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| - VIP Lounge & Billiards is my favourite pool hall in the city (downtown that is, not including anything west of Dufferin and east of Parliament).
It's a large venue, they have over twenty pool tables as well as a few snooker tables. It's underground, and has the feeling of a dank, dive pool hall, with none of the issues that come with that sort of establishment. Right on the corner of Yonge and Gerrard, it's easy to get to, and often busy, even during the week.
The location itself is clean and well maintained, they have a full service bar from which you can order, or wait for a server to come to you while you're playing a game. You can find many racks of cues throughout the place, but a lot of the cues seem to be dented, scratched, and unusable. This is to be expected from a public pool hall, but it seems like a good chunk of them are like this. You can, of course, bring your own cue. I'm not entirely sure if VIP is host to any pool leagues, but I've seen plenty of professional looking players throughout my many trips to this place.
The price is reasonable for a downtown Toronto location; $10/hour for non-members, $9/hour for members. Membership is $20/year, and the dollar you save is well worth it if you're a frequent player. The tables are not coin operated, and to get a table you will need to leave a piece of ID to prevent you from skipping out on the bill. Drinks (and food) are also charged to the table this way.
The server staff is usually quick and accurate, but on extremely busy nights you may wait a while, or you might have to call someone and remind them of your order, or check in on things.
The food is as you'd expect, albeit slightly higher priced than other nearby spots. Another reviewer mentioned that the tacos were tepid and bland, which is occasionally true; the food is very hit and miss, on what I can only assume is based on who the people are in the kitchen on that particular night.
Aside from pool, VIP Lounge & Billiards has a fairly large seated section, with tables and a few couches. You can watch TV (usually sports), chat, relax. They have board games which you can borrow and play (no fee, as long as you order a drink, and ID is also required to get a board game). They carry the basics, like Scrabble and Monopoly, and I'm not sure what other games they have.
In one corner of the room they have a punching bag machine (drop in a loonie, see how hard you can hit the bag). In the hall adjacent to the hall leading to the washroom, you'll find a row of seating if you want to get away from the noise, as well as a foosball table.
For music, they have a jukebox, otherwise a pre-set playlist will play throughout the bar. They play almost every genre of music, as I've heard everything except country, and there seems to be no order to how it plays; rap followed by rock followed by pop followed by reggae.
For the location and price, VIP Lounge & Billiards is a great place to go. And if you enjoy the experience, I recommend you get a membership as you leave for the night, because if you're a fan of that kind of atmosphere at all, you WILL be back.
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