Game on at Three Lives
The video-game themed bar in Syracuse provides a safe space for nerds and non-nerds alike, published in Baked magazine’s Spring 2023 print issue
When Jon Page opened Three Lives in 2020, the video-game themed bar had a row of 15 old arcade machines that patrons weren’t allowed to play for most of the pandemic. So, Page and his staff developed the “Roll for a Shot” menu.
The server rolls a 20-sided die, with numbers corresponding to a shot on the menu. Like all of Three Lives’ menu items, these colorful, flavored shots are based on popular video games, like the Din’s Fire shot inspired by Legends of Zelda.
A TikToker named Dustin Dean paid a visit to the bar and featured the “Roll for a Shot” menu on his account, giving the small Syracuse bar the exposure it needed to stay afloat.
With a commitment to theme and a willingness to adapt, Three Lives not only survived, but thrived through the challenging pandemic years.
“It’s wild the way the universe wants you to work,” Page said. “You are in your flow state right now. You’re doing your thing. You stay on that path, dude. Life will just seem easy.”
Page, 31, was a professional musician and bartender with years of experience in fine dining before he decided to open his business, which he markets as an “e-sports lounge” and “gastro-pub.” The bar offers food options like loaded tater tots and sliders.
Page calls his bar a mesh of all his interests, from games to music to films. TVs hang around the bar for gaming streams, which is how Three Lives stayed connected with patrons during the pandemic, or playing movies like Lord of the Rings.
“We’re all a little weird, and we embrace that”
Vibrant, floor-to-ceiling wall murals wrap the interior of the bar. For each mural, Page commissioned a local artist, but they had a task—to incorporate “three” into the image somehow as an homage to Three Lives.
Despite remaining true to himself when crafting the bar’s image, Page never intends to exclude any patrons.
“I think it’s just because we’re all a little weird, and we embrace that,” he said.
As Page meandered the empty Three Lives bar a few hours before open, he recounted his high school years growing up in Syracuse, where he never felt welcome in any crowd. Or, as he put it, he “never had a lunch table.”
“Now this,” he said, gesturing around his video game themed establishment. “This is my lunch table. Everybody here is welcome—as long as you behave yourself.”
Aside from the pandemic, the biggest challenge to the bar has been managing misbehavior, Page said. Three Lives has a zero tolerance policy for verbal harassment, slurs, or any form of hate or threat to another patron’s safety.
I experienced this commitment to safety on my first visit to the bar. My two friends and I sat down at a long table, the only open one on the crowded Saturday night.
Three folks approached and asked if they could sit at the end of the table, because the bar was full, and we said yes. Mere seconds later the waitress came over to check on us to see if they were bothering us and promised that if they started to, she’d take care of it.
Page said this zero tolerance policy encourages patrons to keep coming back.
“A bar has to be a safe environment,” he said. “When people see us throw those people out, they think, ‘Man, this place is awesome.’”
Each time a patron visits the bar, they level up. Levels work like a loyalty program, where after 10 levels, you receive a quest, such as bringing a new person to the bar, and completing that quest earns you a prize, like a free menu item.
Page directed me to the corkboard by the host stand, where some regular patrons, level 100s or 200s, are on display.
“Gaming has always been friendly and competitive,” Page said. “My favorite thing to hear in the bar is two strangers meet and say, ‘Oh, what’s your level?’”
Laura Duke, a Level 5 and fourth year architecture student at Syracuse University, started going to Three Lives in fall 2021.
While the bar can be crowded on a Saturday night, Duke sees Three Lives as a break from the overwhelming crowds on Marshall Street. Duke and her friends enjoy games, but she said she wouldn’t call herself an avid video gamer.
“(Three Lives) seemed really unique compared to other bars I’d been to in Syracuse,” Duke said. “It’s always changing, it’s always interesting, I kinda like that instead of going to the same place and seeing the same people all the time.”
As a non-gamer, I was hesitant about paying my first visit to Three Lives, worried I wouldn’t be able to participate or appreciate the experience.
But Three Lives is a game anyone can play. The entire experience is interactive, from the “Roll for a Shot” menu, to the “Level Up” loyalty program, to secret menu items hidden in the paintings on the bathroom door.
Three Lives opened with a staff of four, including Page’s sister, himself, a kitchen manager, and a bar manager. Today, the bar has 14 staff members.
But Page’s ultimate vision for the bar is expansion. He wants to take out the booths and create a lounge area, open up the basement for live music, and potentially turn Three Lives into a franchise.
“Don’t not go there just because you think it’s a nerdy place,” Duke said. “I think if you’re looking for something that’s different from a typical bar, where you can actually do things besides talk to people, if you want a different experience, you should try it."