This accolade places Jackpot in the company of Chuck's Cafe in Syracuse and Burt's Tiki Lounge in Albuquerque.

National recognition for Jackpot makes sense if you're measuring sootiness, or ironic thrift-store T-shirts per capita.

But college bar? There's no television inside Jackpot. No bar games. No Wolfpack gear. No Cornhole. No backward hats.

Just cheap drinks and a lost-soul camaraderie.

"I suppose the weirdos from college come in," said bartender Jeramy Lowe. "I'd count as one of them."

The bar's only advertisement is a tiny slot machine logo painted on the front door, along with JACKPOT! in capital letters with an exclamation point.

Still, it's possible to imagine a national dive-bar scout stumbling in after a plate of old-fashioned pot roast at the IHOP next door.

But Playboy's endorsement is even stranger considering the Jackpot review was penned by Jay Winfrey, another bartender.

He writes:

"Looking for the budding literati and the downward-spiraling graduates who still scream with glee to the Clash and the Jam? You'll find them here. No bar in Raleigh comes close to the divey, decaying decor of this place."

(Word around Jackpot last week was that the Playboy folks were desperate for a last-minute choice, had some Jackpot contacts and asked them to graciously step in. But this will have to remain a rumor, because Playboy's PR reps in New York couldn't be reached by press time.)

On a hipster map, Jackpot occupies the same scruffy parallel as, say, Sadlack's Heroes.

North Raleigh has few equivalents -- little with such history or grittiness -- and a newcomer driving through the Wakefield subdivision would never guess such places exist in our capital city.

To hear Lowe the bartender tell it, Jackpot patrons are surprised just to return and find the building intact.

"At least four times a week, somebody asks me if this place is shutting down," he said. "Please stop asking me if we're shutting down. We're not."

Lowe can remember when Bourbon Street Social Club occupied Jackpot's white-brick box, offering free pool games on tables that were often cracked and frayed.

Lowe sings in a local band, and he has written for the Independent Weekly and the now-defunct Raleigh Hatchet. But since he got laid off from his surveyor's job, he splits time behind bars at Jackpot and The Rockford.

"I didn't see a need to cut my hair or shave," he said, scraggly and proud.

Jackpot's distinction lasts only one week. But its musty charm lingers, wafting over Raleigh like the scent of PBR spilled on a shag rug.