When I first arrived in San Francisco, I was disappointed to learn - at least if Google was to be believed - that the city had no pub quizzes.
Proper chocolate, I could do without. Television without adverts for Viagra, I’d shed no tear for. But pub quizzes? They were my favourite things to do in London: a chance to get slowly drunk while showing off my knowledge of obscure trivia and children’s television from the 1980s.
“How can they not exist here?” I complained to my ex-pat Brit friends. “This is the geekiest city on the planet.” And that’s when they explained where I was going wrong. You see, they don’t call them pub quizzes here - they call them ‘trivia nights’. And while they’re definitely not a prevalent as they are in the UK, there are at least half a dozen quizzes - in pubs - each week, if you know where to look.
So look I did. And between Google, and a bit of good old-fashioned word of mouth, I narrowed the list down to two: at the Edinburgh Castle on Geary Street (every Tuesday night) and the Elephant and Castle on Battery (every Thursday). As you’ll realise from the names of those pubs, even in San Francisco Brits are responsible for the best pub qui… sorry… trivia nights.