Sauced

Four Bars for Playing Skee Ball

Phinney newcomer the Ridge is contemplating adding skee ball. Meanwhile, here’s where to go to drink and throw.

Posted by: Allie Oosta on Jan 13, 2012 at 11:00AM 0 Comments

Skee ball at King’s Hardware. Photo: Risa R/Yelp.

This morning Chris Werner shared a First Look at Phinney’s newly opened pizza spot, The Ridge. The family-friendly pizzeria (which moonlights as a bar) is talking about adding skee ball in the future. We could be wrong—but isn’t it a little dangerous to drink and throw heavy objects?

Safety concerns be damned. With its minimal skill requirements, this childhood arcade classic is a natural fit as a bar game. Bonus: The process of heaving that heavy wooden ball up the inclined ramp requires only one hand, meaning you never have to put down your beer.

We’re keeping tabs on The Ridge’s skee ball plans, but if you’re curious about where else to potentially knock someone out, we’ve got the scoop on other bars featuring this trending game. If shuffleboard’s more your thing, we’ve got you covered there as well.

King’s Hardware
A Ballard classic with an impressive happy hour from 4 to 7, and two very popular skee ball machines in back. Grab some sweet potato fries and get in line.

The Rabbit Hole
The divey Belltown sibling to Bathtub Gin and Co has cool drinks like The Donnie Darko and Jessica Rabbit—we’re told they might not be the best, but they’re strong. Drink one slowly and check out the two machines in the back, at just 25 cents a game. Try the hush puppies with lavender honey, too.

The Zoo
Eastlake’s Zoo Tavern is kind of the every man’s bar—that is if every man only drinks beer or wine, pays with cash, doesn’t mind some dirt, and loves parlor games. Hit the ATM before hand (or use the one inside), and prepare for ping pong, shuffleboard, and an old-school skee ball machine from the 1962 world’s fair, which we’re told is somehow (as most ancient things are), way cool. It takes quarters, is much longer than most skee ball machines, and still has the original chrome and handsome little details.

Auto Battery
This Capitol Hill spot emits a fun car-repair-shop theme due to their space (an old garage). More shuffleboard here, as well as Wii games, one skee ball table, air hockey, foosball, and lots of flat screens for watching any and every game.

Fun fact: Skee ball tables used to be 36 feet long—they shortened them to 10 to 13 feet because the average person is too weak to throw that far.

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Tags: Dive Bars, Drinking Games, The Ridge, Zoo Tavern, Auto Battery, Rabbit Hole, King's Hardware

Watch the State of the Union at Kate’s Pub or Cafe Presse

A third alternative: Stay home and play a drinking game. Esquire has a good one.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jan 25, 2011 at 10:26AM 0 Comments

Raise a glass to the big guy: Bars hosts SOTU parties.

These days nearly every bar you go to has a television, so you’ll likely be able to catch the State of the Union all over town.

But if you’re still fired up and ready to go, you should probably hit Organizing for America’s rally-the-base bash at Kate’s Pub in Wallingford. This begins at 5pm (the speech is scheduled for 6pm).

Added attraction: Kate’s has an applause-worthy happy hour that lasts until 7pm and includes half-price food.

Cafe Presse is also hosting a watch party. Presse fries up some of the city’s best frites, so you can eat your pain tastily as you contemplate joblessness, global violence, and our highly fractured national government.

If you prefer to huddle up at home and watch the speech, might I recommend a drinking game? As is so often the case, Esquire has the best one. I’m not just saying that because it includes the expression “excessive bloviation.”

Cheers!

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Tags: Capitol Hill, Wallingford, Drinking Events, Drinking Games, Barack Obama, State of the Union, Esquire

Monday Night Bingo at Calamity Jane’s

If the novelty of parlor games won’t get your friends out to the bar, perhaps all-you-can-eat spaghetti will do the trick?

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Aug 23, 2010 at 07:58AM 0 Comments

Bingo begins every Monday at 8pm at Calamity Jane’s.

Monday nights at the neighborhood bar are some of the best ones. On weekends all the bartenders are in a bad mood because people are forgetting to tip them and throwing toilet paper around the bathroom. Conversations tend towards the loud and the disproportionately passionate, and there is always a smoky cluster around the entrance.

It’s okay if that’s what you’re into, but it’s not terribly relaxing.

Early week, however, is when a neighborhood bar wipes its brow and smiles. Industry folks pop by for a few drinks on their nights off; neighborhood regulars check in to make sure the weekend warriors haven’t done any permanent damage. You can sink in with a beer and really soak up what a bar has to offer.

But it can take a little coaxing to get your fellow officey friends to come with you on a Monday. They’ve likely spent the weekend having disproportionately passionate conversations and now they’ve made all sorts of resolutions about the week to come. How to break them down?

Maybe bingo? I don’t know. But it’s worth a shot. They’ve got it at Calamity Jane’s in Georgetown every Monday from 8 to 10pm. Sometimes there is a theme. “You know,” said the employee with whom I spoke about bingo night, “themes like lesbian, hula, pirate.”

Past prizes have included Georgetown Brewing t-shirts, sex toys, and “whatever we can scrounge up,” per the aforementioned employee. He said about 20 to 40 people usually come.

Oh and if the bingo doesn’t tempt your buddies, go with all-you-can-eat spaghetti. It’s $8.18 from 6pm onwards, meatballs are $1.14 each.

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Tags: Cheap Eats, Dive Bars, Georgetown, Bingo, Drinking Games