Turtle Racing

Turtle Race
The Mighty Athletes

My roommate is a fan of bars in general, but especially of bars with activities — karaoke, goldfish racing, pub quizzes — if you can win a t-shirt with a bar logo on it, he’s there. So Friday afternoon when he called and asked, “Do you and Erica want to come to turtle racing tonight?” I was not very surprised, even though I had no idea what turtle racing might be. Would we be squirting turtles with squirt guns? Would that make a turtle move?

Turns out the first rule of Turtle Racing at Big Joe’s 2 and 6 Pub (1818 W Foster) is “don’t touch the turtles”. (They don’t mention this, but it’s not just for the turtles’ sake.) And there are no squirtguns. Buying drinks gets you tickets, a randomly-drawn ticket makes you an honorary Turtle Jockey for a race, the turtles run out from the middle of a table towards the edges, and a winning turtle wins you a t-shirt. The loseriest turtle gets its jockey a free drink.

It was DumbFun enough to distract us from the Bulls’ HorribleStupid loss to the Wizards, so there you go.

4 Comments so far

  1. Matt (unregistered) on May 10th, 2005 @ 10:25 pm

    This is so much fun. I can’t recommend it enough. Plus the drinks are cheap, and the jukebox is GREAT (it’s some kind of neat MP3 system with like every song EVER on it).


  2. Alana (unregistered) on May 11th, 2005 @ 10:00 am

    I’m there! What nights do they do this?

    And I, for one, would love to hear about more bars with activities.


  3. Fuzzy (unregistered) on May 11th, 2005 @ 11:13 am

    Oops, details are so important — turtle racing is on Friday nights, starting at 9 pm.


  4. Alana (unregistered) on May 11th, 2005 @ 11:50 am

    And an offside note to Dave: These ABSOLUTELY qualify as “sports”.

    I defer to Merriam-Webster:

    “Sports.

    A competition of speed, as in running or riding.”

    There you have it. Turtle racing = sports.



Terms of use | Privacy Policy | Content: Creative Commons | Site and Design © 2009 | Metroblogging ® and Metblogs ® are registered trademarks of Bode Media, Inc.