Flight Club will be lined with 12 dart-throwing areas. Photograph courtesy of Flight Club.
Practically every bowling alley has automatic scoring screens, and some display bonkers animated graphics when you hit a strike. Why not refresh the rudimentary game of darts with some computer-assisted scoring? That’s the idea behind Flight Club, a huge entertainment bar arriving next month to Mount Vernon Square.
The cavernous pub-like space, one several new US locations from a concept that originated in London, is lined with a dozen semi-private dartboard areas. For about $15 per person, you’ll be able to book one of them for a 90-minute “Social Darts” experience— basically a game of darts with a nifty automated scoring software that uses cameras to track the flight of each throw.
“That technology was developed by—I’m not making this up—literally a rocket scientist,” says Toby Harris, the CEO of State of Play Hospitality, which runs Flight Club’s US locations. When you win, a hidden camera captures your final throw for an instant replay.
The darts experience is available for groups as small as two people, but Flight Club expects around half of its business to be larger corporate events and buyouts. That’s one reason Harris picked a location so close to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.
Besides plenty of dart-throwing, Harris says Flight Club is aiming for an inviting, upscale pub-meets-fairground ambiance in its 8,300-square-foot space, with plush banquettes and handsome patterned wallpaper.
“We’re saying come and play darts—or not,” Harris says. “We obsess about the environment.”
Food offerings resemble the kind of eclectic bar food you might expect at a trendy new bowling alley: guacamole, truffle fries, mini poke tacos, and a lobster elote dip with jalapeños and cotija cheese. There’s an espresso old-fashioned and a spicy mezcal cocktail with lychee, lime, and ginger. The signature dessert is cotton candy.
Like Swingers, another huge novelty entertainment bar centered on an activity (mini golf, in its case), Flight Club and its software-assisted dart throwing is an import from the UK. The first Flight Club opened in London’s trendy Shoreditch neighborhood in 2015. State of Play, which owns the license to the darts concept in North America, has opened locations in Boston, Houston, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Denver. After DC, Philly, St Louis, and New York are next.
Flight Club. 641 New York Ave., NW.
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