Frames Complex

Frames can n longer be merely classed as a snooker club because it offers so much more than that! Once the place to go for afew games and a few pints, there is now more on offer here. They have a café serving really nice food, all the usuals, sandwiches, soups, wraps, burgers, salads, steak, pasta… the Steak and Kidney served in a Yorkshire pud is pretty good! Food is served from 12−6pm which is pretty good, as are the prices! About £6.50 for mains etc. Then there’s the Chill function room where you an host private parties, prices start at £275 which includes room hire, D.J., finger buffet for 100 people and invitations too. Pretty cool.
Then we hit the solarium, yes really, you can get a tan in a pub! Who’d have thought! They offer spray tans and sunbeds and have great offers on at the minute fro free minutes when you buy a certain amount, which is pretty good!
I must say, frames does have it all! Plus the great snooker/​pool room is still as awesome as it’s always been, with plenty of tables to go around!

Back in the day a trip down to Frames was the perfect to skive off a few lectures and a great hangout for anyone wanting to keep a low profile. It’s been a while since I’ve been down and after getting an invite to a ‘boy’s day out’ I was very excited to see how it had shaped up.
Now, not merely a snooker hall but now a fully fledged ‘complex’ the place boasted a couple of bars, a café, a club and even a beauty parlour! Seemed to be a one stop shop for all your socialising needs.
We didn’t quite make it to the tanning suite but we had a most enjoyable few games of pool which I made the usual horlicks of. Membership is free (with valid ID) so we had to spend a bit of time getting that sorted but once we were up and running we flew through the games.
For a Wednesday afternoon the place was quite busy but the sheer number of tables meant that there never was too long a wait for a game. We made full use of the bar facilities (not too pricey either) and all round it was a pretty killer way to spend a day.
Pros: Good for novices and sharks alike.
Cons: Can be a bit dark.

Frames used to be incredibly popular as an after work/​school/​tech/​uni place to play pool, sip a drink and have a bit of craic with your mates. Maybe it was because it happened to be the soonest bar we reached in town, maybe it was the attraction of the pool (which incidentall has the largest dedicated pool and snooker complex in Belfast featuring 16 full size snooker tables and a further 15 pool size tables on the second floor) i’m not sure what it is, I just know we used to love coming here. Unfortunately I don’t know what’s happened to the place. It seems a lot quieter now.
The last time I decided to pop in wasn’t that long ago, and I was sad to see the place so quiet. Maybe it was the wrong time of day, or maybe it’s down to the fact that there wasn’t anyone under 60 around the bar and everyone was fixated on the TV in the corner. It just wasn’t the same. It was always a lively, on the go sort of place. Just it just seems stagnant and boring. Maybe it’s me that’s changed though.

Frames is one of those places that’s been around forever and a day.
That said, it underwent a refurb a few years back and is now very different from what it once was.
Inside the complex, there’s a gastropub (The Library Bar — so named because of the place’s proximity to Central Library), a pool hall, a party venue available for hire, and randomly, a tanning salon!
I used to work not too far away from Frames and it became a sort of tradition to go there on a Friday for lunch with everyone. They used to have a 2 for 1 offer or something similar on their main courses, so we’d get a massive feed for next to nothing! They now have buy one, get one half price, which isn’t quite as good, but still worth it if you’re hungry!

Can’t agree with the other reviewers more; Frames was where my classmates and I used to hide during the boring classes in college!
Frames is famous for its’ snooker tables. It’s a bit like one of those biker bars you see in American films where burly looking men in skull caps stand around talking about Harleys and challenging people to games of pool in exchange for the pleasure of not getting beat up. Interestingly, it tends to feature in any movie that is shot in Northern Ireland; it’s featured in Breakfast on Pluto with Cillian Murphy as a ‘psychadelic’ 70’s bar, a far cry from the its’ grimey looking exterior. As long as your standards aren’t very high, then Frames perfect for a quiet night out with friends.

Frames has a pool room, a snooker room and a bar. It is really got everything you need if you fancy spending a day in a dark room getting drunk with your friends. My friends and I used to come here after school every Friday and I have to admit it was really enjoyable. Although I have to say I have never been back since. The pool room was where we were most, and the tables were ok. The very top room is strange as it has no windows, and no lighting except for the over table lighting, which made the place pretty dingy it has to be said.
Although saying all this, it s a bit of an institution around North Belfast and if it sounds like your kind of thing then I believe you will definitely enjoy it.

Frames (as my other Unilocalers have attested) is the place school kids go to when they wanna avoid that pointless free period at the end of the day or at the beginning of the day for that matter. I always felt a little strange playing pool with some friends, whilst some burly looking fellas in the corner, smoked and grumbled to each other over their pool table. The café down stairs does a lot of confectionery (which may be for the school kids hiding there) and the bar is very cheap compared to most other places in Belfast. As Colm H said, the complete lack of light on the top floor does give it a very eery feeling, but it also guaranteed no teachers could see you from the windows!