At the back of the room are several regulation beer-pong tables. Yes, beer pong has regulations. Quite a few, in fact, as determined by the World Series of Beer Pong (seriously). The rules are posted on the back wall, but I only get as far as No. 4.
"No fingering?" I read. "What the hell does that mean?"
Convinced that the posted rules are far too complex for anyone to decipher on a Saturday night, I stand idly by while Xania, the Weekly's nightlife editor and my wingwoman for the evening, gets the Cliffs Notes version of the game explained by the locals.
For those of you who didn't drink in college (or drank so much that you don't remember), this is how you play beer pong: On either side of a table, you rack up six to 10 cups of beer in a pyramid formation, with the points facing each other. Each team takes a turn throwing a standard ping-pong ball across the table into the opposing team's cups. You sink it, they drink it. Empty cups are removed with the remaining cups re-racked into smaller formations. If the ball bounces on the table, the defending team is allowed to swat it away, and women are exclusively permitted to blow a ball out of a cup before it has settled (though the impractical physics associated with this serve as a reminder that this game was conceived by drunken college kids). Generally, defense is limited to silly faces and monkey dances that function as distractions. Between throws, dirty balls are dipped into a cup of water in order to create the semblance of hygiene until players are inebriated enough not to care.
I suggest to Xania that we could have the loser of our game drink the dirty water at the end just to raise the stakes and heighten the drama. Her answer is surprising: "No."
So with the rules established, Xania and I team up against two of her friends. Before the first sip of beer, I'm already throwing with the precision of an incapacitated drunk. Nevertheless, Xania and I are the first to plant our balls in the targeted cups. She is particularly adept at rebounding the balls before they hit the floor, which probably has some correlation with her disgust with the idea of washing the balls in dirty water. The other team is quick to catch up with two consecutive hits.
"You do realize that I'm writing about this," I say to Xania as we drink, "so if we lose, our failure will be recorded for posterity."
"It's your column," she says.
"Yeah, maybe. But that doesn't change the fact that people will be able to Google our failure."
The other team knocks us down to two cups, but we soon even the score. Now the stakes are getting higher. With each throw, the water used to sanitize the balls is taking on a more obvious shade of brown, and with every passing moment, the beer is becoming dangerously lukewarm. By the time I decide it is absolutely impossible to hit either of the last two cups, Xania sinks her ball, leaving me a task that is beyond absolutely impossible.
But this could be my moment to shine. Having no athletic ability whatsoever, I never got to be that kid who caught the winning ball in the Little League game. But now I could be the one to quench the other team's thirst.
I take my shot.
It goes in.
It's not just a victory for Team Hangover—it's a triumph for the enduring power of dumb luck everywhere. And so ends sports night at Tight Rack.
So once more, for the record: In the Colonnade Square you will find a Tight Rack. And if you're going down, you can expect to see lots of people playing with their balls. Fingering is not allowed, but women can blow.
Sorry. Couldn't resist.