Weekly Competition Keeps Teams in Pursuit of the Winning Answers
By Star Traylor
The Winchester Star
When Bette Midler was a guest on the television show “Seinfeld,” she told Kramer she would not be pleasant if she didn’t get her what?
Was it a black and white cookie, tootie fruitie, or macaroni?
Give up?
This is just one of the trivial questions asked during a recent trivia night competition at Coalie Harry’s on Piccadilly Street in Winchester.
The answer, incidentally, is black and white cookie.
Every Tuesday night, teams start assembling at the restaurant around 7:45 p.m.
At 8 p.m., host Bryan Fleming starts asking questions from categories such as “Name that Tune,” “The 80s Shows,” and “Winchester History.”
Teams write answers on pieces of paper. At the end of each round, Fleming calculates each team’s points. The group scoring the highest gets to pick the next category.
Each round has 10 questions. With six rounds, the competition usually runs until about 11 p.m. The winning team leaves with a Coalie Harry’s gift certificate worth $10 for every team that competed.
So if five teams compete, the winners get a $50 certificate. Second prize is half the amount of first prize.
Trivia night was instituted at Coalie Harry’s by former owners Dana Jensen and Megan Crawford after they bought the restaurant in September of 2000.
Fleming, who had hosted the event, pitched the idea of bringing it back after new owners Chad and Tracy Rosenberger bought the business in April of 2002.
From a business perspective, it’s been a hit. Without trivia, Tracy said, Tuesday nights would probably be slower.
“There are a lot of people we only see out trivia night,” she said. “It’s obvious trivia’s the draw, because we’re usually kind of slow before trivia, then it fills up, and people start leaving when it ends.”
Trivia night participants order all types of beverages, appetizers, and sometimes, full entrées while playing.
But one reason the event starts at 8 p.m. is to give customers who just want a quiet dinner a chance to eat before the contest starts, Tracy said.
On average, six or seven teams compete every week. If more teams turned out, Tracy and Chad said, they would move the activity to the back of the restaurant where there’s more room instead of hosting it in the main room of the restaurant.
Answers are written (as seen above) on sheets of paper and then checked by Fleming at the end of a round.
(Photo by Ginger Perry)
Allan Mace’s team, The Hardys, usually has four to six players, depending on who’s available.
“Everybody likes to have that competitive spirit going on,” said Mace of Winchester. “We have a really diverse group of people on our team, which really helps a lot.”
The Hardys have won first prize several times. Mace is good at the entertainment categories with questions about topics such as 80s television shows and music trivia.
“I don’t really like the NASCAR categories, but you know, a lot of people do,” he said.
Jenny Fiore and Jenny Miner, two friends in their early 20s who moved to Winchester from Chicago and attend Lord Fairfax Community College, play trivia at Coalie Harry’s regularly. Their team is called Without Papers.
“It gets people to use their minds,” Miner said of the game.
Fiore said she likes the atmosphere and friendly people they’ve met at trivia night.
Both are fans of Fleming’s relaxed style and ad-lib commentary.
“He just makes people feel welcome,” Miner said.
Fleming, 32, operates a business in Winchester called Sky High Productions, which produces illustrations, computer graphics, and multimedia productions.
Working as an announcer/disc jockey at Coalie Harry’s is one of his regular jobs. But for Fleming, trivia doesn’t start when he arrives at the restaurant on Tuesday evenings.
He’s always searching for questions to use during the game. Sometimes, he gets questions from Internet Web sites. He also makes them up himself while watching television and reading.
“I get (the questions) from wherever I can . . . I’ve spent four hours on it before,” Fleming said.
Not all the questions are easy, particularly for those who aren’t knowledgeable about exact dates in history or popular entertainment. However, as Tracy pointed out, “you don’t have to be jeopardy smart to win.”
Larry Shamt of Winchester played trivia at Coalie’s for the first time on a recent Tuesday.
He said the key to answering the history questions lies in thinking back to the era or time when the event in question took place.
“I’ll go back into yesterday, and I think I’m doing pretty good on these questions,” he said.
Holding events every night of the week is one way the Rosenbergers keep the restaurant filled with people. On Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday nights, it’s karaoke. Thursday it’s “open mike” (microphone) night.
On Fridays, Fleming spins music as DJ Sky High at Coalie’s, and on Saturday, a band or DJ provides the entertainment.
Other area restaurants also host trivia nights. Newtown Tavern in Stephens City hosts a trivia night every Tuesday starting at 9 p.m. hosted by WINC-FM’s Jay Riley.
Plans are under way at Sweet Caroline’s on Cork Street in Winchester to bring back Bar Wars — a trivia event that started in the fall of 1998, but hasn’t been held in recent months.
Sweet Caroline’s Promotions Director Dean Thomas said the competition was called Bar Wars because, when it started, most teams were made up of people who worked at other restaurants.
As Bar Wars became more popular, it attracted people from all walks of life, but the name stuck.
Thomas said Sweet Caroline’s will probably restart Bar Wars in mid-May. The competitions will begin around 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday nights.
