Strikers Sports Bar: The Empire (some of it) returns, with pool tables, fried pickle fries and bowling (or not)

Strikers: Plenty of beer

The hairy guy’s report:

Some bars have a great view. It’s hard to go wrong with a rooftop bar atop a skyscraper. But we don’t have that. Or a beach bar aside a clear blue lake. We don’t have that either. 

 

We do have downtown’s Strikers Sports Bar, which has a fine view across Washington Avenue of the county courts and health department and their parking lot. If you had a legal issue to resolve, Strikers is the closest place to drink it off or celebrate, depending on how things went.

 

But face it: Even if you hold the local courts in high regard (and maybe you don’t), we’re talking about a building that’s a former strip mall -- not a grand architectural gem. So you wouldn’t go to Strikers for the view.

 

You might go there, though, to shoot pool, have a beer and a burger and a conversation – the sort of pleasant things people do in bars.

 

Strikers is a large place, with tables, padded booths and bar seats. Nobody would call it an intimate space, but the decor somehow keeps it from feeling cavernous. Even the hamburgers are large. The men’s room is large (four urinals!). And the bartenders have large smiles.

 

The bar’s name is an apparent aspirational nod to patrons at Washington Lanes, its connected bowling alley. But inside Strikers, you can ignore the bowling. Actually, that was easy on two

Not much of a view

weekday afternoons, when the lanes were mostly deserted before league bowlers showed up.

 

Bowling alleys – they seem to be called bowling centers nowadays, as if alleys sound like bad places – always seems to have a bar serving pitchers of beer. (Why are bowling and beer so linked? There’s even the beer frame. Is it just an old stereotype? No. It turns out that bowling was a German game brought by immigrants to the U.S. along with their tradition of beer drinking.)

 

(Some years back, Budweiser even made beer bottles shaped like bowling pins. Surviving bottles turn up on sites such as eBay.)

 

Strikers (the bar’s logo says Striker but everything else says Strikers, so we’ll stick with that) is part of Art Narlock’s old Empire complex, built in the late 1940s, including the theater at the south end, a steak house and lounge at the north end and the bowling alley in the middle. The

Rochelle behind the bar ...

former steak house (with a couple of impressive Sputnik chandeliers) was a barbecue restaurant for awhile and last an Italian restaurant that disappeared during this year’s pandemic shutdown. Strikers is another bar space between the theater and the bowling alley.

 

A diner space in the center (which housed the first version of the Italian restaurant before it bounced around town) has now reopened as Washington Lanes Cafe; its full menu is available at Strikers. The cafe plans to be open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., till 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. (And the operator of the whole place says he plans to use the lounge and old steak house as an event space.)

 

But we came to hang out in the bar.

We shot pool. There are three tables in good shape ($1 a game), and a dartboard (50 cents a game; dart accessories are for sale in a case). The bowling alley has a bunch of claw games.

 

We ate. The assorted large burgers are each $8.99, and they come with fries. They’re not notably great burgers, but they’re good ones.

 

... and Kara on the job

Notably good, though, are the fried pickle fries ($6), which are breaded pickles sliced up like french fries; they come with a spicy sauce. And a tasty house appetizer called Empire Kickers (described as a mix of corn, jalapenos, cream cheese and bacon, also $6) comes with the same sauce (which, according to an inside source, is ranch dressing and Frank’s hot sauce). The menu also has wings, sandwiches, nachos, salads, pizza and desserts.

 

We watched TV. It’s called a sports bar, so you can guess what’s on the TVs.

 

And we drank.

 

Six beers are on tap -- Killian’s, Blue Moon, Bud, Bud Light, Miller Lite and Leinenkugel summer shandy. But plenty more – everything from Altes to Guinness -- are in bottles and cans. Kara, one of the Strikers bartenders, says she counted 73 beers available.

 

All domestic beers are $2.50. Imports are $3.50. Everything is 50 cents less for happy hour, 3-6 p.m. weekdays. “Bottles, cans, draft – all the same,” says Kara. Pitchers are $8 and $12.

 

The bar appears fully stocked with liquor, though this isn’t the place for upscale cocktails. It does

Inside Strikers: Large but not cavernous

have the full array of colorful Arrow and DeKuyper drinks, such as Watermelon Pucker and sloe gin.

 

But I asked, as usual, for a Manhattan. Couldn’t do it. No vermouth.

 

Rochelle, another bartender, proposed a White Russian instead: “It’ll be like dessert!” And it sort of was.

 

By 6:30 p.m. one night (which would be 6:50 on the bar-time wall clock), bowlers were heading into the building for league play. Rochelle was already busy stocking up on ice. An onslaught of requests for pitchers of beer was likely soon. We fled.

 

But we’ll be back.

 

By the way, the bar’s web page and Facebook page currently disagree on when the place is open. We’re advised to go with the Facebook page – 3 p.m. to midnight Monday-Thursday, 3 p.m. to 2 a.m. Friday, 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Saturday and noon to 11 p.m. Sunday.

 

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See Doc's report: Thoughts on life at Strikers, with a bit of Robert Frost

 

 

  The particulars:

  Strikers Sports Bar

  1205 Washington Ave.

  989-893-1000