Question: What Packs A Bar Besides Beer?

The craft beer craze isn’t the only thing sustaining Traverse City bars. On virtually any given weeknight, you'll find team trivia competitions filling the seats as if it was the middle of July.

The quiz night trend seems to have begun when several establishments -- including Kilkenny’s, U&I Lounge, The Bayview Inn, Peegeo’s, and Incredible Mo’s -- started contracting with companies to conduct trivia nights, questions, host and all.

More recently, “community-hosted” team trivia has taken hold. The formula seems to work: friends form teams and take turns coming up with questions, while the host bar gets the benefit of a crowd on an otherwise quiet winter night.

Right Brain Brewery has hosted trivia on Tuesdays since it opened in 2007. Since then, The Workshop Brewing Company and Rare Bird BrewPub have developed trivia programs of their own.

All three breweries’ trivia nights follow the same format. Leif Kolt, Right Brain’s design, marketing, and events coordinator, calls it “elementary-classroom style”: Teams of up to six players fill out worksheets, and at the end of each round, they swap and “grade” each others’ while the host calls out answers. At the end of the night, top-placing teams usually win gift certificates to the bar.

Lars Kelto, who Rare Bird Co-Owner Nate Crane describes as “the trivia master,” used to play at Dill’s Olde Towne Saloon (now The Blue Tractor) in the 90s. That was back, Kelto says, “when trivia was one of the few things you could do” in town. Dills’ trivia was also written in-house.

On a recent Tuesday night at Rare Bird, 15 teams (with names like “Hops on Pop” and “Rich Corinthian Leather”) gathered to hear questions from team “Tasteful Sideboob.” Cheeky, politically incorrect names are a big part of team trivia.

Topics ranged from “Weird Misconceptions” (Q: “What color did people used to think blood was before it left the body?” A: “Blue”) to “All Things Related to Years” (Q: “When is the next time the date will be a numeric sequence like 12/13/14?” A: “January 2, 2103”). Kelto's team, the Homeschool Dropouts, took top honors last week.

“This week I’m going to bring a set of high-quality game show buzzers to Rare Bird,” Kelto says. “We’ll have a speed round where top teams will send a person up to answer questions. It’s very edge-of-your-seat. The whole bar gathers around and roots.”

While Kelto is primarily involved with community-hosted competitions these days, he has participated all over Grand Traverse and Leelanau counties. The Homeschool Dropouts have also made it to Team Trivia Michigan’s state finals three times and have placed twice.

The Workshop takes the summer off, and Rare Bird plans to do the same. But despite the weather or the topics, many teams are seriously committed. Rare Bird has been averaging 15 teams a week, according to Crane.

“On Tuesdays, there’s a snapshot of the night where it looks like a crazy Friday night,” he says. “Every seat is taken in there.”

There are at least 13 weekly options for trivia nearby (hours change in the summer):

Mondays
Knot Just A Bar (Omena) 6:30pm
North Peak Brewing Company/Kilkenny’s Irish Public House (Traverse City) 7pm
The Workshop Brewing Company (Traverse City) 7pm

Tuesdays
Village Inn Tavern (Suttons Bay) 6:30pm
Rare Bird BrewPub (Traverse City) 7pm
Right Brain Brewery (Traverse City) 7pm
U&I Lounge (Traverse City) 8pm

Wednesdays
Tucker’s (Northport) 6:30pm
Peegeo’s (Traverse City) 8pm
Bayview Inn Restaurant (Acme) 8pm

Thursdays
Dillinger’s Pub (Traverse City) 7pm
Incredible Mo’s (Grawn) 7:30pm

Saturdays
Turtle Creek Casino – Level 3 Lounge (Williamsburg) 6:30pm