Bar, games and live sports venue Roxy Lanes to open in Bristol later this month

Bar, games and live sports venue Roxy Lanes to open in Bristol later this month

Posted on: 04 May 2022

Roxy Leisure run a series of venues throughout the UK – describing themselves as “professionals at play”, their venues combine bars with games and entertainment.

 

Roxy Leisure are opening their brand new Union Street site, Roxy Lanes Bristol, at the end of this month - an exciting prospect given everything its other locations have on offer.

 

The new venue, which opens on Friday 27 May, is set to have facilities from bowling, to ‘iceless curling’, to basketball and karaoke - packing a whole heap of entertainment into one location.

 

Bookings can be made already from the Roxy Lanes website.

 

 

As a showcase of what the new venue will have on offer, they kindly took me up to Roxy Lanes in The Light, Leeds – their home and most populous city with three different locations – to get a taste of what Roxy was about...

 

Immediately, the interior of Roxy Lanes speaks to – or perhaps yells to – their “rebellious spirit”. Neon and bulb-studded letters light up a rocky, pop culture mashup inside, with posters sharing wall space with murals of figures like David Bowie, all lit up in wonderland hues of blue and pink.

 

It’s a huge site, which their Bristol presence promises to follow in the footsteps of, with discrete areas for each activity that could easily be the entirety of a smaller venue. 

 

We hit the bar first – I was eager to try Roxy’s extensive list of signature cocktails. I tried a ‘Baby Got Backspin’, a vodka-based cocktail incorporating tropical flavours – including a delicious mango puree.

 

I was impressed with both the flavour and foamy texture and was pleased to see they used Absolut rather than a cheaper alternative. Not only that, but the bar staff whipped it up quickly and skillfully.

We had a go at the ‘iceless curling’ first. It uses a surface that recreates the low-friction of ice, without the temperature – and thus, energy-intensive refrigeration. It was good fun and trying to learn the knack of it was a fun challenge.

 

With typically high production value, the curling ‘range’ featured a birds-eye camera above the goal circle, making scoring easy.

 

The only downside of iceless curling is it doesn’t require any brushing, so a few of us were disappointed to not be able to live out our full Olympic curling fantasy.

 

We can’t be the only ones, however, as Roxy actually keep a few brushes on hand. They aren’t necessary, but they are fun.

 

We moved on to bowling afterwards, of which the only real innovation Roxy introduced from the last time I bowled was that we didn’t need to exchange our shoes for fiddly and unhygienic bowling shoes.

 

Other than that, bowling is bowling, but they do it well – I was especially pleased to see the tradition of weird little animations in-between scoring upheld.

We moved onto shuffleboard – a game I had previously associated with the elderly on cruise ships. It turned out to be good fun, and difficult to boot, although it struck me as mostly like a smaller version of curling.

 

We finished off with a game of pool, my win tally for which I’d rather not reveal.

 

Roxy Lanes is, all in all, a fun place to be, an interesting alternative to just sitting and drinking at a regular bar. I’m looking forward to the opening of the Bristol location, which promises all the above, along with ‘duckpin bowling’, basketball, baseball batting cages, and karaoke.

 

It’s set to launch in May, which we’ll be ready to cover, so watch this space.

Bookings for Roxy Lanes' new Union Street site (opening on 27 May) can be made here. Visit the Roxy Lanes website to find out more.

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Article by:

Patrick Bate

Patrick is a filmmaker with so much Bristol in his blood the white blood cells are graffiti'd. Educated at the Northern Film School in Leeds, he’s returned home to be a Videographer and Reviewer for 365Bristol and BARBI. When he’s not messing about with cameras, he enjoys playing guitar, spending far too much time on tabletop RPGs, and being an awful snob about cider. Have a look at his work here, or get in touch at patrickb@365bristol.com.