bartogian visits Guthries

Recently, I was able to visit Guthries Tavern, located in Wrigleyville, Chicago, on a day when the Cubs did not have a home game (which may be relevant). Now I’d heard Guthries described as a “board games pub”. They have a bookshelf full of games that patrons can borrow and play. You’re not going to find Age of Renaissance or even Settlers there, the types of games you’ll see are the sort of games that everyone has heard of – we’re talking things like Scrabble, Cluedo, et al. (I didn’t pay too close attention once the genre was identified).

At 6:20pm on a Thursday evening, the place was almost empty, with just myself and one other Diplomacy player present. As time progressed, more patrons appeared, filling out the place in a way that was never threatening to be crowded. This was good, since it enabled us to have exclusive use of the covered back patio to run two diplomacy games.

An evening bar game necessitates a strict ending time, which for us was no later than 11pm. Of course once you start introducing a fixed ending time, people start to have opinions about whether or not this is a good thing… I’ll just present the facts and say that the sharks board got to finish 1906 while the novice board which started later played through to the end of 1904.

And we leave you with a shot of the action, during what I believe was an adjudication phase. (Ask privately for the uncompressed image)