Burf Quimby’s Pub Quiz #7
Zine, 28 pgs, $6, quimbysnyc.com
A good ol’ fashioned pub quiz is one of the one trillion things that has dropped out of sight as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on across the planet. And yet this zine arrived in the BP offices months into the ordeal — a small reminder of nicer, more normal times. When these kinds of simple realities might return in full remains to be determined. In the interim, we can leaf through hard copy content like Burf Quimby’s Pub Quiz and reminisce like it was the barfy, boozy, bar-centric olden days.
This is literally a quiz booklet in zine form, created by Quimby’s New York City, a cousin shop to the Chicago zine mainstay. The question topics run the gamut from history, sports, pop culture, and all sorts of minutia. There is a small amount of recency bias with some questions, but in the best way. The range of new, older and oldest make it tricky to pinpoint the vintage of whoever assembled this quiz.
Aesthetics-wise, picture the handbill of a high school play. The cover is a thick and sturdy card, the inner pages, a fine quality stock. Just retro enough, given, again, how foreign things like IRL pub quizzes have seemed in recent months. If nothing else, players could easily replicate a quiz night using the zine via Zoom (I said it!). Worth investing in a few copies of this zine and supporting Quimby’s while you’re at it.