This article was updated on March 22, 2024.
We’ve read those annual midsummer Independent ice cream surveys with envy during our long winter months here, and, honestly, isn’t it sort of cheating to claim that reporting on your favorite soft serve is journalism? We set out to investigate a far harder story to break: the pool scene. And we don’t mean swimming.
Over the course of four weeks, we racked up nearly two dozen games of pool at five bars: the Provincetown Brewing Co., the Governor Bradford, the Underground, the Porch Bar at the Gifford House, and the Bomb Shelter — every pool table we could find and play, though rumor has it that there are others.
The first four, listed from east to west, are in Provincetown; the last, whose reputation as a dive bar piqued our curiosity, required a drive to Wellfleet.
We assessed lighting, game play length, felt quality, and social composition in our quest to play all the pool tables in public establishments on the Outer Cape. Each has a pool table with six pockets and 16 billiard balls, but the number and quality of available cue sticks varied widely.
We also wanted to find the pool sharks. In the absence of meeting any, we became them.
If you have a few hours and a dedicated crew, a full tour can be done in one night or over the course of a weekend. Or take your time and make individual excursions. Find out what suits you after the break.
Provincetown Brewing Co.
141 Bradford St., Provincetown
Open Thursday 5 to 9 p.m., Friday & Saturday noon to 9 p.m., Sunday noon to 8 p.m.
This spot is a good early starting point. If you show up by 6 p.m. on a Thursday, you’ll have plenty of time to claim a table, order a burger, and play two games of pool before hosts Harrison Fish and Evan Snavely begin the bar’s weekly Trivia Night at 7.
The pool table is in a valley between dinner tables and lounge chairs. The place is well lit enough to allow you to make note of each player’s tell: pursed lips that indicate frustration or lifted eyebrows — the higher the arch, the more difficult the shot. Because of the almost ritualistic emphasis on taking up space and moving around the table to watch and be watched, a pool game can reveal the underlying tensions and flirtations of a social group. Surely friends have made up and lovers have connected around this table.
Perhaps it is luck, or ambiance, or the smooth felt, but we can humbly report having played some of the best pool games of our lives here — meaning several three or four sunk ball streaks, with plenty of pretty spinning shots. Games are free as long as you buy food or a drink.
Governor Bradford
312 Commercial St., Provincetown
Open Thursday 5 to 11 p.m., Friday & Saturday noon to 1 a.m., Sunday & Monday noon to 11 p.m.
On a rain-soaked early March Saturday night, the Governor Bradford is brightly lit and jumping. Drag Karaoke, hosted by Dana Danzel, is distinctly the main event, with dozens of people lining up to sing. This is the place for a once-in-a-lifetime barbershop quartet-esque rendition of the Killers’ “Mr. Brightside.” Off to the side of the stage, a lone pool table draws those less inclined to belt their hearts out.
Of all the pool tables in this survey, the Bradford’s is the only one that is already in use when we arrive. Truro resident Dan Fitzpatrick lines up his shot as a mustachioed man in head-to-toe leather croons Carole King’s “It’s Too Late.” Fitzpatrick comes to play at the Bradford at least twice a month, even though he has a table at home.
“I like the general atmosphere — it’s got an old Cape Cod type of deal,” he says, one eye laser-focused on the table.
That said, Fitzpatrick notes that the table’s felt needs to be redone. He points to a distinctive L-shaped divot around one pocket, which the eight ball is stuck on at that very moment. Otherwise, he likes the “cool light fixture,” a series of three bulbs suspended from frayed rope — a nod to the restaurant’s nautical theme.
The billiards rig boasts one truly unique feature: a foot-tall stump of chalk. The temptation to palm it is difficult to resist, and it is also difficult to avoid brushing against it as the game goes on. By the end of the evening, most players will find streaks of white across their clothes and arms. Above the stump, a chalkboard for queueing up for the table reads “No Cheating.” The names of those on deck include someone named Ronnie and “your mom.”
Even with its drag karaoke, one player tells us, “the Governor Bradford is where I come to see straight people in Provincetown.”
The Underground
293 Commercial St., Provincetown
Open Thursday to Saturday, 6 p.m. to 1 a.m.
