How to get in on New York City’s board game boom
Put down your phone and embrace New York's post pandemic board game boom
On a Thursday evening in late April, around 150 people gathered in an East Williamsburg event space to play mahjong, sip mixed drinks made with Moshi sparkling water and vibe to electronic music amid wall projections of clouds tinged with bisexual lighting.
The event was “Mahjong After Hours” hosted by Green Tile Social Club, a group that’s been convening New Yorkers to mingle and play a 19th-century matching game for three years this May (check their Instagram for info on their third anniversary celebration, a “day-to-night” event co-hosted by Nha Minh and Trans-Pecos in Ridgewood). The club, which began as four friends from Texas playing mahjong in a New York apartment, evolved to park meetups and ticketed events at venues and Asian restaurants, and a feature on The Today Show.
Co-founder Sarah Teng tells The Groove that the club picked up speed organically from the start, through Instagram and word of mouth.
“Having a place where you could meet people in real life, post-Covid, do an activity, learn a new skill and it was specifically Asian Americans, I think that was why we were able to grow so much,” Teng said. She notes that Green Tile is a “social-first community,” geared toward bringing people together more than the competitive aspect.
Angela Liu, a GTSC volunteer, had never played mahjong when she attended her first event a year and a half ago.
“People are here to play the game, but it’s not necessarily the main thing,” Liu said. “It’s a game of four people so it’s not super intimidating, even if you don’t know anybody else at a table. You start to recognize the same [attendees] and it feels easier to talk to people.”
Over the past few years, New York City’s post-lockdown era has seen somewhat of a game-playing boom. From old-fashioned board and card games to tabletop roleplaying games, whatever contest you’re craving, there’s probably a regular meetup for it. A combination of the games we played inside during Covid gaining renewed interest, and a desire for analog interaction beyond just going to the bar, has primed the moment for offline gathering–whether that’s literally Magic: the Gathering, or another arbitrary rules-based conquest.
Like any organized club, from rec softball to bird watching, common interest around a specific game initially draws strangers together, but it’s the standing calendar invite that keeps them coming back:
