We walk into trivia

Pecado Bueno, Seattle, Washington (West Seattle neighborhood)
Just so you know, Jeopardy is on Hulu now. During several stretches of our lives, we watched the show consistently. When we lived near (or, to be honest, with) my mom, we regularly watched it along with Wheel of Fortune. No offense, Mr. Sajak, we endured the Wheel, but happily played along with Mr. Trebek. When we were in seminary, Trivial Pursuit was wildly popular, and it’s fair to say we were pretty competitive.

Which is why we were intrigued when we were in Redmond, WA, a couple years ago visiting the bar that represented Washington state on our 50 state adventure* and saw a poster for “Geeks Who Drink.” That time, we couldn’t go -- we had about it didn’t work for us at that time. When we saw that Geeks Who Drink, which runs trivia quizzes modeled after pub quizzes in Great Britain and Ireland, is still a thing, we knew we needed to go.

Many local bars have quiz nights, but we chose the Geeks Who Drink evening at Pecado Bueno in West Seattle. Sure, it was partly to avoid having to drive over the West Seattle Bridge into Seattle proper, but more because Mindy noticed that the quiz master at Pecado Bueno ("Sin Well") is named Sean Church...which works well with our other blogs.

Pecado Bueno is a Mexican restaurant more than it’s a bar, which is a point of internal contention in this blog, but hey, the event is Geeks who DRINK, so that seems bar-themed enough for our purposes. And Pecado Bueno is right next door to a bar, and the two establishments share restrooms. So there.

We arrived at 7:00 pm as Sean announced that the quiz was about to begin, so Mindy found us a table and got the quiz pamphlet while I went to the bar to order. The chalkboard menu listed a “rotating red wine” and a “rotating cider” among the tap options, so I ordered the wine for Mindy (it was a cabernet sauvignon) and the cider for me (it was pineapple). The bartender poured our drinks and gave me a number for the nachos I ordered because why wouldn’t I get nachos?

Sadly (for our score), the first round of the quiz was math-focused, and Mindy was initially alone and trying to figure out how the game worked while struggling to remember past fifth-grade math. Even after I came to the table we didn’t do well; we felt like Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford. (Sample question; “The whole number square root of 34969 is the same number as murder in the California penal code.” How could we not know that?)

We were even more disappointed with ourselves when we knew only half the answers on a movie photo quiz of rom-coms. (How could we miss Clueless, even if it was a picture of Dionne and Murray?) If they don’t have Bible or theology questions (which they didn’t), movies would be my go-to category, and I choked.

We didn’t do well with the music category either. In honor of Michael Jackson’s 60th birthday, covers of the Gloved One’s songs were played. We had to name the song and the singer or group that covered it (these were two point questions). The only cover we were confident we knew was Weird Al’s “Fat", which was a parody rather than a cover of the King of Pop’s “Bad".

There were only five teams that night; Sean mentioned that there are usually seven or eight teams for the weekly event (which debuted at Pecado Bueno just over a month ago), usually a combination of newbies like us and regulars. At that point in the game, we were tied for nearly last place. (To be fair to us, we were a team of two people, and three of the other teams had at least four members. Giving your team a clever name is part of the deal, and we hadn’t given it much thought. We called our team “Warthog.” The best name that night was “I Thought This Was Speed Dating.”)

Things improved with the Buffett category, where we had to decide if a fact or quote applied to Jimmy or Warren Buffett. On that round we finally won the bonus question, which happened to be “What 30 Rock character had Jimmy AND Warren Buffett on his speed dial?” The reward for getting the bonus question right was a baseball card that could be redeemed for a house beerita or margarita (we got the margarita).

We nearly aced the next category -- an audio round about TV shows that have outstayed their welcome (I only recognized Supernatural because it has a character named Dean). We’re so proud to be knowledgeable about bad television.

At the end of the eight-round game, we ended up in second place (granted, two teams left before the last couple rounds, but we’ll take a win any way we can get it) and got a $15.00 gift certificate for Pecado Bueno. (We also managed to get another bonus question right, so we’ve got a baseball card tucked away to use when we go back).

Rumor has it that Amazon’s employee Geeks Who Drink competition has a hundred dollar prize. Geeks Who Drink also sponsors specialized quiz nights (like the upcoming one about Parks and Recreation) with an entry fee and cash prizes.

