“Baby Got Back” blares. The Guinness tap flows. And 50-some bar patrons flex their gray matter to deduce the unit of measurement named after an Italian scientist who invented the electrical battery and discovered methane.
Fourteen small teams huddle in tufted booths, at the polished bar, and around the Pac-Man table in back, nervously crunching on Spicy Lime & Chile™ potato chips and a white-chocolate-drizzled popcorn called Unicorn Crunch. It’s Pub Quiz Night at Old Kings Road, the jackpot is $250, and these beer-swilling brainiacs are not effing around.
Pub Quiz or Trivia Night is an English tradition that began in the 1970s as a way to bring in more customers on slow weeknights. It arrived in Santa Barbara a dozen years ago and has endured many iterations from Dargan’s to Cooney’s and even a stint in Alice Keck Park Gardens. Today the most popular (and arguably hardest) game in town is at Old Kings Road on Wednesday nights — but you’ll find others at Wine Therapy, Taffy’s Pizza, Draughtsmen Aleworks, The Garden, Figueroa Mountain brewery, Captain Fatty’s, Santa Barbara Cider Co., and more.