I was a little skeptical of coming to this place for a recent birthday. Once I heard it was around the King and Portland area on a Friday night all I could think about was drunken 20 year olds all up in my grill. Plus I really suck at ping-pong. But I was pleasantly surprised, for a bit...
Showed up to the venue around 8pm and took a couple of minutes to locate it. There's a small sign on King Street pointing towards the alleyway but walking through there still made me confused. I kept going and sure enough I saw the Spin sign pointing down some stairs. They even had one of those sliding peephole things you see in the movies, though it wasn't being used. No password needed.
Walked in and the girls at the reception desk greeted me. I told them my friends had reserved a table and they smiled and said to walk right in. They had a stack of old television sets displayed on the ground playing The Big Lebowski. Nice touch. Also in the front area was a display case of ping-pong accessories. Another nice touch.
The place is pretty massive and it was cool seeing so many people deep into games of ping-pong. The black lights were in full effect, but from what I heard this isn't an everyday occurrence so not sure what the lighting is usually. Found my friends, said hello, and proceeded to the bar for a pint. They had a dozen good beers on tap (I counted) and a glass of Creemore was 7 bucks, which is decent. The bartender was very nice and polite. There was also an absolutely stunning server who would check up on our table and ask for drinks. She was so amazing I almost asked her out, which is totally not my style but I was pretty mesmerized.
They have these guys who go around collecting balls with this little net. It's pretty cool because you can basically just go about and play your games and not worry about stray ping-pong balls as they just swoop them up and drop them back into the bucket next to your table. Very cool. They even seem to have some sort of VIP ping pong table if you're fancy. Oh, and free coat check!
From around 8pm to 10pm they were playing amazing soul music. Stuff like Otis Redding and Smokey Robinson. The music definitely played a big role in how much I was enjoying myself. But when after that the shitty dance music started to pipe through the speakers. Started off with some wack remix of Notorious BIG and then I started to see the club kids slowly wander in.
We stayed for another hour and bounced at 11pm and the place was pretty bumping at that point, but the vibe had completely changed. I loved this place early on when the music and people were perfect, but I can see it becoming a questionable experience during late-night hours. I would love to come back and practice my pong skills but I'm going to do some research and find out the best times to come back when the music is tight.