Not a whole lot happens in South Lake Union these days, so when the new pool hall opened in the old TGIFriday’s space we headed across the street after work to check it out.

I don’t know why I was expecting anything different from what I got, but I guess the only places I’ve ever spent much time playing pool in are dive bars and dirty billiard halls. Stix, located at 1001 Fairview Ave N., looks like the den of a well-off 50-year-old man. It’s all blue walls and black leather couches and shiny new pool balls. The place was almost completely empty at happy hour, holding only a few waitresses from Joeys and a couple of older guys who looked like they probably owned a couple of the boats docked on the water. There’s a special “gold room” in the back with a special table, a private bathroom and cocktail waitress, and an X-Box with four controllers.

Monday - Friday the tables are $7 per hour, and I think they go up to $12 on the weekends. I didn’t try any of the food because I was too busy winning, but when I requested the beer list the bartender enthusiastically recommended the house red which was “better than Mac & Jack and on happy hour.” (It wasn’t better, but it was a perfectly acceptable beer.)

By all of which I mean to say that if spots like Joeys and Chandlers are your type of place, you’d probably like to stop by and shoot some stick. I can’t say what it’s going to be like on the weekends, but at 5:00 on a Tuesday it was pretty empty and harmless. Not my scene–I’ll stick with The Zoo–but certainly someone’s.

Related posts:

1. Stix for sale
2. Metroblogging drinks: The Beacon Pub
3. Metroblogging happy hour–tomorrow!
4. Pub Crawl: The Zoo Tavern
5. happy thanksgiving from the group pool (2)