Over ten years ago, I used to live with Phil and Michael in a small triangle squashed between Clapham Junction station, an old people’s home and an Irish pub with a laissez faire attitude towards illegal late night drinking and in-bar fist and knife fights.
When we weren’t awoken from our sleep at 2am by screaming police wagons pulling up outside the pub, we were being woken by far more victorious cries. Behind our home, a gang of older West Indian men would gather each day (and night) to play dominoes on an aged board sat balanced on the wall outside the old people’s home.
The players would talk, joke and harangue each other until, with a mighty outcry, one of the domino players would smash down his winning domino on the board with such force that the rest of the pieces would erupt into the air.
Goodness knows what the old ladies thought of the men who sat outside their homes drinking their Malt drinks, smoking their rollies and engaging in a cultural past-time that must have been handed down from generation to generation, continent to continent.
All of this kinda brings me to the image above – which I took at a New York ad agency. It’s a gang of guys watching dominoes on TV like they’re watching sport – in fact, like they were watching poker.
A while ago, we suggested that maybe chess would replace poker’s domination of young men’s relaxation time, but the fascination and the commentary we saw yesterday made us wonder if dominoes could actually be the next big social ’sport’. Chess involves an element of knowledge, concentration and study – while dominoes is accessible, multi-player and offers the most enjoyable victory.
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