Rainbow Snooker Club

Friendly snooker hall with reasonably good quality tables and friendly staff. Used to be unlicenced and allowed u to bring ur own beer in but its now licenced and has a bar.
We turned up on the first night it had a bar with our own beer but were allowed to bring it in.
Overall a reasonable club amd worth a visit.

Now children, there’s a big difference between pool and snooker. Snooker is for the serious bods amongst you, those who know geometry like the back of your hand and enjoy the sight of multicoloured balls travelling ever so deftly. Fnar, fnar. Anyway the seriousness of snooker is reflected in the fact that as Rebecca says, there’ll be no messing around. Don’t expect to come in here and continue getting tanked up after all the clubs have closed. They’ll turn their back on you like Naboo in the Mighty Boosh.
It’s everything a snooker club should be, dark and dingy, a little unkempt, like what you’d see in that Paul Newman movie, The Hustler. Sheesh, I’m trying to get that broken fingers scene out of my head now. That was quite brave for such an old film. Anyhoo, it’s quite unique to Manchester as I can’t think of any bar or club which emulates its atmosphere really. Not really somewhere where your average girly girl would feel too comfortable, but perfect for a typical lads’ night out. You won’t get excellent drinks or anything to eat here, but you’ll get some damn fine snooker.
I’ve seen the word snooker so many times now, I’m actually realising what a weird word it is.

I think these reviews may be approaching the task of judging this snooker club from the non-​snooker perspective. I’m not much of a snooker player myself either, so I’m not the best person to change that. However, a bunch of my mates are keen snookerers (is that what they are?) and they all swear by Rainbow.
I went down with them once and I was pleasantly surprised. There’s just nowhere else quite like it. It is dark and dingy, a little damp sure, but really if you’ve just descended some dark stairs through a small door with a broken neon sign above it, you shouldn’t really be all about sitting around a glass table and sipping a glass of Chenin Blanc and an organic bar snacks. You pay your couple of quid, get your pint of warm beer with no head, and play a bit of unpretentious snooker with your mates.
Everyone is friendly as well. Its not some front from a gangster film. Personally, contrary to previous reviewers, I don’t think you’d get any trouble whatsoever unless you were looking for it. Having said that, I accept no responsibility for trouble people get it.
Basically its not for posh people. They wont like it. But I don’t like them. So there.

In my humble opinion, some places were better before the smoking ban. Oh, what’s that sound? A baying mob of clean-​air nanny staters? Shush up, you lot. Anyway, as I was saying, some places were better when you could smoke in them, and Rainbow Snooker Club is one of them.
You see, when someone says ‘snooker club’, I imagine a smoky dingy place where you can play pool (I can’t do snooker, because the balls are all different colours and that weirds me out) for 6 hours, chain smoking and saying things like «wanna dance, punk?» It’s a romantic image, conjured up by watching too many James Dean movies, but it’s an image I like. Now, Rainbow is pretty dank, with faded paintwork and stained carpets lending an air of actual shab, rather than shabby chic, but it just seems too clean now that it’s not populated by men effortlessly juggling a fag, a pint and a cue.
Word to the wise, there are places in Manchester where the student rules, where it’s OK to wear outlandish clothes and talk loudly about your trip to Thailand (well, it’s never OK, but students put up with it). This is not one of those places. This is a place where the locals rule. So, by all means come in and have a few games of pool with your mates, just try not to behave like a complete prannet, or you could end up in trouble.

So maybe it’s a little rough around the edges, the tables have seen some use, the décor some abuse but isn’t that what you want from a pool room? Surely half the experience is about the dirty glass, the moody lighting and the dodgy character eyeing you up for a hussle? The way I see it if Paul Newman had ever brought his queue to Manchester, Rainbow is where he’d have taken it.
The edge of town location is perfect for keeping things low key and the prices of both the drinks and the tables are much more reasonable than some of the more central snooker halls.
My only complaint is that things just aren’t the same since the smoking ban kicked off– I’m a non smoker but even I can appreciate the romance those killer fumes brought to the table.