Commodore Lanes & Billiards

Fun place for families. Walked in on a Saturday night not expecting to get a lane, and expecting a long wait. I was pleasantly surprised to get a lane immediately after a short wait. I estimate the wait was under 5 minutes!
Pick up your shoes, and bowl immediately. The beauty of Canadian bowling is that there is no need to find a ball that has holes fitting your hands and fingers, and no need to find one that is the right weight either. All the balls were the same — small balls, slightly bigger than a baseball. No holes for a grip! You get 3 tries to get 5 pins down. Not as easy as it looks. Scoring is automatic so no need to figure anything out. You pay for time, not number of games.
We had one frame left before we ran out of time and they were nice enough to extend our play time by a few minutes to let us finish our game. That’s really nice customer service! Incidentally the shoes were new and clean.
This place is huge. There’s a small Kiosk to buy liquor and snacks. If you buy drinks, you have to consume these away from the bowling area. So that wasn’t as much fun, but it keeps the bowling lanes clean I guess.
There are 12 Lanes Of 5-​Pin Bowling, 20 Billiard Tables, an arcade area, fooseball tables, even a virtual Dart Arcade Game — play against other players across the world!
Will be back. Oh, bring your ear plugs, the place can get noisy when people get really excited about their bowling.

Fun 5-​Pin bowling ally, still pretty old fashioned inside and a surprisingly big space. The very old school scoring interface is especially awesome (think a screen straight out of Star Wars).
The only downside is the service and inexplicable cash only policy. It’s beyong comprehension for any business in any city to be cash only today. Not only does this suck for customers, but it does the business out of prospect income. Ridiculously unnecessary.

What a great little bowling alley… and a hidden gem that you would almost miss if you weren’t looking for it. It’s below street level, and huge when you get downstairs. There were quite a few people there last night, but we still had plenty of space to hang out between rounds.

this place is ancient, but worn well.
Pool tables well used, but in great shape.5 pin bowling lanes, all the equipment are well maintained. Staff are friendly, good beer selection.

Super fun place! You wouldn’t know what to expect from the inside of this place by looking from the outside. From the busy street of Granville, all you can see is a sign that say Commodore Bowling and Billiard with stairs leading down in some kind of basement.
It’s a total Narnia, once you pass the front door, it’s almost as you’re catapulted in the nostalgic universe of the movie Grease. Multiple bowling alley (5 pin bowling with the smaller bowling ball) and even more pool tables in the back. There are also other things such as dart and if I recall correctly there even an old school jukebox. They really got the ambiance right in there.
The staff is very friendly and playing there is very affordable. Parking, as it is anywhere in downtown Vancouver is going to be a hassle, but there are plenty of buses running close by and the skytrain also.
A must to just hang out with friends and happened to be walking on Granville St.

This place is OK. You can grab a drink while you bowl, but they’re strict about keeping your drink in a very particular place. I understand wanting to keep lanes spill-​free, but you can’t even keep it at the tables and chairs where you wait for your turn (which isn’t too close to the lanes).
Also, the bowling pin reset machines are terrible, it feels like they got them in the factory’s faulty merchandise bargain bin.
Note: for any of you non-​nationals like me, this is 5-​pin bowling with a smaller ball, not the 10-​pin you’re used to!

I feel very neutral about this place.
I like the fact this place has bowling lanes and billiards so if all the bowling lanes were reserved, you always have the option of playing billiards, which was exactly what happened to me and my colleagues. There are also darts and arcade game machines if you’re into that type of stuff.
Décor wise I do like the retro look. The place is fairly well maintained so it doesn’t give off the stench of damp old mop heads.
The patrons seem to be normal too, no creepers like the ones you may often find at Soho Billiards.
Staff is friendly and you can purchase food.

We were visiting from the US, and just popped in here to look around. We were really surprised to see that the bowling balls are significantly smaller (with no finger holes) and there are only five pins on each lane.
The employees were very friendly, they explained all about Canadian bowling and so we had to try it! We only did a half hour, but we were able to play two whole games plus a little more in that time (only two of us).
The bowling area is very nostalgic and I loved the feel of an old time alley. We had a really fun time.
P. S. I think they take credit cards now, and they definitely have automated scoring as well.

What a fun place! The retro lanes are so neat. Love the random toys and displays in their front lobby area, too. Super friendly service last night! Huge selection of pool tables, they even have darts and arcade games!
A great place for all!

It was alright. No washroom as far as I knew there were signs everywhere «no public washroom» «no outside drink» it was kind of expensive for an hour it was like 14 bucks. Overall a very fun thing to do in the city though. Just think there are better pool halls out there, but for Vancouver it was fun.

I volunteer with Big Sisters, they provided me with some free passes to the Commodore. I made a reservation prior to arriving and had also mentioned the passes over the phone. When I arrived I was told by a male staff member who was extremely abrasive and rude that he’d never seen my passes before and, ‘We don’t take these here!’. Next the general manager came out, who was also rude. We ended up staying and paying (I would have just left but my little sister was really looking forward to it). One of the elderly female staff was nice enough to give us a discount– bless her. What a shame, I love the old-​timey feeling of the place too bad their customer service was the shits and all the men were miserable old farts. I shan’t be returning.

