One of our readers, Sarah, emailed us to let us know that Finn McCool’s Tuesday night trivia is definitely worth avoiding. Having just spent a pretty long and annoying night at Bar Louie, we feel her pain. We’ve posted her review below and hope that it prevents others from being subjected to what sounds like the world’s most aggravating trivia night.
Thanks, Sarah, for both sending us your review and saving us the pain of going there.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My coworkers and I started going to trivia about a month or so ago, and in searching for the best place, we stumbled across your website. First, thank you so much for compiling that awesome list. It’s so useful. Based on your review, we have been enjoying Bucktown Pub for the past weeks.
Unfortunately, we decided to branch out. We noticed you don’t have a review of this place so we felt compelled to give you advance notice of our second point: never, ever go to Finn McCool’s. It’s not worth it your time, money, or brain cells. I’m writing only because I just read the review of Bar Louie, and if time is anyone’s priority in trivia, this place should be avoided. It was scheduled to at 9, which we reluctantly decided would be fine. However, we were forced to leave at 12:15 A.M., embittered and exhausted, and there was still a round left to go. Normally we would stick it out, finish what we started, but the awfulness of the evening only compounded upon itself, and we had to leave or face severe homicidal ideations. With the number of times the Duffman-esque host (complete with frequent voice modulation and awkward emphasis) repeated the simple instructions, stupid jokes, and the questions themselves, not to mention the number of incredibly long breaks for grading, the man seemed intent on keeping everyone there till morning.
The Quizzo format seems to contain so much promise. We were scared when Duffman started things off by playing Jock Jams and encouraged us to give a “what-what” when we knew a correct answer, but decided to ignore the cheese and enjoy ourselves. The questions were certainly doable, with a few difficult ones thrown in for a challenge. However, the host also liked throwing in side contests and games for points that ruined any aspect of knowing-things-for-the-win. For example, the host-appointed best team name earned 50 points right off the bat. Twenty points if you could guess Duffman was from Alabama. Then there was the interminable “most creative toast” break, during which he provided us a solid 30 minutes to drown in overly loud music and tiny drinks and think of a toast for another 50 points. We came up with something inappropriate and randy and moved on, but the kicker was the finalists: the winners of the most creative toast were the two teams who contributed the same exact toast. The evening was awash in ironies like this, but it was never, ever entertaining or even self-aware irony. It was sad and made us bitter.
Just for some icing on this cake, the waitstaff was incredibly rude, the advertised specials (in the bar and on the website) were not actually in effect, and the manager showed us where the rudeness originated when we asked him about it at check time. ($2.50 Miller Lites advertised on Thursdays, without reservation, are apparently only on NFL Thursdays. $4 it is!)
We hated it; don’t even give it a try. I lament going outside of your reviewed locations in the first place. We’re crawling back to Bucktown Pub next week and begging for forgiveness.
Finn McCool’s
15 W. Division, Chicago
9pm-???
1 paw (out of 4)
Here Comes Treble is a group of Chicagoans who want to share our love of trivia nights with the rest of the city. Follow us as we search for the best pub quiz in town!
