Leon Dubov is watering his 692 tons of sand. It’s a Wednesday night time at 6:40 p.m, and the bar he owns in Sunnyside, Queens, is totally lifeless. A curious patron of the brewery throughout the road sticks her head inside the ability, however shortly disappears. “Imported from New Jersey,” Dubov explains whereas spraying the hose proper the place the gamers will stand. “I’ve to do that as soon as a day.” He predicts that his volleyball courts will quickly be filled with league contributors, co-workers, stragglers in search of a pickup sport. And he’s proper: By 7 the place is hopping. However though there’s a completely stocked bar mere toes away, nobody orders a drink.
New York Metropolis already has bars the place individuals can play bocce, shuffleboard and tabletop video games—what The New York Occasions not too long ago known as “activity-driven” areas. They’re successfully bars the place the primary draw isn’t consuming, and so they make sense at a time when many so-called “sober-curious” persons are experimenting with consuming much less, or by no means. However even inside this new paradigm, volleyball is a stunning selection for a bar’s theme. Startup prices are within the tens of hundreds of {dollars}, discovering an enormous warehouse with enormous ceilings and the suitable column spacing is near-impossible in a spot like New York, and there’s the truth that it’s basically tough to play a two-handed sport whereas gripping and sipping a beer. Maybe that’s why—although a High Gun sequel simply raked in a billion {dollars} on the field workplace, and nostalgia for the Nineteen Eighties and ’90s is excessive throughout all points of our tradition—this idiosyncratic nook of not-quite-nightlife appears destined to vanish earlier than most individuals even grow to be conscious of its existence.
Somebody would possibly simply mistake the surface of Dubov’s QBK Sports activities for an house duplex if not for a plastic banner that reads “VOLLEYBALL BAR AND LOUNGE” out close to the sidewalk. The fluorescent lighting inside doesn’t precisely scream “bar,” both. There’s a granite countertop that appears prefer it belongs in a suburban New Jersey kitchen. The closest factor the enterprise has to a seashore theme is the truth that the lavatory tile is black, and exhibits sand. Consuming at QBK Sports activities is like having a pop at a Planet Health. The beverage program itself is easy—Modelo on faucet, exhausting seltzer in cans, a couple of bottles of booze on a chrome steel bar cart.
Allie Clever is a typical QBK buyer. She’s a marketer in Manhattan, and her co-workers commute from everywhere in the metropolis—or New Jersey—that means it’s powerful for everybody to get collectively for a contented hour. So the 23-year-old, who grew up enjoying aggressive volleyball on Lengthy Island, emailed Dubov to see if he may assist. Displaying as much as a park as a lone individual might be awkward, she mentioned, but it surely was simple to type a five-person staff after popping into QBK. Though she concedes that the attraction of the place is extra concerning the sporting facility than the bar itself, she will get a way of camaraderie from sharing a post-game beer and a basket of fries along with her new buddies. “It’s actually exhausting to make mates as an grownup,” Clever instructed me over the telephone. “It’s good to satisfy a brand new realm of individuals the place we now have one thing in frequent that isn’t simply work.”
Whereas QBK is the primary volleyball bar in New York Metropolis, the idea has been round since at the least the ’90s. Houston, particularly, appears to be a hotbed. There are at the least eight in that metropolis, in line with Matthew Richard, common supervisor of Sideout VolleyBar; the bar and grill, which opened in 2017, was the newest addition. Regardless of the competitors, Richard mentioned that enterprise is sweet, and that Sideout is within the technique of transferring to an excellent greater location for the autumn. However he readily admits that consuming just isn’t the primary attraction at his institution. “Whenever you throw out phrases like ‘volleybar,’ you begin attracting solely that choose group,” he says, that means critical athletes. “I needed to begin a bar that occurred to have volleyball courts, but it surely ended up being the opposite approach round.”
It’s not simply QBK that’s having a tough time. Take into account Downers Sand Membership, which is in an workplace park–stuffed exurb about 45 minutes due west of Chicago. Previous to the pandemic, 80 groups performed at DSC, a lot of them made up of associates who performed as a team-building train. The extreme curbing of in-person workplace tradition signifies that now, there are nearly no groups. “This environment was an incredible place to satisfy individuals,” DSC proprietor Jim Weyrick instructed me. “Yearly there could be individuals on my summer season groups who grew to become mates and went to the outside volleyball world, after which I misplaced them. Then COVID hit and I misplaced everybody.”
Downers was really as soon as a part of a neighborhood chain. Weyrick, who grew up enjoying volleyball in Illinois, took over from the earlier proprietor in 2014 to stop this closing location from closing. Enterprise was good and DSC resembled a third place filled with regulars who genuinely cared for each other—a person even proposed to his girlfriend on the sand. However now Weyrick can barely preserve the lights on, which is partly as a consequence of staffing points, and partly because of the pandemic. There’s additionally the truth that it’s the center of summer season, and patrons won’t be as wanting to spend their valuable leisure time inside a room painted with palm bushes and blue skies once they might be exterior, surrounded by the true factor. In New York, as an example, there are many locations to play the game—Prospect Park, Central Park’s Nice Garden, Pier 6 of Brooklyn Bridge Park. These locations are clearly BYOB, whereas Dubov, of QBK, doesn’t enable drinks on his $50,000 pile of sand.
Again at QBK I meet up with Dubov. He doesn’t drink or play the sport himself, however nonetheless is aware of sufficient to provide a primary lesson. (“On the finish of the day, I’m working a sports activities facility,” he says.) He instructs me to carry my arms above my head and make a prism with my fingers to set the ball, and demonstrates make a flat floor with my forearms to return the ball to him.
We hit till about 7 p.m., when paying clients start to trickle in. I order an IPA and ask, “How does a man who doesn’t drink or play volleyball find yourself proudly owning a volleyball bar?” Dubov was impressed by an uncle who owned a bar in Coney Island. He enlisted that uncle’s assist after studying about two volleybars within the tri-state space: Limitless Summer time on Lengthy Island, and the Highline Enviornment in New Jersey. It appeared apparent to him that New Yorkers could be wanting to patronize such an institution. There was, in his estimation, an enormous gap available in the market for individuals who need to exit in the course of the week and check out one thing new.
“Friday is date night time,” he defined. “However Monday and Tuesday, persons are in search of one thing to do after work. And that’s my candy spot. I need to be their one thing.”
