Electric Playhouse

Electric Playhouse is hard to categorise: a large space on Ouray Road on Albuquerque's west side where the floors and walls are projection-mapped into interactive games, with a restaurant and full bar inside it. It is the sort of venue that gets described as an experience rather than a bar, and for readers of this directory that is precisely the appeal.

The recurring difficulty of not drinking is that the default social activity is drinking, and the hours pass with nothing to do but hold a glass. A venue whose entire proposition is doing something removes that problem completely — the evening has a shape, everyone has something to occupy them, and nobody is tracking rounds. This directory has made the same argument for board-game cafés in Tulsa, an arcade bar in Burlington and a bowling alley in Omaha; Electric Playhouse is the largest-scale version of it.

The mocktails are named inside the house scheme rather than filed under a generic heading — Cocowatts, Nebula, Surge and Power Outage all sit in the same electrical-and-cosmic vocabulary as the rest of the venue. That is a small signal this directory weighs consistently: bars that name alcohol-free drinks the way they name everything else have integrated them rather than tolerated them.

The all-ages policy is the other reason it is here, and it is genuinely uncommon. Most rooms with a good alcohol-free list are 21-plus, which quietly excludes families and anyone bringing a younger sibling or a child. Visit Albuquerque lists Electric Playhouse among the city's mocktail destinations specifically as the family-friendly option.

Open 10am to 8pm Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, and 10am to 10pm on Friday and Saturday. Closed Monday and Tuesday. Booking ahead is sensible at weekends, when the game sessions fill.