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TRIALS & errors |
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Account retold by Lee Newbauer, photos by TwoSticks |
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Trials & Errors: Monday Night Football at a British Pub, September 24th, 2001 Overheard at Trials Pub:
There was a complete intelligence failure for the second GQBSV. I suppose it would have helped if the Junta scouted out this place before we decided to descend on it. The idea was to pick a British Pub, in this case, the very Victorian Trials Pub in downtown San Jose, and demand to watch football...American football. None of that soccer crap. Imagine the hilarity! We picked a Monday night game to watch and everything was set. We'd meet around 6p to watch the game and drink some brews. Two problems made themselves evident very early on: For one, 6pm was too early. Granted, that is when Monday Night Football starts, but I realized after stepping off light rail that coming straight from work left me very hungry. What was I going to do for dinner? There were no restaurants near Trials. Luckily they serve some very tasty pub food and I enjoyed a Ploughman's Platter that included wedges of Cheddar and Stilton cheese, tasty bits of sausage roll, bread & salad along with my first two "Fat Lip" ales (be careful when you empty a pint and ask for another "Fat Lip"). Secondly, there was no TV! Who ever hear of a bar without a TV? Come to find out that Trials is very "old school" and had we gone to their website beforehand, we would have realized this: "At Trials there is no room for television sets as the wit and wisdom of the customers provides all the entertainment required for an enjoyable night of drinking." Oops. When you are there, you can almost picture yourself in pre-war Britain. Pre-war Britain had no televisions and for a second I almost thought I heard Winston Churchill on the radio. So when we wanted to watch the game, we were out of luck. The junta had to make a quick decision...did we move the event to another bar or stick it out with Trials? Mother Nature answered that for us when downtown San Jose was struck with a freak electrical storm and it started to pour rain. Everyone that was outside, including a group of rugged rugby players, streamed indoors and we were staying put. Since Trails is very aware of the absence of TV and believes their patrons provide the entertainment, Monday night happened to be trivia night. They broke the bar crowd into groups of 3, each person paying $3. The winning team would split the kitty (this night it was a whopping $63), the losing team gets free beer. Sounded like fun so JD Wylde, Poco and myself formed a team, determined to use our mutual knowledge of useless facts to crush the competition. Questions ranged from easy: "What year was Sputnik launched?" (1957) to very difficult: "What do you get when you book a hotel under the "American Plan"?" (all meals included). Out of twenty questions, my team came in second place with nine answers correct. The winning team had thirteen correct. What was very suspicious was that the losing team got zero right and hence the free beer. Very suspicious.... While we were busy with trivia, someone opened up the puzzle chest where Trials keeps their collection of cool puzzles and games. Virtually everyone tried their hand at the Iron Heart, a metal contraption where the point was to separate two pieces of metal from each other and then, in a cruel twist, put them back together again. For some, this was a difficult and frustrating task (see picture of Erndawg at left), especially when you have a few beers in you. Watching others try to do this was quite entertaining. Thanks to everyone that made it out to our weekday jaunt. You folks are really what make Guerrilla Queer Bar the fun time that it is. Our next event will be a going away party to our Token Straight Chick, Gretchen, and her hunky boyfriend. Downtown Sunnyvale is hereby put on notice!
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