No trivial matter: Kipper’s Totally Rad Trivia Night moves to Fred’s on Mondays

In a town full of trivia competitions, Kipper’s Totally Rad Trivia Night keeps shaking up cerebrums. Now the event, formerly hosted at Asheville’s New French Bar on Wednesdays, has outgrown its original venue and is moving to Mondays at Fred’s Parkside Pub (the former Fred’s Speakeasy, beneath Fiore’s restaurant).

Kipper’s trivia debuts at its new locale Monday, March 22, starting at 9 p.m. It costs $2 to play, and the winning team splits the proceeds.

The match is run by the enigmatic Kipper Schauer, a Durham native who moved from San Diego to Asheville seven moths ago. By day, he works on software and slinging drinks. One night a week, he orchestrates his raucous pop-culture trivia contest.

“We’ve been competing at the New French Bar since we started” last fall, he explains, “but things were getting cramped with the amount of teams showing up. I am so grateful to the New French Bar for helping us grow into what we are, but it was time to expand.”

Schauer offers some advice and background for potential players:

• “Getting there early is kind of important, because you don’t want to be the assholes stuck without a table like the kid who smells like beef jerky in a high school cafeteria.”

• “Kipper’s Totally Rad Trivia Night isn’t an f-ing nap party. There are altogether too many damn boring trivia nights here in Asheville. … We focus on what is best referred to as pop culture — movies, music, TV, comic books, video games, celebrities and what not. Every other trivia night seems to rely on questions about history, geography and sports. Our night presents the alternative to that.”

•  “Trivia should be a goddamn battle of the wits. You’re playing against an entire room of people who think they’re smarter than you, [and] it’s your duty to make sure that you not only win, but cut them down to size while you’re at it. I’m a big fan of inter-team heckling.”

• “It should be fast-paced and exciting. Why waste time sitting around waiting for another dull question? It should be an onslaught of awesome.”

• “Trivia hosts also have the duty of making questions accessible. You’ve got to straddle that line between too easy and too hard. I’m not saying that you should get every single question, but it’s a dick maneuver on the part of a host if everyone in the room misses the same question.”

• “I truly believe that Kipper’s Totally Rad Trivia Night is the perfect competition for a very select group of people. If you get it, you love it. If you don’t, you don’t. But those that do get it are people I enjoy knowing, and I aim to make it awesome for them.”

Jon Elliston, managing editor

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About Jon Elliston
Former Mountain Xpress managing editor Jon Elliston is the senior editor at WNC magazine.

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