The GGA Project -- Day #130 "Slow-Motion Sporting"

There are a lot of good things I could say about the lower East Bay/Tri-City area (Hayward, Union City, Fremont, Newark).  That the area is a hotbed of bangin' nightlife is not one of those things.  In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find a club at all in the area (only The Saddlerack comes to mind).  Bars are almost completely limited to those found in restaurants, and the majority of the standalone bars are dives (dive-evil, not dive-cool).  Given this, I've been wanting to drop by Mojo Lounge, which I'd read decent reviews about on Yelp.  With Monkey away for the night and my friend Kenneth free for the evening, it seemed their Wednesday karoake night was beckoning.


So we complied.


And what to my wondering eyes did appear before me when we entered the bar?  A shuffleboard.  Bam!


Today's New Activity: Cultivating Finesse a la Shuffleboard


Thankfully, Kenneth had already grasped the oh-so-complex rules of the game, so after the 3-second tutorial he gave me we were good to go.  Just a little housekeeping first:

Here's Kenneth sweeping the board of all the sand that'd gathered in clumps after the last round of play.

And here he is covering it all over again with more sand (?).  It made sense when we started though.  The little pucks slid much better and faster on the de-clumped sand cover.

So basically all you do is take turns sending your little puck down the board, trying to get it as far away as possible without having it go off the board.  The opponent tries to get his puck further than yours, because the only person to gain any points in a round is the one who gets his puck the furthest away.

Pretty simple.

This means I win this round!

And this means Kenneth wins.


Crystal clear, right?

The best part is that since we have the same initials, nobody won or lost :P  I think all games should be played in this somebody-won-but-we'll-never-know-who manner!


It was a pretty fun game, especially because it's a game that's not so much about domination or power, but more about aim and the art of developing a gentle touch.  And the clincher was playing with some very very good karaoke as background noise.


Normally I'm super annoyed by good karaoke singers, mostly because it always seems they take themselves way too seriously and it takes all the fun out of laughing at feeble warblers like myself.  But the people at this particular (non-evil) dive were good but cool and un-pretentious, and it helped that they had decent song choices, too. The only exception was the horrible-but-karaoke-required "Summer Lovin'" from Grease.  Ugh!


Anyway, it was a super fun night and I will totally be dragging people up my way to Mojo Lounge soon.  Three cheers for down-to-earth watering holes.