We had fun and thought we should try it again with people with better math skills. (Offspring, are you reading this?) Everyone playing, especially the winning team -- who was not us -- seemed to be having a good time enjoying their beverages, the company, and the friendly competition.

After the quiz was done, we were able to talk with Sean, the quizmaster. He has a full-time job, but he does this gig for fun and a little extra cash. He’s been doing Geeks Who Drink quizzes for eight or nine months, and he made it clear during the evening that he’s just reading questions given to him, so don’t blame him for saying NCSI has outstayed its welcome. (When someone griped about South Carolina barbecue being called “weird,” though, he changed the adjective to “awesome.”)

Sean had mentioned his blog, and Mindy told him she’d read and enjoyed it. We told him about our blogs and asked him our two questions. He said what made a good bar was “The workers. Ultimately people go in and out. The workers make it good or bad.” In college, he came to appreciate the servers and bartenders of bars he frequented.

He said, “The people more than the pastor or worship leader [make a good church]. Ultimately it’s the activities done by the people such as bake sales. When I was growing up, there was a Bunco night at church.” He said he still keeps in touch with people he knew from Sunday School.

Certainly, some people who could enjoy doing this kind of thing regularly. You get bonus points if you read the previous sentence and knew the question for that answer is, “Who are Dean and Mindy?”

*The Kindle version of Cheers and Amen, the book about our adventure, is on sale through Labor Day! Click here to learn more.

We walk into a wall

Round Table Clubhouse, Fresno, California
We are living in the future.

Sure, we don’t have flying cars, and that’s a big disappointment, but there are so many things we didn’t see coming. Computers in our home seemed amazing enough, but we didn’t see the internet coming or the ability to carry access to it in our pockets. Another thing we didn’t see coming was serve-yourself wine and beer taps. Though Round Table Pizza’s Clubhouse is a restaurant rather than a bar, we decided we really needed to write about its bar wall, so we asked a couple of friends to meet us there on a recent Friday night.

It makes sense that such a thing would exist -- all-you-can-drink soft drink machines in pizza parlors and fast food restaurants have been a thing for quite a while now. On the other hand, alcohol can’t be served in the same lackadaisical fashion that Pepsi and Pibb are dispensed. After ordering our pizza, we went to a different register to leave a credit card and driver’s licenses as ransom. The cashier gave us bracelets in exchange.

She pointed out the room temperature and refrigerated beer glasses (and the room temperature wine glasses) and explained how the taps work. At the wall, you hold your bracelet to a sensor under the beer or wine you want to drink. It’s easy to taste a variety of beers before committing to one. It’s also easy to run up your tab, but the wall bartender will not allow you to be overserved.

We’ve seen a cocktail-mixing machine, so I suppose a wall could also serve liquor. I assume Round Table doesn’t have the licensing or inclination. Since cider wasn’t an option, I, like Mindy, went with wine.

We’d actually visited this Round Table once before, during their grand opening on Saint Patrick’s Day. The Clubhouse is a large, open-feeling place with the usual plethora of TVs and a nice game room. We were fascinated with the artificial fire -- you could put your hand in the flames. There were many more rectangular tables than the circular ones promised in the company’s name.

On this visit, we’d asked friends from our Sunday School class at The Bridge. We had a great time together, and as we ate our pizzas and breadsticks, we asked our bar questions.

Mindy asked them whether they wanted to use their real names or aliases. Mindy gets rather enthusiastic about pseudonyms. Our friends decided to call themselves Kayla and Jethro (as in Tull).

When we asked what made for a good bar, Kayla said, “It’s the friends you go with.” Neither Kayla nor Jethro expect to meet new people at a bar but prefer a place where friends can eat, drink, and talk comfortably.

Jethro said, “If I were to own a bar and it had a vibe like Cheers did, that would be what I’d want.” Jethro also said that a trendy place can be fun.

A good church, Kayla said, should have “good teaching and the warmth of the people around you.”

They told a bit about their story. Kayla grew up going to church on occasion, and she liked it. Jethro lived in the same community, and his family never went to church. They were already a couple when someone shared the Gospel with them. Soon after, they decided to follow Jesus, and they assumed the thing to do was to go to church. They visited The Bridge (which was then called Fresno Evangelical Free Church), and the preaching of Rick Yohn, the pastor back in the day, “impacted” them. Jethro said, “He really made us think of things I’d never thought about.”

