All Good Ingredients, But Lacking Great Delivery
A review of the Brooklyn location of the Bury the Hatchet axe throwing chain where we had a good time despite finding it lacking in some areas
Review of Bury The Hatchet, Brooklyn, USA
Our session at Bury the Hatchet in Brooklyn was ok, but there were a few little niggles that made it sub par for me. I wouldn’t want to be too negative though. The venue was perfectly adequate for a good night’s throwing. I just thought it was lacking the kind of delivery I’d expect from being part of a big axe throwing chain (Bury the Hatchet has 16 venues across the USA).
On the positive side, it’s an impressive venue. It’s a large warehouse space on the edge of the East River in Brooklyn. There is a series of lanes caged off from each other along each wall (two targets per lane), and plenty of space in the middle for spectators. The bar/reception desk had a good selection of alcoholic and soft drinks. I could imagine a large group session in particular enjoying themselves there. The boards were also in very good condition.
Equally positive was the Premium option to throw a wide variety of weird and wonderful throwing implements, which no doubt would add to the fun. I’ve thrown shuriken-type throwers, and even spades, in other places, but they had an even more varied collection of throwers, including ones I’ve not seen before.
The location is also very pleasant. Although the skyscrapers of Manhattan are just over the water, the Greenpoint neighbourhood where the Brooklyn venue is based has much more the feel of a small town than a city suburb. We wandered down from the Greenpoint station through a mix of regular shops and newer eateries and bars. It was just on the right side of gentrification for me (ie not grimy, but not too hipster either). An ideal place for an axe throwing bar.
It was an easy trip on “the train” to Greenpoint subway station. In fact, a bit easier than we expected, so we arrived about an hour early. The Axe Master was happy for us to start early. By which I mean, she basically went “Ok. Sign the waiver”. Not rude as such, just lacking in much enthusiasm. Not a big issue either. Who needs a hyper receptionist to go through the basics of signing in? It was just that this lifeless service persisted throughout the rest of the session. A shame really, because it was good of her to be so flexible, and the sign in was sufficiently competent. It was just a bit ‘meh’ and that’s the memory that sticks.
We were given perfunctory throwing instructions and then the axe master went off to the other lanes. We had a quick warm up and were throwing ok, but it took a bit of time to master the house axe, which I found wasn’t weighted very well. I’m always reticent to criticise house axes, It was just a regular wood chopping hatchet like you get in plenty of places and I’ve usually found to be fine. I don’t expect house axes to be high quality, but I thought this one was particularly difficult to throw.
The axe master returned to us a while later with some small balloons to stick to the boards, explaining it was the first game – to practice our aiming. Popping the balloons was fun, but it didn’t take too long to hit three balloons each. We spent a bit more time aiming at the tape that had attached the balloons, until I eventually called the axe master over to ask what was next. Generally, I’m happy to get on and throw without staff looking over my shoulder, but obviously we weren’t sure what the process was here and hadn’t been shown any scoring mechanism. She brought more balloons over and again left us to it.
This time, once we’d popped the balloons, I went over to the axe coach who was now working behind the reception desk to again ask what was next. It was a bit grating to have to chase her up each time, even though she was entirely friendly and professional and brought over a tablet for digital scoring. She explained the scoring system to us and then returned to her reception desk.
The tablet was another minor gripe. To my mind it doesn’t really matter if you use a whiteboard, chalkboard or more technical digital scoring, as long as it adds benefit to the experience. In this case I couldn’t see what benefit the tablet provided. It had a rudimentary display showing two numbers left and right. If you tapped it, it went up one point. If you swiped down, it removed a point. Ok, so you could use it to record two head-to-head scores, ie every time you hit a bullseye of five, you could hit your score five times. You could then see who won at the end. However, a piece of paper could show you same thing, and, unlike the tablet, you wouldn’t need to swipe down 50+ times to reset the score back to zero! The only vague benefit I could see was that the score could be projected on to a monitor, so spectators could see how you were doing too.
Although I’ve listed these criticisms above, the reality is that we then had the best part of 45 minutes competing. The targets were painted up as the old fashioned WATL five ring targets (Bury the Hatchet have been in and out of WATL over the years, but didn’t reference the organisation). The quality of the axe not withstanding, we were able to compete, and we did record the score on the tablet (giving up on resetting back to zero, and simply starting from the next round score).
Other than a final five minute warning, we didn’t see the axe master for the rest of the time, which was fine. It was really more comical than annoying when, at the end of our time, we went over to say goodbye and startled her behind the reception desk where she was still employed.
I’ve certainly had worse axe throwing experiences, so the little niggles wouldn’t put me off going back there per se. It just seems a shame that they detracted from an otherwise ok venue.
Pros
- Variety of throwers available (at extra cost)
- Good boards
- Spacious venue
Cons
- Unenthusiastic axe master
- Unsatisfactory house axe
- Unhelpful score recording
Disclaimer: “The Axe Inspector” receives no payment or benefit of any kind from either TheAxeThrower.com or from the venue, for this review. The review is the subjective opinion of one person (albeit as objective as possible) and we encourage throwers to try out the venue to make their own mind up.