The Rooms
The rooms, and how an evening runs
Three rooms, a short bar, a stage the size of a hearth rug and a narrow terrace, all on one flat floor above Hardware Lane. This page is the walk-through: what is where, what it feels like at nine in the evening, and the order things happen in.
The front room is the one people picture. Six felt tables with timber rails, brass lamps hung low enough to put the faces in light and the ceiling in shadow, and a floor of old boards that creak in two particular places. It is the loudest of the three rooms and the warmest, and on a Saturday it is the only room in the building where you have to raise your voice. The wheel stands against the far wall under its own lamp, and the dealing hands at the tables belong to hosts who have been taught to teach rather than to perform.
Through an archway is the middle room, which we keep deliberately quiet: armchairs, two low couches, reading lamps, a shelf of two-player games and a window over the laneway that is worth sitting beside when it rains. The music is turned down in here, the hosts do not come through offering anything, and this is where anyone who needs twenty minutes away from a table is sent, with a free pot of tea and no commentary.
The back room has a door that shuts. One large table, lamps you can dim from the wall, a sideboard for platters and enough chairs for fourteen. It is hired by the evening and comes with a host who stays for the whole thing. Beyond it, a short corridor leads past the cloakroom to three steps and the terrace: six tables, a view across laneway rooftops, open whenever the weather is good enough that people would rather be outside than in.
How an evening runs
From the laneway to the last hand
-
Arriving
The street door is a plain one between two awnings, with a brass plate and a lit stairway. The lift is inside the same entrance on the right if you would rather not take the stairs. Both bring you to a small foyer with a cloakroom, a host at a lectern and the night's programme chalked on a board.
-
The landing check
Photo identification, every visit, members included. The host reads your date of birth, satisfies themselves and hands the card straight back; nothing is scanned or recorded. They mark your seat fee or ticket, take your coat and anything bigger than a tote, and tell you which tables are running.
-
Settling in
You are walked to a table rather than pointed at one. The host tells you the game, the order of play, the two house conventions that differ from the version you know, and hands you a rack of counters. First hand is dealt slowly and nobody minds how long you take over it.
-
The middle of the evening
People move. The felt, the board shelf, the bar, the middle room and the terrace all fill and empty through the night, and the kitchen will find you wherever you have landed. If a set is starting on the corner stage a host says so, and chairs get shuffled around without much ceremony.
-
Last half hour
Final food orders go in an hour before close. Half an hour before, hosts start collecting racks and the wheel is covered. Hands are not extended past the closing time for anyone. You settle what is open at the bar, collect your coat from the cloakroom and go back down to the laneway.
The plain facts
What is where upstairs
- Where
- Level 2, 118 Hardware Lane, Melbourne CBD
- Getting up
- Lit stairway from the laneway, or the lift inside the same entrance
- Rooms
- Front room with six felt tables, quiet middle room, back room with a door
- Outside
- Narrow rooftop terrace, six tables, three steps up from the corridor
- Access
- One flat floor, accessible toilet off the foyer, two height-adjustable tables
- Capacity
- Around sixty seated across the floor, fourteen in the back room
Every table in every room runs on the same basis: played for entertainment only, nothing staked, nothing wagered, nothing paid out, counters with no value that stay in the building. Over-18s only, photo identification at the door. The front room closes at midnight from Tuesday to Thursday and at one in the morning on Friday and Saturday, and hosts may ask anyone to take a break at any point.