The Pour House

So my girlfriend and I stumbled onto this place two nights ago because we were hanging around downtown to wait for our friend to turn 21 at midnight. She was watching bike polo and we were strolling doing our coupley things. We came upon this group of people outside The Pour House and they recommended going in their for the show that night, which happened to be them (The Spread,  but we didn't know that at the time). We had a quick evening snack at Bida  Manda before they closed and then came back at 10pm for the show. It was great. The venue was cool, and divey, with a dark brick alleyway leading into the actual place. I love that they didn't use the main entrance because that just upped their coolness a lot more for me. The Spread turned out to be great and it was a good, energized show. There wasn't even a cover that night, so we just walked in and had a great time. I'm pretty glad I found this place. It's a great late-night place to have fun with someone without even drinking a sip of alcohol.

Unbelievably poor experience. First they oversold the place. Next the fire marshall made the band stop and everyone leave and re-enter for a head-count. Finally, they would not let us back in or give us a straight answer for 40 minutes in the freezing wind and cold. (Many people were in this predicament.) Our credit card was still inside, so we could not just leave. Nevermind that we had will-call tickets bought way in advance (the whole point of buying tickets in advance is that you have a spot guaranteed.)

The staff was rude and unapologetic. They acted as if the whole thing was the fire marshall's fault. This was a wasted road trip, hotel room and Friday night for us that we had planned well in advance. It is squarely the fault of the greedy venue that oversold the place and then handled it in a completely amateur way.

Unforgivable.

First, Kelly Y's story is classic... LOL!

I was there one night with 2 friends when literally 6- 8 others had showed up. But, the band plugged in & played their asses off anyways. It couldn't have been easy.

Some sketchy characters from the area used to occasionally wander in &/or loiter around by where we parked, but hopefully those days are over.

This is not the greatest venue in the world & the staff is a bit hit or miss, but it's far from terrible & they're doing what they can to host good live music... so, 3 stars for their effort.

To give them credit, they book better bands than some "nicer" places in the area do. This is definitely the type of place where some nights are a lot better than others.