They also began attending a Sunday School class with other young couples at a stage in life when there was time to do things together. They built close friendships that carry on today. Many of the same people have been in an adult Sunday School class for over thirty years now, and Jethro said, “I never even knew I needed community.”

They said that if any one thing has kept them at The Bridge, that is it.

We attended that same Sunday School class when we lived in Fresno nearly thirty years ago, and when we moved back to the area last year, Jethro and Kayla remembered us. It has been wonderful to spend time with them again.

We went to Round Table to report on that beer and wine wall for this blog, and we always enjoy the pizza. But easily the best thing about the night was time with old friends.

We walk into a bar before it opens

Tap & Cellar, Fresno, California
Okay, I admit it. I don’t like to do things the hard way, so we went to Tap & Cellar’s soft open. If we’d gone the next day for the grand opening, we could have enjoyed a live band, and there would have been more photos on the wall, but we probably wouldn’t have had the great pleasure of talking with Mike, the owner (and, on Thursday night anyway, our bartender).

After looking at their website for directions, then going to Google maps, Mindy noted that Tap & Cellar might be hard to find (their website mentions that they’re “hard to find on purpose”). The bar’s in a business park, and we had just a little trouble finding it in the dark because we thought it was behind a closed security gate. When we circled back, the gate was open, and we made our way through.

It’s next to a karate school, so we wondered about kickers and punchers getting too much alcohol. The outside is a little drab -- although maybe that’s just because it was dark when we saw it -- but the interior is warm and inviting, with old barn wood on the walls, reclaimed heart redwood tables, and a shiny polished wall of taps. A few guys sat at the bar and baseball was on the TVs; it was opening day. Seeing MLB again was good (Seattle was playing Cleveland when we got there, the A’s and Giants having already won their openers). A guy who came in just after we sat down said next year he was going to need to take opening day off since he spends the whole day checking scores when he should be working.

Cole, a seat or so down from Mindy, was on his laptop and talking to two guys down the bar. They were talking about the business, and after a while, we noticed Cole had stepped behind the bar to get himself a drink and to serve some newcomers. He said he’d spent the day before on the road from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm, checking out breweries from Auburn to Santa Cruz (with two or three stops along the way) for Tap & Cellar.

As often mentioned here, we aren’t fans of beer, but other people would be delighted to see the wall of taps. We were amused by the names of beers (“Devil’s Teeth,” “Pulp Addiction,” “Don’t Tell Claudia”). I actually ordered from the wall, because we noticed a pineapple cider (from Oregon). Mindy was happy to see the Saviez Vineyard syrah rosé on the menu, and she ordered that. (Oddly enough, we had pineapple cider and rosé at The Black Cloister in Toledo, which came up in conversation at Tap and Cellar)

Mike, who took our orders and poured our drinks, seemed pleased with her choice, and we learned he was the winemaker. His family -- on both his mother’s and his father’s side -- has been in the wine business for over a century (Saviez was founded in 1902).

Mike said he’d been looking for a more personal means of selling their wine. For a time, they’d considered opening a tasting room at their vineyard, but bureaucratic obstacles changed their minds. Instead, a little over a year ago, Mike began the work of opening the Tap & Cellar. Their soft open began a couple of weeks ago (though they had friends and family over for a Super Bowl celebration since they had the TVs available).

The TVs were pretty much the only decorations on the walls, but Mike told us there’d be historical photos of the family property (and the family) up by noon the next day for the grand opening. Mike showed us one photo of his great-grandfather that was also on one of their bottles.

While telling us about his family, some of whom had gone to jail during Prohibition, Mike said that the great-grandfather in the photo had been the basis for the Charles Laughton character in the 1940 film They Knew What They Wanted. Mike talked about how lucky he felt to be born into his family, with a chance to follow his dreams rather than just working for a living.

We asked Mike our standard questions, “What makes for a good bar?” and “What makes for a good church?” Mke said a good bar needed, “Atmosphere and people. We’re in the service industry, not selling wine but an experience.” In designing the Tap & Cellar, they were looking to make a cool environment that was about more than beer or wine -- though wine is important to Mike, “I love people, and I hope people love my wine.”

As for what makes a good church, Mike said, “I go to church occasionally. I’m a firm believer in God.” He said the same things that make a good bar make for a good church: the atmosphere and the people.

Knowing that Mike is a winemaker (commuting between wineries in Napa and in Fresno), I asked whether he was more of a wine guy or a beer guy. He answered with an industry saying: “It t

akes a lot of beer to make good wine.”

