The Connection

The best pool tables in boulder. Only place I know in town with regulation sized tables, and a lot of them! They are well-​maintained, and you pay by the hour! Being a student means it’s cheaper too. They recently got their full liquor license so the beer isn’t 3.2% anymore and there is a wider selection! Friendly staff and the manager is such a great guy. Plus their cues are actually decent unlike many bars in town with worn-​down and warped cues. They will do tournaments twice a month as well I believe.

We were here for a Meetup gathering a couple of weeks ago and had reserved 3 lanes for a couple of hours. If only their bowling pin re-​setter didn’t conk out every other frame, necessitating a call to the staff to come and fix it, then it’d be a great place to come out and knock down some pins every once in a while. Plus the fact they have all those pool tables — it’s cool beans. But they seriously need to update some of their equipment.

Its bowling and pool, what else can I say. The kids are always friendly and Dana the manager is great.

The bowling lanes are oh-​so-​slightly crooked (and no, that’s not just me making excuses for sucking at bowling — others have noticed it!) and if there’s a kid having a birthday party, forget about ever getting a lane. But this is the only place to bowl in Boulder and it’s cheaper than any place in neighboring towns. Computerized scoring is a nice touch that minimizes fights over points. Just don’t go here if you’re a professional or anything.
Pool tables: clean, well-​kept, and a little too close together, but surely preferable to trying to shoot pool in a crowded bar full of pushy drunk people.
Air hockey, arcades, televised sports… all fine (how can these things not be fine?) but in all of those cases, along with pool, just be prepared to be forced to listen to the awful and very loud music the counter staff likes to pipe through the area.

video games, short lane bowling, and a terrible venue.
BUT SO MANY GREAT MEMORIES.
Ugh… four stars for being the epitomy of the activity center of a student union… with memories of BIG ska bands coming to that TEENSY venue.
Yay!

The UMC Connection is located in the University Memorial Center on the CU Campus and has 10 bowling alleys, 8 pool tables, fooseball, and a few beers on tap.
As it stands, it sort of fills a weird niche in Boulder. Pool is surprisingly hard to find, except at shitty bars with small tables which are almost always full. Furthermore, the bowling situation in Boulder is also somewhat lacking, which makes this the place to be even if you are not a student.
Now the problem here is that this place is usually full of undergrads. This fact in itself doesn’t bother me, except when I am surrounded by incoming freshman who still act like high-​school kids. Another problem with this place is they play shiiiiitay music too loud. Pop-​rap is simply not cool, I really don’t know what else to say about the matter.
So there we go… the prices are ok but since it is on-​campus it is a little hard to get to via car, but nonetheless still fills and important niche.