The Five Point

These five points

Where: The Five Point, 3124 Main Street

When: 8pm every Wednesday

Web Presence:  You can get info from both The Five Point's Facebook page, and you might possibly, maybe, get some info at the Facebook page for Smarty Pints Trivia, who run the show. You may recognize them as the guys who run the quiz at Falconetti's

Team Info: However many you can fit at your table

Format: Once again, about 40 questions plus a name that tune, multiple choice, and a picture round. At halftime all scores are wiped out, so you get a first half winner and a second half winner, but no overall winner.

Prizes: Each half will yield up 3 possible prizes for the top three teams - The night I was there, the prizes were a pitcher of beer, a gift certificate, or 2 bombers of beer for take-home consumption, which I was a fan of.

Food and drink: The Five Point offers a $15 burger and brew deal on Trivia Wednesdays as well as $3.50 shots of Jameson, if you feel the urge to give the other teams a head start. The nachos were impressive, and poor chip management left us with more toppings than chips at the end of the day.

You'll find The Five Point's quiz starting up every Wednesday at 8PM-ish. Use your sports-sense to determine how late the quiz will start based on whatever sports are playing that night. The Five Point is a very popular place to watch a game, and a particularly interesting contest might end up with the quiz being delayed a minute or thirty. Fortunately, the night we were there was game 5 of the historically excellent Blackhawks-Kings series, and we were treated to an absolutely sublime overtime, finally ended by Michael Handzus, who I was certain had been shuffled to the hockey graveyard, but I guess is so bad ass that hell spat him back out.

Not these five points

The Five Point is a place that wears its opinions on its sleeve — or signboard. And the Five Point's opinion is that you should be inside, drinking their drinks. The atmosphere of the quiz reflects that, with copious amounts of liquid prizes, a game of heads or tails for even more drinks, and cheap beer. It is only four dollars for a can of PBR, although the $6.50 pint Fat Tug is actually cheaper on a per-fluid ounce basis (assuming CAMRA standard 20oz. pints), and you get a better beer, in this reviewer's humble opinion. If the alcohol doesn't get your mood up, you can always rely on the music, which is smoothly played between questions, keeping the party started, up in here, and all the time, in spite of being on neither Grove Street, NOR in the U.S.A.

I feel Mike's take on the host in his review of a previous Smarty Pints quiz was accurate AND clever, so I'll just cede to the past on this one:

Tandem emcees Greg and Ryan run the show here and share the hosting and question-writng duties between them. The hosting is good: the two work a kind of deadpan, affectedly-listless Brian-Posehn-slash-mumblecore-cinema angle which may not play to all tastes, but I found entertaining.

Once again, the questions are excellently done, the music round is tough AND fun ( But seriously seriously seriously that Johnny Cash album again! Someone needs to send these kids to Red Cat or Neptoon and find some other cover songs). The In The News round, often an excuse for lazy newspaper skimming masquerading as question writing, is well done. More importantly, it doesn't feel like they're playing with kid gloves on. Altogether, a good quiz that was a lot of fun, and a great choice for a Wednesday night on Main Street. In fact, I think it may be the only one in the area.

Pro Tip: If you want five free points, come equipped with a list of the top five films at the box office in the current week. They say it comes up every week, so you may as well be on a level playing field with the rest of the teams out there. Now, go forth and win some prizes.

IMHO (Imperious Mephistopheles, Horned Oppressor): A good quiz, strong enough to not be
lost in the competitive Wednesday quiz market. It would be nice if more people stuck around after the game, but we must concede the existence of other hobbies in this wide world.