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Old school pub trivia is becoming an endangered species. With the recent closure of the beloved Tenderloin dive bar, Edinburg Castle Pub, local trivia buffs are mourning the loss of yet another long-running trivia night. Thankfully, after almost 20 years, Tuesday night trivia at the Boardroom in North Beach is still going strong.
In an age where more bars and restaurants are hiring companies like Geeks Who Drink to run their trivia events, the Boardroom still relies on the brain of host Oliver “The Baron” Chang to come up with original, thought-provoking questions every week.
“I’m the sole trivia person—I’m not getting questions from a company, so I can tailor them to my crowd, which is mostly young professionals,” Chang, who has 15 years of experience hosting trivia in San Francisco, the last three at the Boardroom, told 48hills. “It’s intellectual and social at the same time. I think that’s what makes it successful.”
As a casual older trivia player who lives in North Beach, I’d heard rumors about the Boardroom’s legendary Tequila Trivia Tuesdays. You need to show up at least an hour early to snag a table, several people told me. The questions are tough, warned a friend. The crowd’s young and competitive, said another.
Recently, I recruited a couple of friends—also women of a certain age—to join me at the bar to find out if the rumors were true. I can confirm that tables go fast. We arrived a little before 6:30pm to get one of the few remaining outside picnic tables before the game kicked off at 7:30pm. Inside, the bar was packed and buzzed with excited energy. It’s also true that we were older than the other players. Yet we felt welcome and enjoyed chatting with three recent college grads who ended up sharing our table.
Some of the questions were challenging. But not so tough that we humiliated ourselves. That’s probably because Chang crafts his questions so that there a couple of ways teams can figure them out. He tries to include clues within a question so players can narrow down answers to two or three choices to discuss with their teammates. And unlike some trivia hosts, he doesn’t do single-theme rounds.
“I keep the questions topically mixed so teams can pull in from people’s different strengths,” he explained. “If you have a theme focused on a show like ‘The Office,’ and you’ve never watched it, then you’re sitting there for 15 minutes with nothing to contribute.”
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Besides coming up with strong questions, Chang’s also personable and adept at keeping the game moving. He roamed back and forth between the inside and outside tables to repeat questions and give score updates. To our shock, early on, we were one of several teams tied for third place. Our time rubbing shoulders with the top players was fleeting. But that didn’t dampen our fun. We left knowing why folks love trivia at the Boardroom. And vowing to return.
