With a grand opening on Friday, Sept. 23, Our Place hopes to become your go to bar.
Even though the bar has their grand opening soon, they’ve been serving drinks for a little over a month now. Scott McFadyen, one of the bartenders, poured the first beer at Our Place on Aug. 3 at 5 p.m. Since then the bar has been doing a soft opening, holding events a couple times each week to drum up some interest.
“We can do anything here, we’re lucky,” said McFadyen. “We can have groups all over the place. We have a dining area, a sitting area, a pool area, a ping pong area, a bar area, [and] a poker area so we can cater to anybody. Doesn’t matter what age, from 19 to 80.”
These aspects are what gives the bar a jack of all trades feeling. Whether someone wants to shoot pool or to go dancing, Our Place plans to have it covered. With a lineup of free poker nights on Monday and Thursday (which if you’re good, can send you to big tournaments in Vegas, Montreal, and Niagara), a pool league that plays Tuesday and Thursday, Karaoke on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday, and bands on Friday nights.
Right now Our Place has a dive bar air to it. Most of the people coming in are there to shoot pool, sing karaoke, play darts, play poker, and eat food. They hope to draw more students in with a student themed night, a DJ, and the potential for a student discount.
“Everybody knows that the students on Thursdays go to NV, right?” said McFadyen. “Like, that’s the place to go and students like to go there. We’d like to change the demographics of everything because we’re not NV, we’re not the night club. I speak very highly of NV but we want everything.”
One huge selling feature that appeals to most any drunken shenanigans is the fact that Our Place has a kitchen. While yes, Rockling’s and Piston Broke offer the same, Our Place steps a little beyond them. All of their baking is done with a wood fired oven, making pizza, garlic bread, and all sorts of drunk food. To boot, Our Place also tries to catch students with their drink prices to go along with their cuisine.
“We want to make it almost like a student price,” said McFadyen. “We have lower end beer, I used to be a student myself so I know what students like. If you can have $3.25 beer, and most students don’t care what it tastes like, or you can have a beer for 5 bucks and then tax on top of that… students are smart.”
Our Place is immediately across the street from the Expositor residence, smack dab between Rose and Thistle and The Starving Artist Gallery Café.