Both beer and wine will bring people to the Tap & Cellar, but I think the staff will play even a bigger part in making people feel welcome. Even before the official opening, the welcome was grand.

We go to a "Bar" for the "Growlers"

Wine and Growlers, Project Survival’s Cat Haven, Dunlap, California
First, let me assure you the tiger was not given any alcohol. The lions also abstained. No cats partook of alcoholic beverages during Project Survival’s Wine and Growlers event, not even Annabelle, the domestic shorthair. What’s more, Cat Haven’s founder didn’t, either. He never does.

I have this inside information because Dale Anderson, my brother, is the founder, and we grew up in Sonoma County -- wine country. Our parents moved up from Southern California when Dale was a preschooler, and friends and family were always coming up to visit, and they always took wine tours (Dale says he could still give the Christian Brothers tour). Those winery tours bored the heck out of us, so as children, we vowed to each other we would not drink.

He just stayed more faithful to the vow than I did. 

During those years in Sonoma County, the dream that eventually became the Cat Haven began when a man brought a mountain lion for one of Dale’s junior high classes.At first, Dale just wanted a big cat of his own, but over the years, the dream grew. He founded Project Survival, an organization dedicated to preserving cats in the wild. As part of that mission, the Cat Haven has about 30 cats -- from cheetahs to leopards to jaguarundis and Pallas’ cat -- people can see so they’ll be encouraged to support wildlife conservation.

The admission fees help keep the facility running, but the mission of Project Survival is much bigger than that. Through events and donations, they support researchers in the wild and projects that help mitigate problems where the cats and people share territory. The organization has to be creative in their fundraising -- thus, Wine and Growlers.

The event was for people 21 and up, with local cheese and chocolate rounding out the offerings from local vineyards and breweries.  We’ve been to Project Survival’s Cat Haven countless times since it opened, but for this night only, we’re calling the Cat Haven our bar, since wines from Kings River Winery, Marechal Vineyards, and Riffelhof Vineyards and beers from House of Pendragon and Tactical Ops were all available for tasting. Riffelhof Vineyard even released a new wine, Feline Fierce Zinfandel, at the event.

For most folks, the main draw for the evening was the opportunity to take a sunset tour through the grounds; to hear Titan the lion roar, to wait for Dianna the white tiger dive into the spring-fed pond to chase her ball, or to see snow leopards Anna and Elsa. People came back from their tours talking excitedly about what they’d seen, and then they enjoyed their beverages while they sat in the picnic areas watching the sunset and listening to Boxcar Figaro, a local band.

After we helped a little with setting up for the event, we took the opportunity to ask the two questions we always ask, “What makes for a good bar?” and “Whether you go or not, what makes for a good church?”

We asked our friend Jennifer, a keeper and administrator at the Cat Haven, who’s also a very delightful person. She said a good bar needed “atmosphere,” and as I always do, I asked her to expand on that. “Friendly and inviting,” she said. “You can order a drink without pomp and circumstance. Just order a beer and have instant friends.”

When I asked what makes for a good church, she said, “I have a skewed view on that. My boyfriend’s grandfather was a fire and brimstone preacher. He said most people came to church just to judge one another. To feel good about yourself by tearing other people down. It’s hard to find a legitimate church where you love your neighbor as yourself.” She said the best church she had been to was a Hispanic church in South Dakota. They didn’t even speak the same language but were still so very friendly and welcoming.

I also asked Kalene, who was pouring samples for House of Pendragon, our questions. It turns out she was filling growlers the night we’d visited HoP, and she said that in her non-brewery hours, she works in a preschool. In a good bar, she said, “It’s all about the bartender. If they’re friendly and strike up a conversation. Some won’t give you any attention, Ugggh. They’re rude. It’s all about the service.”

And what about a good church? “It’s based on the pastor. If I don’t like the message, if it doesn’t speak to me, not relevant to me, I won’t stay.” She told me a bit about her church history. Her family went to a church that had a good children's program and youth ministry. She loved the high school ministry of the church, particularly her youth pastor. But when she graduated and moved on to “big church” she didn’t like the pastor, so she didn’t stick around. Since then, though, she’s been going to People’s Church where she really likes the pastor.

In the past, my brother's brought big cats to churches, but I haven't seen a big cat in a bar. So enjoy the pictures of big cats in this post now. You’re as likely to see them here again as you are to see Dale with a beer.