It’s alright. If you get there early enought you can grab a lane or a table. But they enforce a lot of rules. Like only 6 people per table in the billard room. I looked and their bowling balls are the size of Softballs. But this was a little better then going clubbing for sure.

Bowled her off and on for years. It’s a hole in the wall establishment that is part of the character. If you’re looking for customer service. don’t…it doesn’t exist. It’s just a good cheap night on the strip for a quick bowling game in the daytime with friends. Never disappoints. I come here at least twice a year and the prices are awesome.

Wandered in here to avoid the rain, and what a lucky move. This is a 1920’s 5-​pin bowling alley with all the original equipment. We tried our luck with the mini-​bowling balls and fared decent. You have to keep your beer off the lanes and go upstairs and outdoors to smoke but hey this is history. They also have a large pool table area.

All right if you’ve got a big group to entertain yourselves.
To me it’s like lawn bowling without the lawn. Three shots to hit 5 pins with a small heavy ball. Then you write your scores on paper for each round and tally after each game.
I do like how the pins get hauled up like aliens into a spaceship. Haha. Obviously I’m easily entertained, even without a crowd.

A true vintage bowling alley and billiard hall! This is old school entertainment at it’s best. Thank you Commodore for NOT completely renovating this place. Its one of the only original hangouts on Granville that still reminds you of the good old days of Vancouver.
Hope you remember how to take score bowling, cuz there’s none of those fancy computers at this place! Which makes me wonder why they have a modern digital «jukebox»? A vintage one would be so much more fun.
Let’s not forget there’s lots of pool tables, friendly staff, a bar (beer & wine) and drinking area. If I remember correctly it’s cash only, and reservations are recommended — but don’t be late, or they’ll cancel it. This place get’s crazy busy on the weekends.

Per the exterior, my boyfriend and I were pumped to date it up at Commodore Lanes & Billiards on a Friday night. The opening music from The Big Lebowski permeated my brain while we walked down the stairs; Steve Buscemi passed me, I swear; and then we got there. The music screeched to a halt. Five-​pin bowling? Is this old-​school style? I stood gaping at middle-​aged men who took out two pins with one roll despite the wide space between them.
We decided to play pool instead. We suck so much. The paintings of Pacific Northwest forest along the wall almost made the evening worth it. They created nice scenery while I took five turns to sack a striped ball.
I know this isn’t correct terminology.
The Dude wouldn’t care.

Meh. It’s just ehh. The vibe seems like hum-​drum and 7 bux on Fri /​1 game? Euh. And FTR, 10-​pin is MUCH better than 5-​pin… but I could be biased growing up with 10-​pin. =P
It’s decent space overall, averaging all of it out. It was kind of fun, though, giving 5-​pin a shot. The ball return is neat, although kind of funny when one was returned from down the alley. o_​O

Killing some time before the show, my buddy and I decided to kill some time playing pool here as were too lazy to bother hoofing over to Yaletown to play at Soho or head down to Denman to play at the properly groomed tables there.
I figured — as long as we can drink some beer and ‘shoot some stick’ (as the cool kids would say) — we were set. Pool is $ 14/​hr on weekend nights and cheaper during the daytime and weekdays. A wee pricey compared to the poolhalls in Richmond — but I guess that’s just the price you pay for the central location.
The community cues were in pretty good shape (passed the roll test) but the tables they rent to walk-​ins are pretty torn down. Trying to put some English on the cue ball and you have no idea where the ball will end up. When my buddy bought some beers from the bar, he was stopped by the pool tables attendant and he informed us that the pool section was not ‘licensed’.
However, he was nice enough to allow us to play on the nicer ‘members only’ tables so we could be closer to the beers we bought and had to keep beyond the imaginary ‘no alcohol’ boundary.
After a while, I figured out why there was such a class divide amongst the members vs. non-​members tables — most of the patrons here were abusing the hell out the hell out of the cues and tables. In between shots and walking over to my segregated beer, I had to weave past punks flailing the cues and testing their might on the punching bag — all to the soundtrack of mini 5-​pin balls being dropped on the bowling lanes.
Shame that the crowd disrespects the equipment and the pool hall is not licensed — cuz at $ 5.25 a bottle, the beer was pretty cheap for a pool hall. But will probably go elsewhere next time I want to ‘shoot some stick’.

Five pin bowling is way, way more fun than ten pin bowling. I mean, only five pins, small balls with no grubby holes, and three tries to knock them all down!
Commodore Lanes feels very old school. There are desks and pencils for you to write out your own score, and after each turn, you have to hit the reset button. The balls return to you on a small ramp, and they sometimes fall off. The games are claimed to be metered, but it seems to be on the honor system. I like how they have foosball and pool too, for when you’re sick of bowling, but not yet ready to go outside yet.
It’s pricy here though, for what it is. It’s cash only and for two games and shoe rentals for two people, it was $ 32. I also don’t like how you have to keep your alcohol in the lobby, and you can’t set it down on the desk, so drinking here is pretty lame.