Hi-Tech Billiards

This place is trash. The owner is so rude. The pool tables are expensive. The drinks are not good. It’s a shame because the space has a lot of potential. Hopefully, there will be an ownership change at some point, and this spot can be revamped & reopen.

DO NOT GO HERE!!! $ 65 (SIXTY FIVE DOLLARS) to play POOL for TWO HOURS… (everything I’m about to say was witnessed by THREE other people who will swear in a court of law, one of which has a Masters degree in education and is a local/​reputable school teacher).
The sad thing is, I really liked this bar before this incident… People would say bad things and I would ALWAYS defend it and talk about it’s positive points. After tonight I can no longer do that…
I had been going to this bar on and off for well over two years, if not three. Whenever I play pool, it had ALWAYS cost $ 12 per hour (league price is the usual 50% discount, or $ 6 per hour — league prices are advertised all over the bar, so I know I’m not going crazy nor have I had a lapse of memory).
My gf and I went to the bar for karaōke and had a couple of friends meet us there as well. There was no karaōke this night, apparently due to tropical storm Andrea causing fear/​panic/​no crowd. We arrived around 10:20pm and decided to hang out and make the best of it without the karaōke (I have a text message on my phone to prove the time of arrival, when I texted one of my friends saying «You leave yet? It’s completely dead here» –10:20pm). The first of my friends arrived around 10:30 and after playing some video games, we decided to get a pool table (Time is now about 11pm/11:15ish).
By 1:15am I am at the counter returning the equipment. I’m told I have to pay $ 65 dollars for the time spent. I ask the manager how much it costs to play pool there, I’m told it’s $ 12 for HALF an hour/​$ 24 DOLLARS FOR AN HOUR!!! I look around and don’t see ANY signs posting regular prices (other than the league price) and I ask where exactly the prices are posted (I could see the sign they USED to be posted on, but it was now blank). I was then told «We don’t post our prices» (right, so they can make any price up they want to). I tell the manager we’ve only been playing for about two hours, seeing as how we started playing about 11/11:15 and it’s now 1:15. I’m told that THE COMPUTER charges for the full hour and can’t tell the difference between 10:59 and 10:01. My reply was, but «YOU can tell the difference! You mean to tell me that I’m being charged for the whole 10pm-​11pm hour AND the whole 1pm-​2am hour!?!» She (the «manager») told me there was nothing she could do about it. Since I’d been going there for a long time, I saw the owner as he was sitting over at the bar. So I go to him and say «Hey how’s it going. You’ve seen me in here before on many occasions, we’ve even talked, I sing karaōke, I bring my friends here and thus bring you business… I like it here and I want to give you the chance to fix this situation before I walk out the door and never come back.»
I then explain the situation to him. The «manager/​bartender» eventually cuts in, CHANGES HER STORY, and says the computer had me marked down as playing at 10:15pm. Now I get mad and say that «a second ago you couldn’t give me a time that I started, EXPLICITLY stating that the computer DOES NOT give an exact time, and now you’re saying the opposite?» The owner then turns to me and says that I «must have had too much to drink, lost track of time and that I’m mistaken»… I have the text in my phone to prove I’m not mistaken (and Verizon now has the phone records), I do NOT like being called a liar… and for them to treat a regular customer like this only foreshadows the treatment anyone else can expect in the future. Listen to these other reviews, stay away from this place.
Oh, I almost forgot… in all fairness, they DID offer a compromise… they offered to refund $ 2… (smh)

A few of my friends and I randomly stopped here to shoot a couple games of pool. I was highly disappointed. It’s extremely overpriced for the venue. The drinks were about $ 8 or $ 9 for a weak vodka cranberry. The place wasn’t clean and it reaked in the bathrooms. It was basically empty for a Saturday night. There were about 3 other groups of people playing in a hall with about 16 tables. During our last game they shut off the juke box, so we played our last game hearing crickets, besides our voices. When the waitress walked by we asked her why the music was off and she said because Karaōke was starting but they were having technical difficulties. When we went to pay for the night we got the bill and were shocked! It was over $ 40 (we played 2 games) which was not worth it considering we paid for bad drinks and food from Houlihan’s to be delivered (they have no food service might I add). Magically after we paid, Rihanna started chiming in the background… music on. Something tells me they cut it off on purpose. Trust me they didn’t have to kick us out, this place is a mess. You couldn’t pay me to come back.

I’m not the world’s leading supporter of karaōke by any stretch of the imagination, but my roommate lives for it. Luckily for me, she very rarely does it in the house. As a reward for sparing me from today’s top hits in the comfort of my own home, this year for her birthday I threw her a karaōke party.
In the Jersey City/​Hoboken area, it was surprisingly difficult to find a place that was easily accessible and offered karaōke on a weekend night. Most of the local bars use it as a way to draw folks in on assorted slower business weeknights. We discovered Hi-​Tech Billiards and decided to roll the dice and try it out.
While I wouldn’t necessarily call the choice a mistake, we had no way of knowing that this bar’s crowd would be some sort of guido/​biker hybrid characters. Fortunately, our group was large enough that we didn’t feel completely overwhelmed. Had I been with a smaller crew, I would have most likely felt overwhelmed and walked right out.
If you’re going to karaōke, you should survive just fine. Most of the crowd goes to hang out at the pool tables, so there won’t be too long of a wait to let your inner Beyonce shine. The song selection was fairly extensive and the singers. well, they can’t sing, but isn’t that how it is everywhere?
The fact that this is a cash-​only place presents a huge problem for me. The drinks, while not pricey, are definitely more expensive than they should be for the setting that you’re in. When I was there, they had no ATM on sight and I was forced to go into the nearby Houlihan’s complex to take out cash. I don’t think there’s any excuse to run a sizable cash only venue and not have an ATM on the premises.
The drinks are definitely weak. If you’re spending a night here, the only way to avoid being completely swindled is to stick to a diet of beer and shots.
There is a massive parking lot, so if you drive, you will have no issues finding a spot for your car. If you intend to tie one on like I often do, you may find yourself stuck trying to get a taxi to take you home safely. Though no fault of the bar itself, the very large Harborside that it resides within makes it very difficult to direct a cab to your proper location. The bar is not well known and the cab companies often can’t nail down your specific location. Because of the impossibility of hailing a cab, your taxi is most likely going to get stolen by folks at the better known establishments before it ever finds you.

in a word, dirty

The place is over priced for just playing a few rounds of pool. Especially considering that it is cash only.
The drinks, too, are over priced when considering the portions.
There is a great douche factor after 9 pm from Thurs — Sat when all the guidos come out.

Hi-​Tech is a pool hall located across from Houlihan’s — it has a huge floor space with many tables, and there has always been many available tables when I’ve played there. Hi-​Tech is a cash-​only place and you can expect to pay around $ 20 for a couple games (depending on how long it takes you, that is). There’s also a bar, and waitresses will stop by your table to offer drinks, which are your typical light beer selections served in plastic cups. On Saturday nights (possibly other nights as well), karaōke is open in the bar area. You may want to keep track of time here, as I once paid over $ 80.