The Locker Room Sports Bar & Lounge in Warrenton, Virginia: 5 Reasons to Avoid It

Here are the top 5 reasons The Locker Room Sports Bar & Lounge, at least the one in Warrenton, VA, is a really bad place to spend an evening. I could list more than 5 but my space is limited.

1. Expensive Drinks

Okay, so technically Warrenton is Northern Virginia, which is as expensive as Los Angeles and parts of New York City. But realistically, it's a town in Fauquier County which is the southernmost county in the Northern Virginia area, and there's nothing to do here and it's still basically surrounded by farmland. So having an "upscale" nightclub in town is a stupid idea to begin with, but if you're going to open a fancy bar and charge outrageous prices, at least make it worthwhile. The Locker Room does not. The beer is expensive, about $5 domestic OR imported, the mixed drinks are weak and come in plastic cups, and don't even bother wasting $8 on a glass of their awful wine. Which brings me to my next point...

2. Lousy Service

Not only are the drinks way too expensive, but if you start a tab you need to keep a pen and a pad of paper on your table to keep track of how many you've had; otherwise the waitresses will charge you for about four more than you actually had. I'm not exaggerating. I've been there five times now (the last three times were birthday parties I couldn't get out of attending) and every single time, either I or someone in my party has been gypped out of at least $20 in drinks they never had. On top of that, if you can get your waitress to come by your table twice in one hour, you have the best one in there. At my sister's birthday party, we were there for about 3 hours and the waitress came by TWICE. Again, I'm not exaggerating. I ordered a chicken sandwich which I couldn't eat because it was so dry - the waitress didn't bring any mayo with it and by the time I could track her down the sandwich was cold and I didn't want to eat it at all. Also, if good service to you means tight jeans and visible thongs you're in luck; if you want a friendly attitude, attentiveness and to get charged for what you actually bought, you're screwed.

3. Bad Atmosphere

I was in awe on my first visit: the place is 8,000 square feet with a domed ceiling and skylight, an onyx granite bar, a raised circular marble dance floor, leather furniture everywhere, about 40 plasma TV's (including one at each table and booth), a closed-off cigar lounge, and a game room. It's really nice if there's about 20 people in the whole place. But the layout is all wrong for crowds. The acoustics are terrible even when there isn't loud music; the dance floor in the middle means you have to walk all the way around the entire building to get to the other side if there are people standing at the bar; the bar itself is not conducive to ordering drinks - there's nowhere to stand for walk-ups. You basically have to wedge yourself between two occupied stools and wait for (literally) half an hour for one of their sullen bartenders to get to you.

4. Lack of Recreation

The "game room" consists of two pool tables and a couple arcade games, which isn't nearly enough to accommodate the number of people who are sick of having unintelligible conversations in the main bar and want to actually DO something. A place that size could easily accommodate more pool tables and some dartboards and trivia games. The "game room" is also tiny and cramped and is always smoky. It makes no sense at all.

5. Stupid Events

The Locker Room specializes in being a sports bar, and I'm sure it's great to be able to watch your favorite game on all those TVs (sober, of course - wouldn't want any pesky waitress to come by) but the rest of the time they have to fill their evenings up with something. So on Wednesdays they have karaoke. I love karaoke so this would be a lot of fun, if it was actually karaoke. Instead, it's some DJ who has about one person sing every hour and plays dance music the rest of the time. I have friends who signed up at 9:30 when it started, stayed until close and never got called up - and the list was only about 15 people long. Don't call it karaoke if you don't let people sing. And they have the typical stuff, like ladies' night and DJs, which is fine. But then they have stuff like I got to witness the last (and I mean LAST) time I was there: a bikini contest. This isn't the beach, and this isn't a college town. And it was labeled "bikini contest" but somewhere in the fine print it must have read "stripper dance competition" because it was the skankiest "bikini contest" I've ever witnessed.

So that's my review. Do yourself a favor and drive a few extra miles to Manassas or Fairfax. The money you spend on gas will be less than getting a tab full of drinks you didn't order.