A first. I have just had someone from Denver Colorado respond to my blog with a question. Tried to answer the query but the email was returned. In the unlikely event of Shannon returning to my blog, here is the email I tried to send on the subject of pub quizzes:
"Hello Shannon,
I've not been so excited in ages, one person on earth has read my blog.
I haven't been to Denver (or indeed America) but I assume, perhaps wrongly that you don't have pubs (public houses) there. So therefore no pub quizzes? Quizzes have joined darts, dominoes, arguing about nothing, talking bollocks and saying things you will regret tomorrow as a popular activity to accompany drinking in English pubs. Not sure about Scotland and Ireland.
Are they difficult? It depends if you know the answers, and I often don't. But my fellow team members do so we win free beer from time to time. The Castle and Falcon in Newark where we have a go at the quiz is a decent pub with a predominantly working class clientele and our quizmaster sets what you might call "tabloid questions". The questions tend to require knowledge of "facts" about TV soaps, films, celebrities, sport, kings, queens, historical dates, capital cities, acronyms, biggest, smallest etc, things I'm either not interested in, or can't be bothered to remember. I suppose the questions are aimed at "what" rather then "why" or "how". Example from week before last "what is a mysoginist?" - not many of the men knew but a few would qualify. By the way about equal numbers of women and men participate.
Good fun on a Sunday night but feelings can run high both within teams and between them. All the teams think that the others are getting more help from the quizmaster. Any way is there a quiz culture in the States?
A final word on pubs. Sadly the traditional smallish local English pub is on the decline. This is for many reasons but importantly it is much cheaper to drink at home now here. Not the same I am afraid.
Anyway thanks the comment, and if you get the time let me know about quizzes and bars in Denver.
All the best,
David"
Newark market place
Newark market place dull Saturday morning
Newark Church
Two residents at the weir
Snowy Dry Doddington
Snow on the road to not very Dry Doddington
Raleigh Runabout RM6 Refurbished
Look for the "before" in the blog post
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1 comment:
I know the feeling -- only close friends and immediate family read my blog!
Thanks for the answer. I was wondering because yes, we do have something of a pub quiz culture happening in Denver, and some of the other large cities in the States (apparently "Quizzo" is huge in Philadelphia), and my boyfriend and I play on a team, or sometimes just the two of us. So I just wanted to know how the quizzes compare; ours tend to be chock full of pop culture trivia and then some science and literature questions to weed out the weak (that's my theory, anyway).
The pubs themselves are sort of a pale imitation of the pubs you know, some better than others, and there are styles of pubs -- some model themselves after British pubs and some after Irish pubs, and it's really quite funny to see people argue over which style is best. You could always find Irish bars in Denver, but never anything purporting to be a pub up until about 10 years ago, and now they're quite fashionable. The more successful ones are in neighborhoods rather than right downtown in the bar/night club district. I like them because the point is to sit down and drink beer and -- as you said -- talk bollocks with one's friends.
Alas, I branched out into whiskey drinking following the quiz this past Saturday night, and regretted it on Sunday. I should know better at my age.
Thanks for answering! :)
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