Being a lover of Northeast basically means you’re a lover of all things Minnesotan with hipster glasses and a little tighter pants. The Minneapolis location of Bad Axe Throwing is the perfect culmination of a Minnesotan’s love of Paul Bunyan and Northeast Minneapolis’ love of flannel.

The only thing that would make it better? Beer.

I will air my one grievance now, because honestly I had no other issues at all with my experience so it’s best to just get the negative out of the way. In multiple news reviews and even google reviews there are references to this place being a bar and that people were able to bring in their own beer and wine. This is not true. The day prior I was told that it is a “dry” facility. From asking more about it, it sounds like they are currently trying to get their liquor license to serve beer and wine on site (so there is hope), however, because a group event has a 2 week cancellation policy and knowing that other axe throwing facilities do allow drinking we were frustrated…especially as this doesn’t appear to have always been the case.

Negative portion over, let’s get to the main event.

How It Works:

I live for reservations, so when I saw that there were two options; walk-in or group event, the group event was a no brainer for me.

For a walk-in you pay $20 an hour and it’s subject to availability and you get a throwing lesson.

For the group event, it is $40 per person for 2.5 hours and you need to have a minimum of 6 people.  With that you get a reserved lane, which comes with the two targets, you can bring in your own food and drinks (non alcoholic…ok I’m still a little bitter) and the best part is that you get a dedicated Axe Throwing Coach aka “Axe Master?” (that’s probably wrong, but I can’t remember what he called himself), who not only helps with form and showing you trick shots, etc, but he also facilitates games for you to play.

You can get all the pricing on their website, there are price breaks depending upon your group size.

We had 10 people, which worked out perfectly for 2 teams and because we are extra, we also paid $20 for the medallion you see pictured above that went to the winner of the last man standing rotation we played at the end. So worth it, not only for the Instagrams, but because people got genuinely competitive about winning it which made the whole process a lot more fun.

*Another reason I would say our group size was perfect is that we had 5 people per target so we had a little bit of a breather between throws and actually had time to socialize with each other.

Games:

First Game: B A D A X E

This was their take on Horse. Each person always get two throws, but in this game you go against another person and the one with the highest score earns a letter for their team – spelling out, you guessed it – Bad Axe.

Winner: 4 Cochs & a Dik (family joke about the play off of our last names)

Second Game: 50 Points

I didn’t actually catch the name of this game, but the first team to score 50 points wins. Caveat is that if a team member gets a blue dot once during the course of a game, they can put the opposing team to 0 or they can take 10 points. The blue dot, aka the “Killshot” was by far the hardest part of the board and something I did not even come close to.

Winner: AXE Me A Question

Final Game: Cricket

In this game you’re literally playing cricket for the point levels. We modified the game to have the Killshot be a wild card since Nic said that it tends to make the game run way too long and we still had a tournament to play – so if you’re planning to go to Bad Axe Throwing and they say that’s a wild, know that this was my idea and feel free to let me know 🙂

Winner: 4 Cochs & a Dik

If you’ve been doing the math with me, you are also noting that my team 4 Cochs & A Dik won…yep. GO TEAM!

Medallion Tournament:

Basically everyone has 3 lives to start out with. You lose a life when you get less points than the person throwing against you. The winner of the medallion is the last person standing. I did not win. Yes, it is too soon to talk about. However, this was super fun and relatively quick.

Service/Atmosphere:

The location is in one of the warehouse buildings in Northeast about 2 blocks away from Norseman Distillery which made it easy to grab a quick pre-axe throwing beverage and there was a lot of parking around the facility. The suite was clearly marked and as long as you have GPS telling you which building it was in you are golden.

We were the first ones there originally, so it obviously got louder as it started to fill up, but Nic had a good music playlist going and overall the place was very clean and there were a lot of stools and seating available next to the lanes.

The walls had a bunch of murals, there was a ping pong table available, and the crowning achievement was the vikings-esque throne that the medallion winner got to sit on.

I can’t say enough good things about Nic and our experience. Again, I would definitely suggest getting a group together if possible, not only because you can reserve a time, but because it makes the whole experience easy and fun.

Four Stars.

Bad Axe Throwing – Minneapolis
2505 Kennedy Street NE
Minneapolis, MN 55413
Visit their website for walk-in hours