Flight Club

Flight Club on Walnut Street is a social darts venue — oches with automatic scoring, table service, groups booked by the hour. It belongs in this directory for two separate reasons, and the less obvious one is the more important.

The obvious reason is the drinks list. Five non-alcoholic beers, all named and priced, is the deepest such list encountered anywhere in Philadelphia: Sam Adams Just the Haze and Sierra Nevada Hop Splash at the hoppy end, Athletic's Cerveza Atlética as the crisp lager, Lagunitas IPNA, and Guinness 0 for anyone who wants a stout. Most bars carry one non-alcoholic beer, if that; carrying five means a non-drinker can have a different beer each round, which is precisely the variety that makes an evening feel normal rather than rationed.

The cocktails back it up. The Midway Splash builds Seedlip Grove 42 — the blood orange, ginger and lemongrass expression — with pineapple, lemon and tonic. Better still is the Lyre's flight at thirteen dollars: three alcohol-free cocktails, a gin and tonic, an Amalfi Spritz and a Classico, served together. A flight is a format almost never offered without alcohol, and it does something specific for a non-drinker, turning a single order into a tasting with things to compare and talk about.

The less obvious reason is the format itself, and it is the stronger argument. Darts gives the evening a structure that has nothing to do with what anyone is drinking. There are turns to take, a score on a screen, and a reason to stand up. Every problem with a night out sober — the lulls, the visible glass, the sense of being a spectator at everyone else's evening — is a problem of unstructured time, and an activity venue simply removes it.

Open to eleven midweek and one in the morning on Friday and Saturday, with an eleven o'clock weekend opening.