Great news! I saw a favorite waitress for the first time in months today. Lauren the waitress stopped by my table at lunch today, wearing civilian clothes that showed off her stylish tattoos, and revealed to me that she’ll be returning to work after a long hiatus. Waitresses like Lauren are necessary to make restaurants and other “third places” to be welcoming to regulars. When I was a child, my “third place” was the home of my best friend, Tito. But as we get older some may think it strange to spend all of one’s time at a friend or neighbor’s house, Kramer style, riffling though the pantries and cupboards until in their scant scarcity, they resemble Mother Hubbard’s .
Lucky towns such as Davis have a number of places that are neither home nor school or work, places that allow us all to interact and dine and discover or strengthen our sense of community. In his book The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You through the Day, Ray Oldenburg explains that we need such places to encourage sociability and sanity. Speaking of this book, Lynne Breaux, the owner of Tunnicliff’s Tavern in my former hometown of Washington, D.C. wrote “This wonderful and utterly important book verifies our need for fun through conversation in ‘great good places.’ Oldenburg writes passionately of our country’s current and urgent problems resulting from our ever-increasing social isolation and provides us with a very simple solution. America must read and react to this rational common-sense solution to salving our stressed lives. And our government needs to promote, permit, and zone responsible neighborhood hospitality, recognizing the value of ‘a vital informal life.'”
Just as Norm always returned to the bar named Cheers, and Jean-Luc Picard sought out the counsel of the 700 year-old bartender Guinan, each of us, Oldenburg argues, needs a place where we can go to talk with people and thus remember our civic responsibilities and our sense of place. The city of Davis prides itself on the variety of its third places, whether they be Farmers Market Park, the E Street Plaza, or the many cafes and restaurants downtown. I’m pleased to have provided a minor weekly excuse for you to congregate in our old City Hall building and be willingly “assessed” on the variety of usual and unusual topics I research for you, from Shakespeare and dog breeds to Star Trek characters and Franz Kafka.
Tonight at the Pub Quiz you should expect questions about American cars, Apple wannabes, the National Mall, Regis Philbin, rap singers, sports I don’t watch, excitable cells, Wisconsin natives, well-heeled musicians, broken ankles, nuclear history, songs about loss (do you know one?), anarchy quizzes, Star Trek, the letter T, nuclear vessels, famous trials, Harry Potter, Frank Lloyd Wrights, the Middle East, Greek goddesses, living on earth, newlyweds, Jerry Seinfeld, professional baseball, Shakespeare, small towns in Maine.
See you tonight! We should have room for you!
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
2. Toy Technology Culture. A recent TechCrunch headline recently shouted that a particular company’s “New Vortex Blasters Shoot Discs! And They’re Awesome!” They are made by the same company that manufactures the N-Strike, N-Force and Dart Tag. Name the Hasbro-owned company.
3. Newspaper Headlines. What multi-multi-billionaire published a “raise my taxes” op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times titled “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich”?
4. Four for Four. Which of the following 19th century novelists were alive during any part of the 20th century (which we’ll say started in 1901)? Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, Franz Kafka.
5. The City of Davis. According to the City’s 2009 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the second-largest employer in the city (measured by number of employees) has five words in its title. What is it?
6. Lizards. What’s the six-letter Greek word for “lizard”?
Friends of the Pub Quiz, and those curious about all the fun and fuss associated with the Pub Quiz, should come to de Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis (217 E Street), the highly esteemed pub and restaurant that fills up every night because of the superb quality of food, drink and company that can be found there. The de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz takes place every Monday at 7pm, though players are encouraged to arrive early to claim a table. As always, find out more about the Pub Quiz by visiting https://www.yourquizmaster.com. For more on de Vere’s Irish Pub, visit http://deverespub.com/.