I come from a long line of gamblers, he he, well not really. I do have a lot of family and friends that enjoy some sort of gambling whether it be pull-tabs, slots or table games. I’ve never really been into it. For the longest time, it made me flat out grumpy to go to the casino. I’ve slowly started to loosen up and enjoy putting in $20 bucks here and there, but I’m no gambler. This weekend I was in Long Beach, Washington with a group of friends. My boyfriend and I were going antiquing one afternoon and saw a local, dive-y bar. I know I’m a minority, but I LOVE dive bars. I’m not sure if it’s the sticky floors, the people watching of the locals, or the cheap eats and drinks; I would consider going to dive bars a hobby of mine. So there was a dive bar, Doc’s Tavern, in Ocean Park, WA. When I walked in I already knew I loved the place, based on the fact that they had a shuffleboard table. I was looking up at all of the pull tabs and noticed they have something called punch boards, where you could win various prizes ranging from Altoids to river rafting tubes. I asked the bartender what this was all about, and knew I had to experience this. Tyler and I went to play some shuffleboard while I worked up the nerve, as I still didn’t quite get it; it seemed really labor intensive for the bartender (I didn’t quite get it…) Once I got beat twice at shuffleboard I was ready to take a stab at this NEW, intriguing game.
I decided to try my hand at the game marked sweets. It’s 10 cents a hole. Boy that is a lot of holes; much like pull-tabs the odds aren’t that great. But, for a non-gambler like me, I don’t really care. I just wanted some sweets, preferably M&M’s. Here we GO!
You use the little poker thing (as you see in the above pic) to poke the holes that you’ve selected. Little papers come out of the back.
See, little accordion paper thingy’s. You unravel to reveal the number, crossing your fingers that it is a winning number! It’s really not labor intensive for the bartender because you do all the work. You just collect them in piles of 10 for her. I had opened about 7 dollars worth and was getting pretty sad. I wasn’t sad that I was down 7 dollars, because it was really fun to play. But, my tummy was really calling out for some sweets. I said to Tyler, “Watch me win raisins.” I hate raisins. The next paper I opened was a WINNER!
Cha-ching, oh wait, it’s Raisins. I guess I can suck the chocolate off.
My winnings! Tyler loves these and so did the rest of the group that I was with. So no loss there. And I’m pleased as punch to just have won! I was pretty addicted by that point, but it was time to go. I almost wanted to go back after breakfast the next morning but thought better of it. Now I’m just keeping my eyes peeled for other bars that have these fun games.
I know you are all probably thinking I’m crazy for getting so excited about something like this. Let me just remind you that it is the small things that count. And for some reason this girl gets entertained by Gambling for Sweets!
Tyler had his entertainment a bit earlier in the day. Some creepy pirate looking guy that worked at one of the antique stores had a pet parrot. The parrot just kept saying “Apple”, “Apple”. The shop keeper insisted that Tyler let it crawl on him. Tyler was pretty frightened because it looked like he was headed straight for his eyeballs. The pictures turned out great though; you can’t even see the fear in his face.
