Bumpy Pickle — Restaurant in Houston

If you want to feel like to are at an airport traveling through TSA this is the bar for you. Gate (court) changes, bag searches, and forcing you to dump out your water bottle when it's 100 degrees outside while casually reassuring you that you can refill using their warm hose water that has been placed into a jug. I give it 3 stars because it is not all bad. The sand is nice and much deeper than the sister bar Sports Creek where you can literally stub your toe on the concrete beneath the sand. Good nets/poles, but the lines are not easily adjustable from 2s to 4s as ALL of the other volleybars in Houston are. Their booking system is a nightmare and they double booked us and moved us over and over again burning up precious time multiple weeks in a row. They always try to make it right by tossing us a couple beers, but honestly we're happy to buy our own beer and really just want to play uninterupted volleyball. But it's cute, and the sand is deep. The pickle ball courts look nice, but volleyball is my thing. Also their parking is insufficient. I almost forgot. We were wrapping up our 2 hour rental which we do almost every week ($100 revenue + all the drinks 10+ people are buying) and on the dot they wanted to boot us off the court because there "was another reservation" ready to go. This would be understandable except there were other WIDE OPEN courts that they could have been pushed to while we wrapped up our last game of the night. Instead of handling this request gracefully the attendant said sassily: "if you want to pay for another hour you can finish your game." Maybe they'll iron some of these staffing and logistical challenges out. If so, I'll gladly come back and update my review. Until then, I will not personally be back. I hope there will be more critical thinking by the staff and less robotic responses from either being way over or way...

The communication and follow through with management was piss poor at best. I attempted to book a reservation through their website on 4/23 for sand volleyball court. When going through the website I clicked make reservation and it said that it could not be processed at this time. I clicked it again and it said the same thing. I then received two notifications that it charged my card twice (pictures provided). I immediately called them and explained my situation. They said that they did not see this on their end but checked and saw that there were in fact courts available for Friday from 7-9. They said that they would investigate and give me a call back. Took down all of my personal information as well. Cool? Wrong. I did not receive a call back and waited until the next day (4/24) to call again to see if they figured everything out. The lady that answered did not know what I was talking about stated the managers were in a meeting and they would get back to me. I reiterated that I just wanted the one reservation and just to make sure the other one did not actually process. I also asked if they could please provide an email receipt at their earliest convenience. She said that could easily be done and that the day and time was still available. AGAIN did not receive a call. Checked my account and both charges weren't processed but again still wanted my one reservation that they said was available. Had to call back today which they did not answer. Had someone else call for me. (They answered for them) and when I finally get In touch with someone re explained my situation and asked could I just book through the phone since there website is having issues they hit me with "oh we are booked now". Friday plans ruined so to poor follow through and communication. Will not be doing business with them. Figure out...

EDIT: The owner tracked me down on Instagram and messaged me apologizing for this issue. He refunded my credit card charge and offered me a gift card. We returned 2 more times to use the gift card and had a good time. One night there was a good crowd and the other night there were only 5 of us there but we had a good time because we happened to be all at a similar levels. I hear that Mondays are good so if you don't want to risk having a sparse crowd I would go then. The food is surprisingly good for a place that isn't supposed to be about the food. Love the carne asada fries. I also appreciated that the owner tried to make up for the issues so we will probably give the place another shot on a Monday.

Original review: This place is terrible. We called ahead and were told open play was from 6-9 pm (the previous time we came just two weeks earlier it was from 6pm-12am for the same price). We showed up at 6:15, paid for open play and the employee did not say anything. When we get out there we find there is only 1 open play court instead of the usual 3 courts and we are told we can play on this single court until all 3 courts open for open play from 8-12 which was not what we were told on the phone. Even if they made a last minute change why wouldn't the employee tell us when we showed up? She just took our money and didn't tell us we were there 2 hours before full open play even starts. We play one or two games and then are told that the single open play court is actually booked for a lesson. So now we are waiting around for an hour until open play starts at 8 pm because we can't get our money back. Ridiculous. Will be going...