The return of the Boats and Garden Hoses

When I played trivia at Brown’s years ago, there were several dominant trivia teams.  One of the more memorable trivia teams was a squad who took their name from an iconic scene in the Will Ferrell movie “Step Brothers,” where Ferrell and John C. McGinley make a music video called “Boats n’ Hoes.”  I’d link a YouTube clip here, but you should put the film on your Netflix queue and save me the trouble.

I also remember that team because two of their members – Jennie and Mark – had a disagreement with one of the team members, and joined Street Academy for a couple of months.

Eventually Brown’s trivia moved from Brown’s to Revolution Hall, and just a couple of weeks ago back to Brown’s, this time on Monday nights.  So as my Monday Night Street Academy team – myself, Jeremy and Alexis – got ready to play and defend last week’s win, I thought I saw some recognizable faces in the taproom.

Yes it was.  The Boats were back, albeit rebranded as “Boats ‘n Garden Hoses,” as per the new rules on PG-friendly team nicknames.

Last night was not one of Street Academy’s best nights – we were unable to identify the person who sang the Olympic theme “The Power of the Dream” from the 1996 Olympics (we put down Whitney Houston, it was Celine Dion), and the triple-bonus question – name the three Canadian cities that have Hard Rock Cafes – hurt as well.  We put down Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver – apparently it was Toronto, Ottawa and Niagara Falls, the last one being a serious kick in my brain because I remember taking my wife Vicki to a Hard Rock Cafe in Niagara Falls after we visited the falls itself; albeit we visited on the American side of the Falls, but heck I should have remembered it, especially when Vicki bought about $50 worth of HRC pins and souvenirs … but I digress…

At the end, we were in fourth place and the final question involved identifying in what decade Southwest Airlines first took to the air.  As the host indicated that Southwest was originally a regional carrier, I recalled that there were regional carriers in New York back in the 1950’s, including Mohawk Airlines, so we wrote down 1950’s and prayed for the best.

It was the 1970’s.  And Boats ‘n Garden Hoses won for the night.

As they told me afterward, although they were dominant most nights at Brown’s years ago, all they would win at that time were individual rounds, and not the final overall prize.  But this time, they were able to put everything together and, for the first time, take the overall $30 gift card, so congratulations to them.

It’s also one of the first times that a “name” team (as opposed to one that changed its name every week to reflect whoever died or was involved in a political scandal) came back to Brown’s with the new trivia company.  One can only hope that other teams from Brown’s past – including the roller derby squad The Hellions of Troy, the women’s hockey team Moose, and others will come back to the Taproom and give the new trivia setup a try.

At least they know that they’ll see some familiar faces.