It's funny how things change over the long course of time that I've been at this. Once, a long time, like say in my first hundred bars, I would have really liked the Fox Sports Grill (FSG). But now, I think it's kind of a pit of despair. Located in the hollowed out corpse of Planet Hollywood, FSG was not really at all what we thought it would be. I had pictured a place with a lot of wood, a whole lot of TVs, lots of sports memorabilia and that sort of thing. Oh, and high end pool tables, dart machines, a few Golden Tee games.
Not like that at all.
Instead, you enter on the main floor, from street level, into a smallish room with a few empty tables, obviously meant for the lunch crowd. There's a rather large hostess counter, also abandoned, and in fact it's a little creepy, everything made up as if there should be something there, but there isn't. The creepiness is much disarmed by the sound coming from below--there's an open gallery looking down on the entry of the actual bar, which is beneath street level, and the volume of sound, in the cocktail party chatter and laughter range, was quite high. We descended the stairs, to see another large dining room to the side which was also essentially empty, and then there it was in front of us, the bar.
It was big, and it was packed. Not that there weren't seats, just that it seemed as if everyone had pushed up against the actual bar, a massive structure in the center of the room with an upside down pyramid suspended over it. The waitresses were wearing sports jerseys, and there were a lot of TVs and one pool table, but otherwise it was not at all what I had expected. The crowd was business casual, and I suspect it's a lot of people from neighboring hotels looking for a more exciting stop than the lobby bar. FSG, however, has coopted hotel bar furnishings, so while more exciting, it will still be familiar for the traveler. There was a lot of standing, talking, chattering, desperately making moves going on here, not least in the side lounge we ended up in, where there were large couches and chairs of the hotel style, and a group of five to one side and three to the other. Young, awkward, looking to get drunk and/or know one another, these were the sorts of people you don't expect to see a bar full of in Seattle, at least in a place with no cover. But here they were.
There was loud music, as well. Hits from the eighties, mainly, and this was one of the things that made me think least of the bar. Not the hits themselves, no, but the fact that, when Bobby Brown's "Tender Roni" came on, many people, many people, sang along with the chorus. I don't know why that bothered me so much, but everyone I've talked to about it got the same feeling, that there was just something very wrong about it, so I'll stand with that opinion.
Anyway, the drinks were fine, not horribly priced, not terribly tasty, strong enough. The space was big and varied, and really far better than it should have been. People looked like they were having fun, quite a lot, and even singing a
Bobby Brown song supports that notion. So why didn't I like it?
Well, I think it was the undertone of desperation that ran through the whole place. These were people trying far too hard to have a good time. Maybe they were succeeding, but it was still forced, or seemed that way to me. And the atmosphere was totally fake, right down to the hotel furniture in a non-hotel bar. In the first part of the quest, I wouldn't have noticed any of that--"Tender Roni" might still have gotten to me, but hey, it's Bobby Brown, so what can you expect? But now, I can see what kind of a bar it is, and I don't like it.
But if you don't go to as many bars as me (and you don't) and you have a sort of business casual, I-just-got-off-work feel to you, then hit the FSG and you'll proabably like it. It may be, for a while, your favorite bar. But I'll bet that it won't last in that spot. It's not the kind of place you can fall in love with, just the sort of place you can spend a few nights with. Like much of the crowd, in regards to one another, I suspect.
Anyway, I'm not heading back, but it works for some, I guess.
Posted by Jason at February 25, 2005 04:23 PM