Yellow Dog Coffee Co. will host a free game night in collaboration with The Lore to teach customers how to play cribbage, mahjong and go.
The game night will be held from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Saturday at its downtown location.
The Lore co-owners Kim Bieda and Sarah Pimsler will teach cribbage. A Yellow Dog Coffee barista will teach mahjong, and a regular customer at The Lore will be teaching the game go.
Yellow Dog Coffee will provide most of the games. In addition to cribbage, mahjong and go, patrons will have the opportunity to play from Yellow Dog’s game library.
Lilly Braun, general manager of Yellow Dog Coffee, spoke about what she hopes the community will experience from the game night.
“We're in extreme times and one of our goals as a company, and one of my goals personally, has been to bring more community events,” Braun said. “It can be hard sometimes to find places to gather and to meet people, and we have a really great community here, so we just really enjoy being able to provide a space for people to connect.”
Bieda said she hopes the game night will introduce patrons to new board games.
“All of us knew how to play these games that are a little less well known, and we thought it would be great to have some more folks that knew how to play them and could enjoy the games,” Bieda said.
Yellow Dog Coffee has had its fair share of game night hosting experience.
“We used to do a game night once a month, but we weren’t giving it as much attention as we would have liked to, so we stopped doing it, …” Braun said. “It was actually The Lore who approached us with the idea to have this game night and make it a little bit more intentional.”
According to Merriam-Webster, mahjong is a Chinese board game played with 144 tiles that typically involves four players drawing and discarding tiles until one achieves a winning hand. The history of mahjong dates back to early 19th century China, with the game being named for the sound of the tiles being shuffled, similar to a bird’s chattering, according to Oh My Mahjong.
Cribbage, according to Merriam-Webster, is a game where players are dealt six cards, and each player attempts to form different combinations of cards and be the first to move their peg around a board to 121 points. The game was invented by John Suckling, a 17th-century English poet and courtier.
According to Britannica, go is a game of East Asian origin with roots in China going back 4,000 years. The game is traditionally played on a wooden board with black and white flat round pieces, and the game is won by controlling more territory than your opponent.
This isn’t the first time Yellow Dog Coffee and The Lore have partnered to host events for the community.
Bieda said Yellow Dog Coffee and The Lore collaborate on a brunch and craft class, with Yellow Dog providing the space for the event, coffee and a baked item as part of the cost of the class and The Lore providing the craft supplies.
They’ve also hosted a craft supply swap. The Lore and Yellow Dog Coffee partnered with The Artist Closet to collect used materials from the community. Crafters could donate their art supplies to exchange with others.
In addition, The Lore and Yellow Dog Coffee recently hosted a Valentine’s Day blind book swap, where people could buy a surprise book to unwrap and read with their date while enjoying their drinks.
This story was edited by Macey Thaxton and Madisson Cameron. Vanessa Essien and Mary Ann Livingood copy edited this story.
