The Portside Pub: Reloaded

Yet again, the quizmasters at the Portside have changed. Now Mondays will find it being hosted by IQ2000 trivia, with the exact host unconfirmed at press time. 

Where: The Portside Pub, 7 Alexander

When: 7:30 PM Mondays

Web Presence: Quizmaster Katie usually provides some hints on her Facebook page

Team Info: Max team size of seven, so if you have more, get ready to break them down into two teams

Prizes: $60 in bar credit for first place, $40 for second, and there's even a prize for team who finished second to last.

Format: Two halves, with three ten-question categories each. There was a lightning round that gave beer to the winners as well, which is a fun diversion.

Food and Drink: Much the same as before, but the beer selection seems to have grown in their variety. If you've got a sweet tooth, they've got a tasty ice cream sandwich, made with ice cream from the impeccable Earnest Ice Cream.

Alright! You may recall that I recently did a review of the Smartside Trivia at the Portside, but forget about that! It's old news! The Portside has revamped their quiz by tipping the fantastic Katie, of Darby's notoriety, to host the show. As you may have expected given her previous body of work, it was a smart choice.

The linear quarters of the Portside haven't changed much in the last six weeks, but the trivia sure has. The quiz starts around 7:30 PM, and moves along at a decent speed. The content is classic: heavy on the pop culture, themed rounds, with a willingness to ask some legitimately tough questions. There's an enjoyable music round, some matching, and even a few new twists to Katie's formula. The lightning round between halves is a great way to hand out some free beer. Identifying random things as fast as you can is a better beer dispersal mechanism than heads or tails anyways. I suppose you shouldn't complain about free beer, but I don't see why I can't rank my preferred methods of handing it out.

As a relatively young quiz, the Portside doesn't yet have the crowds of regulars that some quizzes have. The night we were there had about seven to eight other teams, and a few tables that weren't participating. Personally, I find it interesting to see a quizmaster who is used to packed houses and rapt attentions hosting at a smaller level. Katie does a great job engaging the teams, and it looked as though even the teams who hadn't come out explicitly for quiz were having fun. Gastown is in need of more pub quizzes, and Monday has always been one of my favourite nights to go to a quiz. The week's just started, but there's still a reason to look forward to Mondays. Forget what some cats may say, if they even exist. Anyways, hopefully the word gets out that there's good times and great prizes to be had here, and the ranks of quizzers will swell.

Judgement Day: An excellent Quiz Night With Katie quiz, in a convenient downtown location, with excellent prizes. May as well get in on the action at ground level.

Mixing my sequel signals 2: Electric Boogaloo

Smartside Trivia @ The Portside Pub

THE QUIZ AT THE PORTSIDE IS NOW ON MONDAYS AT SEVEN PM. Furthermore, it is being run by Katie of Quiz Night With Katie fame. The review below is kept as an archive, but is not accurate anymore. Look for an updated review sometime soon.

Where: The Portside Pub, 7 Alexander


When: 8 PM Wednesdays

Web Presence: It merits an occasional mention on the Portside's web page, but not much else

Team Info: Seems to be "bring 'em if you've got 'em"

Prizes: Gift certificates and beer to be had! It looks like they will sometimes give away Canucks tickets, but with the playoffs looming, that possibility is getting less and less likely.

Format: A beefy quiz, with three rounds divided into several sub-categories, probably around 60 questions in total.

Food and Drink: The nautically-themed bar features nautically-themed food, which makes sense. I had a pretty tasty lobster chowder, and everyone's favourite arthopod shows up more than a few times across the menu. There's a selection of fairly standard pub food, but vegetarians may have a tricky time finding something they actually want to eat for dinner. If you're feeling generous, you can even buy Save-On-Meats sandwich tokens to distribute on your way home. The bar is as you would expect, with a better than average tap list and $4 Jameson. You've been warned.

The quiz at the Portside is run by the former hosts at 131 Water, a nearby Gastown establishment whose quiz I quite enjoyed. I hadn't the chance to attend when they were hosting there, so this was my first experience with their quiz. If you are wondering why I keep using the plural third-person possessive, it is because I forgot their names. I'm sorry Vancouver, but you don't always get the pub quiz blog you deserve,

The confines of the Portside were cozy and pleasant, evoking the nautical air that one would expect of bar near the waterfront. Being found in the trendy locale of Gastown meant that you were more likely to find house music than sawdust, more chic clothes than salty dogs. It was a good thing that the tables weren't terrible either, since the quiz started an hour late. In their defense, it was one of the first nights there, and they apologized profusely for the delay.

The quiz itself was an immense one, easily one of the largest in town — if you are looking to maximize the number of questions you get asked, then look no further. There were three rounds, each containing between 20 and 30 questions. The rounds were subdivided into 2-5 categories. A sampler: Food & drink, matching a world leader to their country, movie scenes with actors replaced by cats, and a well-curated music round, evoking classics such as D'Angelo's "Untitled (How Does It Feel)."  A nice, broad selection of questions.

However, there was one round which I feel compelled to say something about. The premise was as follows: Order these ten cities from warmest to coldest. The cities are: Hell (Norway), Yakutsk (Russia), Harbin (China), Fort Vermilion (Canada), Fort St John (Canada), Ulaan Baatar (Mongolia) and others. You get the point though. They are all improbably cold places. Is Siberia colder than Mongolia? Than Northern Alberta? Than Northwestern China? It is almost like asking if Seattle or Vancouver or Burnaby gets more rain. How do you even measure it? Coldest single point in time? Average chilliness? How cold it is right now?  We, like most teams, bombed it. It was the toughest matching round since "match the NASCAR driver to their sponsor," which I didn't mind so much. At least that had some facts backing it up.

The takeaway from all this complaining? First off, don't make "put these in order" round. They're awful, one mistake can ruin an entire round for a team. Secondly, if you have to, make the differences fairly obvious, or at least have a few sets that can be ordered in and of themselves. Finally, use a ranking that has an actual definition, or at least say but what metric you're measuring. This smells quite similar to the article Mike wrote on why you don't ask questions about city size.

I hate to end on a complaint, so here's a paragraph break leading into the final summary. Did you know the paragraph symbol (¶) is called a pilcrow? Now you do! Also, even though I didn't like that one round, I thought this was a really fun quiz with a lot of potential. I'll definitely be heading back there sometime soon!

The Cold Hard Facts: I just said it! A fun quiz with a great music round, and will hopefully only keep getting better.

It was cold here once