Triune Impurity Rites

It's been awhile since I've updated this, and we've got some news from three corners of the city. I hope this enables a broad swath of the city to drink and answer some questions.

First off, the good people of Marpole have a quiz to call their own, as the Milltown Bar & Grill have started a trivia night on Thursdays. head on down, for four rounds of trivia, for a shot to win over 60 dollars in prizes. I'm told Thursday is Fish and Chips night, so that's an added bonus. They also run Music Trivia every second Saturday, providing the opportunity to go to a quiz for thirteen consecutive days (!). 

Our next port of call will take us to Commercial Drive, where Stateside Craft is running some Thursday Night Trivia. It looks like you can grab a $12 pitcher of beer on Thursdays, so that should be reason enough to go. Don't know much else about it, though. 

And finally, to round out this holy trinity of Thursday quizzes - it looks as though the excellent quiz at the Our Town Cafe (the one at Kingsway and Broadway) is back on, after a long hiatus. I haven't stopped back in, but last I went, it was a fantastic quiz. No word on whether Def Jeoppard is back providing musical accompaniment. 

I'll try to head out to these quizzes to give everyone an update as soon as I can. It'll take at least three weeks, but more likely four or five. Or six. Or ten. 

Stay tuned for an excited addition to the blog!

The Princeton Pub

Where: The Princeton Pub, 1901 Powell Street

When: 8 PM Wednesdays

Web Presence: You can follow Quizmaster Rebecca on twitter, @trebekaquiz

Team Info: Bring 'em if you got em? I didn't see any specific team size limit.

Prizes: Random prizes throughout the night, and a round of drinks for the first place squad

Format: Two or three rounds, each with three categories of ten questions

Food and Drink: The very definition of pub food, without any aspirations toward craft, or local chic. Plain, straight food that will fill you up. As a result of being located in one of Vancouver's craft beer hotspots, the beer selection is quite good.

When Alexander died, the Wars of the Diadochi flared up as Perdiccas, Antipater, Ptolemy and others carved out their own satrapies from the continent-spanning empire. When Katie (of Quiz Night With Katie fame) finally shed the Vancouver coil, the aftermath was a lot less bloody across her three quiz nights. While no quiz has ever been able to take root in the arid soil of the Portside, grounds were more fertile in the East. As Ptolemy founded his dynasty in Egypt, so too has Trebeka built her own Lagidae at the Princeton Pub & Grill, located at the corner of Powell and Victoria streets.

If you're still reading this after all that needless masturbatory exposition: thanks! Now I'll tell you what you want to know. Starting at 8 PM, despite what the website and posters say, Trebeka's quiz is a well constructed quiz, with a light but competitive crowd. There were about six teams when we were there, and room for a few more. The questions are grouped into themed rounds, which I love. Instead of two rounds of General Knowledge and some picture rounds, each week you are going to be quizzed on something more specialized. I'm a fan of this style as it lets all sorts of people join in on the question answering, and rewards the most versatile teams. Our table d'hôte served up a round on Tiling, grout and all, and a round on Mali. Given the railroad-adjacent locale, it was clarified that round would be about the country, and not the drug.

The food is fine, and the beer options varied. The service can be a bit slow, but have some pity on the one poor bartender they have trying to keep everything straight. It is a bit out of the way if you live downtown or west of Main, but if you're in the erstwhile Hastings-Sunrise or really anywhere else in East Van, it's an excellent choice. So go! A quiz like this deserves more teams.

Too Long? Didn't Read?: A strong quiz in a slightly far-flung locale. I'm definitely going back.

Ptolemy I Soter - looks good,
but can he run a quiz?

Will There Ever Be a Rainbow?

I'm a little bit late to the game, but Woo Hoo Classic Simpsons Trivia has moved out of the slightly bizarre environs of SD Galleria, and on to the less convenient, but nicer confines of The Waldorf. Head down to the Tiki Bar, and share a drink with everyone's favourite Olmec head. When's the next quiz? Tomorrow, so adjust your schedules accordingly.

As Christopher Wallace once said, "If you don't know, now you know"

Señor Xtapolapocetl

Falconetti's Smarty Pints Trivia

THE QUIZ AT FALCONETTI'S IS NO MORE. TO REMINISCE ABOUT HAPPIER QUIZ TIMES, CATCH SMARTY PINTS TRIVIA AT THE FIVE POINT ON MAIN STREET, WEDNESDAYS AT 8.

Where: Falconetti's East Side Grill, 1812 Commercial Drive

When: 8pm every Tuesday

Web Presence:  The Falconetti's facebook page posts reminders about the quiz, albeit somewhat irregularly

Team Info: However many you can fit at your table

Format: About 40 questions plus a name that tune, multiple choice, current events, 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: Choice of shots or pitcher for top three teams in first and second half, as well as for particularly funny joke answers.

Food and drink: Falconetti's is famed for their tantalizing menu of gourmet sausages; meanwhile, the veg-heads will enjoy the creative poutines on offer.


Falconetti's pub quiz takes place every Tuesday at 8pm, downstairs. Specificity is important in this case because if you go upstairs at the same time, there's stand-up comedy, and if you go on the wrong day, you may find yourself, variously, at either a karaoke night, a Walking Dead screening party, a DJ set, a live rock-country performance, or even a burlesque show.

Appropriately, Falconetti's quiz is the venue in microcosm: a quirky mashup of sundry cultural elements with the common thread throughout being a simple dedication to fun, in all its various forms. And in this regard, Falconetti's is a success.

Tandem emcees Greg and Ryan run the show here and share the hosting and question-writing 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.

The question writing is better: the two have a knack for writing questions that are, as mentioned above, a lot of fun. My team had a great time trying to puzzle out what year Alex Trebek shaved his trademark mustache or what Ontario city was recently anointed Canada's serial killer capital (who'd've thought it was sleepy little college town London? It's always the quiet ones you have to watch out for.) The name that tune round, an eclectic mix of shameless dance-in-your-seat jams ripped from Napoleon Dynamite's iPod, was equally enjoyable, in spite of a minor ID3 snafu which misidentified the artists -- and artists they are -- behind "Whoomp! There It Is."

Between questions, Falconetti's brawny sound system blasts yet more music at you, again, hewing closely to the establishment's holy gospel of party ye all the time. Fun, yes, but so loud as to make intra-team discussion somewhat difficult. Let's by no means lose the music -- that would be nothing less than apostasy -- instead, just ratchet it down from 11 to 10.

(On that note, stick around after the quiz for an outstanding '80s hair metal set by DJ Thunderjunk, a man who it must be said is no less than a connoisseur of the genre, as attested by him playing a Ratt song that wasn't "Round and Round.")

Bottom line, Falconetti's is a lot of fun. Definitely worth a check out.

Beware