Annabelle R.
Yelp
This is a pretty unique venue, which I was pleased to find on a Sunday night. They do live music here (piano/guitar) on certain nights, but on Sundays, they do karaoke.
The decor and lighting create a really great ambience inside, with odd random signs, business cards, news articles, and other scraps of paper covering the walls pretty much from floor to ceiling. The layout is a bit weird with the bar area blocked in its own section but sort of narrow and squished, and stuffy on a hot evening, and the wall separating the bar area blocks the view of the karaoke area if you're trying to watch. There's one line for ordering drinks at the bar, which creates and blocks traffic in the middle of the restaurant during busy time. It's worse when they are understaffed. In fact, it seemed that way when we visited this past Sunday. It was a full house in the dining area (booths and tables) and in the bar area... a lot of people. They seemed to have only 4 employees total working, one for the entire bar area, one serving and waiting on all of the diners on the restaurant side, one cook, and one DJ/KJ. For a busy Labor Day weekend night, that's seems a bit unprepared. And if it's always like that, that's even worse. There seems to be an upstairs area, but that was not open on this day.
We just came for drinks, and besides the long waits, service was great. The bartender was friendly, working hard, and made us tasty cocktails. And as it got later into the night, seats in the dining area opened up, so we were able to bring our drinks over and get more comfortable. The music was fun all night, and they were still going even after midnight and after we left (usually karaoke or live music ends earlier at other places I've been, so that was cool, especially if coming there for the entertainment). We enjoyed our time at The Alley, and it led to an even greater time afterward, so I'd say it set us up for a pretty good night.