“So what’s your trivia team name – and where are your teammates?”

July 2005. It was a warm Tuesday night, and I was on my way to the Hooters restaurant in Crossgates Mall – for what I had heard was a spirited competition of bar trivia.

Normally the only time I ate at Hooters was on Sunday afternoons when the Pittsburgh Steelers weren’t playing on my home television, and I had to find a place where the games were broadcast with the NFL Sunday Ticket. One of the Hooters girls told me that on Tuesday nights, someone comes in and hosts trivia, and the place is packed from front to back with teams trying to win free food and beer. She mentioned some of the teams names – Lynch’s Mob, Clay Aiken’s Skid Marks – those were the only ones she could remember at the time.

I filed the information in the back of my mind; I was more engrossed in watching Ben Roethlisberger toss a touchdown pass to Hines Ward. But the idea of competitive team trivia intrigued me.

So in July of 2005, I drove to Crossgates and sat at the bar at Hooters, waiting for the host to come in and take team names. While I waited, I spoke with the bartender Corinne and asked her what the trivia entailed. “It’s a lot of questions, and you get points if you get each one right. The tougher ones are worth more points, and at the end of the night the top three teams win free food and beer.”

Seemed simple enough.

“So how many people are you bringing for your team?” she asked.

Oh… I hadn’t thought of bringing teammates. That most likely would have involved calling my friends, seeing if any of them had the time to come to Hooters on Tuesday night for a couple of hours, and then have to deal with their wives and girlfriends wanting to know WHY they were in a Hooters.

So I asked Corinne the question that would eventually determine if I could play team trivia or not.

“Is there a limit to how many people can be on a team?”

“No. We’ve had teams of 10 or 15 here.”

“Um… I meant can you have a team of one – like, can I play as my own team?”

“I guess so,” she said, as she pulled the bar tap to fill a pitcher with Budweiser. “I’ve never seen anyone play as a team of one before.”

At that point, the trivia host walked into the bar. He started handing out pencils and stapled answer sheets to the regulars who swarmed his table.

After a couple of minutes, I walked over. “So can I play this game?”

“Sure,” the host said, handing me an answer booklet. “What’s your team name?”

Team name, team name, jeez I hadn’t thought of a team name. Then it hit me. I gotta represent my past, and decided that the name of my high school was as good a name as any. “Street Academy.”

“Okay, rules are simple. You get 20 questions, some of them are multiple choice. You can skip two questions, and at the end you bet whatever points you want, like Jeopardy. Top three teams win orders of wings. So where are your teammates?”

“Um… I don’t have any. Can I play as a one-man team?”

“Sure,” he replied, scribbling down the name “Street Academy” on a mimeographed score sheet.

I later learned that the host, Kevin Baker, was previously involved in radio, and had been operating this trivia game at Hooters for several years – originally as a promotion within the radio station, and then eventually as a secondary job. His assistant, another radio guy named “General James,” would take the answer sheets as people handed them up, and helped Baker keep score.

I looked around. The place was filling up fast. I ordered some food and got ready for the game.

The questions were tough but fair, I missed a couple of early questions but eventually got into the rhythm of the game. During the match, Baker asked several “bonus” questions, which gave you eight points for each correct answer. On a quadruple bonus question, I only got two of the four questions right, and thought – oh crap, I gained 16 points and lost 16 points at the same time.

Nope, Baker told me the next time I handed up an answer slip, you only lose points on a bonus question if you miss every possible answer. So if you got one answer right and three wrong in the bonus question, you still earned eight points.

After the 19th question, Baker ran down the scores, and I was in 9th place among 30 teams. Not bad for the first time playing.

Then came the final question. Unlike the previous 19 questions, Baker only gave the category on the final “bet what you want” question – the category was California trivia.

Yikes, I thought… that could be anything. But I had nothing to lose, so I bet all my chips.

He read the final question. “Sutter’s Mill, the site of the California Gold Rush, is located near what major California city?”

I drew a blank. All I could think of was that it’s often the earliest or quickest-settled cities that become state capitals. Nothing to lose – I wrote down Sacramento and handed up the slip.

Baker went through the entire lineup of teams – squads with names like Pork is a Verb – Tres Hombres – Cartman’s Mom – Boom Stick – ATTAX – Uncalled 4 – Wild Agbyanis – and a dozen other names. Then he said, “Team number 7, a new squad called Street Academy, bet it all, and he wrote down Sacramento.”

He read a few more answers, and then said, “And Team #1, Lynch’s Mob” –

The place erupted in a chorus of boos and catcalls and jeers, like the crowd hissing the villian in a movie serial. Baker read their answer.

I asked Corinne, “Why are they booing that team like that?”

“They’re the top team in the bar, and they don’t often lose,” she replied. She then pointed over to what looked like a wing-sauce mixing bowl that was bolted to a wooden base. On the bottom of the base were the words “TRIVIA BOWL.” “They won that last year,” she said.

Baker eventually read the answer – which was indeed Sacramento. After the scores were all settled, I discovered that my one-man operation had nabbed third place – and with it, a gift certificate for 20 chicken wings at Hooters.

Nice. I walked in there with no expectations – and I walked out of there with 20 free wings – and the start to one of my favorite pasttimes, competitive team trivia in the Capital District.

More to this story in future posts.