Trivia nights are popping up at New Orleans nightspots as bar owners and bartenders are appealing to brain power to bolster sales.

Bridge Lounge manager Max Chesney said the dog-friendly bar’s weekly Tuesday night trivia game has drawn a steady crowd of new faces over the past eight weeks.

“Lots of people who enjoy that sort of thing typically aren’t part of our ordinary clientele, and I was trying to reach out to draw new people in,” Chesney said. “I thought it was a good idea to try to bring people in to boost business on what is typically a slower night, and so far it has worked.”

Bartender Ryan Stiles said having a trivia game gives people an excuse to come in to the Magazine Street bar and stick around for the three-hour game when they might otherwise leave after one or two drinks.

“The benefits are numerous all around,” he said. “Our regulars enjoy it. It provides a different evening for them. It kind of stimulates the mind with something other than the usual bar conversation.”

Chesney said he hadn’t considered hosting a trivia night until he was approached by Geoff Cost, an Ann Arbor, Mich., native with a history of trivial success.

Cost said he got into the trivia business in 1997 at an Ann Arbor Irish pub called Connor O’Neil’s. What began as a dozen people shouting out answers evolved into as many as 300 people on 55 teams competing in what has become the largest bar-based trivia night in the country, Cost said.

The average participant at Connor O’Neil’s was a doctoral or master's degree student, Cost said, while the Bridge Lounge trivia players tend to be in their early 20s.

“I think the popularity started with Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy and those types of things, but for some reason it’s turned into kind of a hipster kind of thing,” Cost said.

Le Bon Temps bartender Stephanie Kaston said she began a trivia night at the nightspot 14 weeks ago after complaining to her boss about a lack of customers on Tuesday nights.

What began as a labor of love for Kaston has quickly turned into a major draw for the bar.

“We definitely have a crowd every week,” she said. “My sales have tripled.”

After a run to a dollar store for prizes the first week, Kaston said she arranged to get T-shirts, pint glasses, bottle openers and other merchandise from the bar’s liquor distributors to use as weekly prizes.

“It’s good for everybody,” she said. “The customers get free T-shirts, the alcohol people have people wearing their T-shirts and we get a full house every week on what used to be a dead night.”

Finn McCool’s co-owner Pauline Patterson said she and her business partners established what has become the biggest pub quiz in the city shortly after opening the bar in 2002.

With prizes ranging from pint glasses and T-shirts for first place to a sack of potatoes for last place, Patterson said more than 20 regular teams play for the love of trivia and of the bar itself, keeping money flowing even during slow times.

Stephen Patterson said the popularity of the quiz draws a steady stream of new faces to the Banks Street bar.

“We’re off the beaten track so we don’t really have any walk-by traffic,” he said. “We have to have something to bring people in. This is how we do it, and it’s working well for us.”•

By Coleman Warner (NOLA.com)

October 01, 2009, 10:20PM

Social networking with a purpose came to the Asher home at the lakefront Thursday night. And to nearly 50 other homes around New Orleans.

In an extraordinary display of organizational moxie, the group 504ward, billing itself as a "movement" designed to keep talented young professionals in the city, held dozens of evening-meal social gatherings.

Among many somewhat older and more seasoned professionals who played host and prepared food for small clusters of the young adults were 504ward staffer Carol Asher, a veteran of nonprofit organization work, and her husband Harold, a certified public accountant.

"We're helping them navigate the networks, because you know New Orleans can be kind of a closed community, " said Carol Asher, 54, as she welcomed about 10 young visitors to her home on Gull Street, offering drinks and steering them toward a lavishly landscaped back yard.

"They came here (New Orleans) for all the right reasons, " the host said. "We want them to stay here."

Thursday's "dine around" event attracted as many as 500 people to the homes of well known civic figures such as Anne and King Milling, Pres Kabacoff, and Julia and Will Bland. The social event roughly marked the first-year anniversary for 504ward, which has assembled a contact list of more than 3,000 participants.

While its goals strike some as a bit vague, directors of 504ward, who work closely with an array of other civic groups, said they believe they are having an impact in striking a note of appreciation for crowds of young professionals -- many single, some married with young children -- who have found their way to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina destruction.

The group tries to help the newbies, along with a fair number of native New Orleanians, build new friendships and obtain the best tips on where to find a good bank, car mechanic or doctor. It holds homebuying workshops too, encouraging people to plant roots in the still-recovering city.

Those targeted by 504ward are highly motivated professionals in the early-20s to mid-30s, especially those living in Orleans Parish. There are no formal memberships, no dues to pay. And the group offers contact with what it considers to be wise "connectors" who can give advice on carving out a new life in New Orleans.

Bringing young adults together with such "connectors" was just the point of Thursday's scattered-site dining event.

At the Asher home, Carol and Harold, 58, played the role of adviser and agent of encouragement, joined in the task by David Smith, a friend and radio station executive.

"This just brings them in contact with folks that can employ them, No. 1, and it helps them navigate the community, " Smith said.

Among young professionals sitting down with the Ashers for a dinner of sweet and sour chicken and vegetables were Katie Luscomb, 21, a pre-kindergarten teacher who moved to New Orleans from Virginia; Emily Remington, 29, a school reform specialist who works at a Tulane University's Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives and moved here from Austin, Texas, and Mark Spizer, 27, a commercial real estate developer originally from New Orleans who lives in Charlotte, N.C., and flies to New Orleans frequently for work assignments.

Remington said she has found no shortage of social networks to tap in New Orleans. She said 504ward is one of the more robust ones, offering contacts with people who might help identify sources of school supplies that she and her colleagues at the institute might steer to schools that need them.

"The tangible things are the partnerships you can form, " she said.

The dinner gatherings had varying topical themes, organizing people according to whether they wanted to discuss urban planning and green initiatives; economic development, health care or nonprofit efforts, among other topics, according to Jessica White, 23, a 2008 University of Virginia graduate who grew up in Metairie and now serves as 504ward's executive director.

One question, she said, was to be posed at many of the dinner meetings: "What would you do if you were mayor?" Answers were collected, with the prospect of later prizes for the best ones.

"It's going to be a lively conversation, " White said.