Pig Beach – Gowanus – Thursdays @ 7

The Trivia: Five themed rounds of ten questions each plus a picture round. This trivia night is run by a Connecticut-based trivia company called Best Trivia Ever. My general stance on trivia companies is that the question writing is lazy and uninspired and the host rarely has any connection to the material, and this one isn’t much different. The questions leaned heavily into pop culture, with a lot of them seemingly referencing specific Buzzfeed articles or unverifiable Google “search data”. Questions that essentially amount to “guess the celebrity” just don’t feel satisfying, and many of the questions were so niche and obscure that even after the answer is revealed, the crowd goes “huh? who?”. The picture round is mostly impossible, focusing on D-list reality stars and young, unknown musicians. Pluses: the host was a great clue-reader, offering witty banter/hints/asides that kept it fresh even as he was repeating questions, and he kept the pace going perfectly, with enough time between questions to discuss with the team and enough time between rounds to get a drink, chat for a bit, yet still finish the night by 9:30 (trivia is always on a school night, isn’t it?).

Best Trivia Ever has the following line in their Instagram bio: “Trivia nights used to suck. We fixed that”. Number one, how dar… but then as you swipe through their many event photos, you’ll get a sense for the type of clientele they are trying to attract to trivia nights: Zoomers. And they have a point; trivia has rarely been kind to young folks, no matter the generation. Their personal experiences haven’t been in the public consciousness long enough to be considered “Trivia” with a capital T, and many of the questions are drawing upon decades of history they weren’t alive for. This was true for young people in the 90s, it was true when I started playing trivia as a twentysomething in the 2010’s, and for the most part it is still true today.

It isn’t fair, nor is it really meant to be. There is an inherent advantage for having been alive longer to accumulate the breadth and depth of knowledge required to win a trivia night. BTE’s question writers would like to skip that wait, instead opting to provide tons and tons of questions aimed squarely at Gen Z, which is such an utterly Gen Z thing to do I can’t even… The “Pub Trivia Vanguard” may be perplexed by the nature of some of these questions, as very few of them fit the classic Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit mold. And you know what? That’s OKAY! There are LOTS of different trivia nights in the city on every night of the week with plenty of traditional categories (history, sports history, movie history, etc.), but very few that cater towards folks who don’t binge watch five episodes of Jeopardy in a single sitting. I’m not gonna shake my first at these young folks and tell them to get off my trivia lawn; I encourage bars, hosts, and companies to continue to try to find underserved markets to cater to. It is my belief that EVERY bar can be a trivia bar with the right host and the right questions, and BTE is helping to demonstrate the veracity of that belief.

The winning team gets a $50 gift card to Pig Beach. Second place gets $25. Third place gets a totebag.

The Venue: Pig Beach is a massive barbecue joint in Gowanus (like right on the canal) with a ton of outdoor space and a huge, high-ceilinged indoor area where the trivia happens. There are dozens of TVs with sports and classic barbecue offerings (pulled pork, brisket, collard greens). There are plenty of beers on draft, but not the most robust cocktail list, and they’re expensive to boot.