Hooters Trivia Reunion Night – June 14th, BE THERE!!

It was the spring of 2007.  My Street Academy team at the time consisted of myself, Rich Mahady, Tracey Stein, her boyfriend Ken Secor and my wife Vicki.  The final question that night was on the category of movie monsters.  We were in the lead and bet a sizeable amount to lock everyone else out should we have the right answer.

The question was, “The 1956 film Godzilla starred Raymond Burr, who played a character who shares his name with what comedic actor?”

Half the teams put down Will Smith, some others put down Jim Carrey.   Since I saw the film several times, and recalled how coincidental it was that Raymond Burr’s character was named after comedian Steve Martin, I already had the answer scribbled out before the host finished the question.

Yes, we got it right.  And yes, we won about $80 worth of Hooters food.

And two days later, Hooters shut down when the corporation that owned eight Northeastern-based Hooters restaurants filed for bankruptcy.   The gift certificate was uncashable.  The bar was cleared out.  All that was left of our days at the Crossgates Mall Hooters was the Trivia Bowl, which is still used today as the championship chalice of Capital District trivia supremacy.

That was four years ago.  And all the trivia teams from that time period – along with the Hooters waitstaff – have scattered throughout all the Capital District bars and taverns and restaurants and evening diaspora.  Some of those trivia teams are now the #1 teams in other bars; while the waitstaff have moved to different eateries.

Four years after that last game at the original Crossgates Mall-based Hooters, and in anticipation of the new Hooters opening up on 70 Wolf Road in Albany, there’s going to  be a Hooters Reunion Trivia Game.  It’s going to be at Stout on North Broadway, with the first question starting at 7:30 p.m.  And yes, there will be New York Yankees tickets available for the winning team.

“It’s been four years since Hooters abruptly closed,” said Kevin Baker, the organizer of Trivia Nights Live and the host at many of the trivia games around the Capital District.  “It’ll be good to see a lot of faces that I haven’t seen in a long time.”

And in addition to Baker hosting the game, there will be several of the original Hooters Girls waiting the tables and collecting their tips.

The Capital District trivia scene goes all the way back to 1996, when radio show producer Kevin Baker worked with the newly-opened Capital District Hooters to promote a team trivia game at their bar.

“I worked at PYX 106 in the 1990s, and I had a mutual friend with the first general manager at Hooters, and we started as a radio promotion.  Hooters was buying advertising for a while, and then they stopped advertising, but we kept doing trivia until 1998.  I switched radio stations in 1999, I had another friend who was managing Hooters, we did it straight from 1999 to 2007.”

The game grew from those humble beginnings, and it spawned the first super-trivia team, Lynch’s Mob.

“Back then, we were the only game in town for a long time.  Lynch’s Mob they were the team to beat, they were the team that got booed every week, they always sat next to my table.  The game had a different format, we did 15 questions and the points were different.  I re-wrote the game and I changed the way that I got the questions, and it turned into what we have today.  As time went on, we’d have 20, 30, 40 teams coming every Tuesday at Hooters.  It turned into this phenomenon that I never even imagined.”

The big prizes each week – the top three teams would win a smörgåsbord of bar food, enough to feed a six-person team for a night, or a one-person team – like my original Street Academy lineup -for a week.

“We used to give away a lot of beer, we’d give away a lot of food, the top three teams each week won a lot of stuff.  There were so many people playing every week, it was very worthwhile for the restaurant.  We had people playing in the hallway, it was so crowded at Hooters on Tuesday night.”

During the summer, Baker moved the start time for the game from 7:30 to 8:30, so that he could play softball prior to going to Hooters.  The teams followed the time change.  That’s when he knew that the game was going to survive and thrive.

“When everybody followed the time change, when it didn’t affect business, that’s when we knew we had a good solid base of teams.  There was one year I moved to Vermont, and we kept the time at 8:30 through the wintertime, and it was just getting bigger and bigger.  People were going to play, and certainly I’ll never deny that the atmosphere had something to do with it, but it got me started on something that’s grown into what it is today.”

Today, Baker’s Trivia Nights Live company operates over two dozen trivia games throughout the Capital District – with some games as far away as Central New York and Vermont.  He’s worked out a deal with the Recovery sports bar chain, and for the past two years there have been “Recovery Bowl” trivia tournaments, with the grand prize being VIP tickets to NFL football games.

“Trivia at Hooters was a big party, that’s what it was.  We took over a table and run up a huge bar tab, we’d be drinking and eating with everyone else, at halftime the food would come in and we’d eat with everyone else.  It was an event not only for the people that played – people knew to find me there, they knew that on Tuesday nights, I’d be there for trivia.  Two examples of nights that I did trivia, even under difficult times, because I knew it was a personal relationship between myself and the teams to play trivia and get together – the day my father died, I said it, screw it I’m doing trivia that night, and we also did trivia on 9/11.  We had a small but loyal crowd on 9/11 for trivia.”

The teams evolved over time, and there were several regular winning teams each week – Tres Hombres, Pork is a Verb, the Village Idiots, the Skidmarks, and Street Academy.

“There were so many different teams, and many of them played for years and years, and it became a rivalry within the bar – trash-talking – people having a good time, people from out of town that would play again and again, we had people from all over the Capital District, and it was the Tuesday night party that so many people looked forward to, that now it continues in a different fashion.  Back then it was one night, one place, bunch of girls in orange shorts selling wings – it was lots of fun.”

The Hooters Reunion trivia game will take place on Tuesday, June 14 at the Stout Bar on North Broadway.  All the original trivia teams are encouraged to attend, as well as the new teams that have joined the Trivia Nights Live family since 2007.  And there will be New York Yankees tickets available to the winning team.  How’s that for some incentive?

Oh, and if there’s one more incentive for you to go to the Reunion Night…

Street Academy is the last team to win a Trivia Nights Live game at Hooters.  You wanna try to be the team to stop that four-year unbeaten streak?  Try it.  Hee he he he he…