When you’re karaoked out and the walk up Commercial Street seems long, make a pit stop at the Underground. A sign near Twisted Pizza beckons you down a set of stairs to a basement that was once home to the now-extinct lesbian bar Chasers. Upon entering, our group of seven immediately outnumbers the bartender and two couples drinking dark and stormys and vodka Sprites.
We squint and try to imagine how the bar must have been in the late ’90s, before the hangouts for queer women disappeared from Provincetown, conjuring Ani DiFranco, killer outfits, and the table bathed in a smoky haze. Real life offers the haloed face of Anne Hathaway in space, as the 2014 film Interstellar plays on a lonely television screen.
The movie sets the moment in a way: the pool tables were last replaced in 2013, and the playlist was made not long after that. The soft, angsty crooning of the alternative bands Alt-J and Cigarettes After Sex summons the ghosts of adolescent depressions past.
We get down to business under a swath of harsh fluorescent light. The first game is solid, the surface is smooth, and the satisfying thunk of sunk balls resounds. The thing about pool is that it grants comfortable space to conversational lulls. But if you need it, a chalkboard wall invites crude doodles and dusty tags.
Marks from excitable cues stamp out a constellation on the ceiling. Space is tight here. While perhaps not recommended for the claustrophobic, the place forces an economy of skill with cue stick angling.
Each game of pool at the Underground costs $1.00.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article, published in print on March 21, incorrectly reported that the bar is cash only and that pool games are $1.50. Also, the tables were last replaced in 2013, not just the felts.
Porch Bar at the Gifford House
9 Carver St., Provincetown
Open daily, 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.
There are certain pool tables that ensnare your heart and never let it go. This is one. Also hard to forget are the narrow room’s red walls, the cues with their perpetually broken tips, and the camel-colored felt marked with a stain we may have left when we accidentally knocked a can of beer onto the table while playing solo at 6 p.m. in the dead of winter.
If this roundup appeared methodical and scientific before, it is admittedly no longer. For the Porch Bar pool table is objectively the worse for wear, and that is why we love it.
On a weekend night, you might find a group of men playing a high intensity game. They will guard the table. They may nod at the quarters you leave on its ridge to claim your spot, but they will probably ignore them. Porch Bar is busy on any given Saturday, and onlookers might fill the booth that shares the room with the pool table, squeezing around a huge globular amethyst on a pillow that sits on the center of the table. It’s nice to have an audience.
This table is especially adorable because it comes with three-foot-long cues to use where the walls encroach, giving players only two feet or so to make their shots. The doll-sized sticks seem like the kind you would hold in both hands as you pop a Rockette kick while singing a Broadway number. If you’re going to play in close quarters, you might as well do it with pizazz.
At winter’s close, we note here that each and every cue has lost its tip. Playing with them makes for a somewhat dissatisfying game. Here’s hoping the Gifford House renovations include the sticks.
The Bomb Shelter Pub
50 Kendrick Ave., Wellfleet
Open Wednesday to Saturday, 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. (winter hours)
This bar is perhaps the last true venue of its kind, in its way recalling the American Dream: here, passing under an archway painted blood red, you’ll find that pesky sense of possibility for an hour or two at this second basement bar on our list. This was not the intimidating biker hangout we had imagined but a quiet refuge with cheapish beer.
Taking in the wood paneling and assorted Americana memorabilia, you might think of that one friend from high school whose renovated basement was the place to hang out on weekends. (Hi, Riley. Thanks for the Goldschläger.) There’s a digital jukebox mounted on the wall and a foosball table. To drink anything other than Miller High Life, Coca-Cola, or well whisky, neat, around this table would be inappropriate.
The pool table occupies a place of honor at the center of the bar under a steady bright light. One side is a bit tight, but overall there is plenty of room to make your moves. On a cold Thursday night, you can have at it for hours without interruption, except if a group of friends is short one foosball player, in which case you might have to step out for a moment.
If you’re lucky, as we were on the two occasions we visited, patrons will relay tales of grand fishing excursions and bizarre home repair sojourns in the homes of the rich.
At $2 per game, this table is the most quarter-hungry of the lot. The bar is cash only.
