Games

[July 25th, 2007]

Best Blockheads

Some toys you just don't outgrow—board games, Wiffle bats, Mr. Huggy Snuggle Bear (we'll sleep with him forever)—and Legos . The blocks' satisfying snap and engineering appeal retain a hold on the adult imagination. Case in point: the Greater Portland Lego Railroaders (gplr.org), a crew of grown-up nerds who won't abandon their toy trains. And who can blame them? GPLC's elaborate Lego landscapes and railways—products of original ingenuity, not detailed directions—are just too cool for toddlers' grubby paws. Kids and parents alike gape at the club's realistic miniatures, which it exhibits at local retailers like the Washington Square Lego Store and festivals like BrickFest 2007. Block on!

Best Trivia (in the) Buff

John Doyle is something of a Portland institution. Proprietor of soups and crunchy, fish-shaped sammies at his super-friendly No Fish! Go Fish! cart-slash-restaurant; godfather to young gay Portland newbies; art historian; former host of the scandalous "Strip Jeopardy." He's also a trivia god. Go ahead, ask him about medieval literature. Or why Tori Spelling reminds him of an ancient horse named Bucephalus. He's wicked smart. His Wednesday night trivia-for-all at the 5th Quadrant (3901-B N Williams Ave., 288-3996) is becoming wildly popular, and for good reason: quirky questions, chintzy prizes and the chance to catch hunky Doyle in his skivvies. Great trivia; nice package. Ewww, did we say that?

Hottest Hockey Hellion

In a rink dominated by toothless, mullet-sporting Russians, Canadians and other cold-climate dwellers, the Portland Winterhawks' German-imported defender, Stefan Langwieder, is an animal. The 19-year-old phenom from Munich racked up 16 scoring points in the past season—not too shabby for a guy who spends most of his time defending the goal line. The gentle German accounted for a mere 91 of the team's 1,699 accumulated minutes in the penalty box over the course of 59 games —a number that's surprisingly low for the rough-and-tumble world of defenders. Langwieder is still a young'un, but if he keeps playing as smoothly as he has, he might catch the eye of the NHL (if the NHL is still around in a few years, that is), or at least a modeling scout from Abercrombie & Fitch.

Best Place to Glide like Clyde (in the Suburbs)

"We've seen a huge resurgence in popularity for ballroom dance because of that television show," says Sunnie Page, co-owner of the Ballroom Dance Company (8900 SW Commercial St., Tigard, theballroomdancecompany.com). She speaks of course, of Dancing With the Stars, the network-TV phenom that has leapt off the screen and invaded the once dance-free suburbs. Page and her partner, Jim Gray, began competing together nine years ago, way before Mario Lopez gave Slater a run for his money in shaking his bon-bon . When Page and Gray turned pro in '05, they decided to open their own studio in Southwest Portland. The popularity of local group classes quickly surpassed the studio's limits, forcing the duo to swap their small space for a larger one in Tigard. And, oh yeah, it will soon be the largest ballroom-dance studio in the country, at 17,443 square feet . Still under construction, the Tigard studio will soon offer classes run by instructors from New York City, London and even Russia. Who knew?

Best All-You-Can-Eat Athlete

What, exactly, did Portland receive when Blazer management swapped three Blazers (including the lovable, baby-faced street-racing fanatic Zach Randolph) for Channing Frye on draft day? "I bring everything," Frye told Trail Blazer fan site blazersedge.com. "A little personality, a little leadership, a little shooting, a little defense. I'm a buffet of goodness ." Stop for a second. Do you smell it? The man is a buffet of goodness. Sure, the team traded a tired old salad bar of "scoring" and "rebounding," but in return, they received a buffet of goodness. Izzy's Pizza, meet thy competition.

Best Place to Lay Your Cleats

While American soccer jocks spend their time tromping across AstroTurfed outdoor courts and body-slamming each other, the rest of the world is playing futsal , a frenetic game staged on indoor courts with a heavy, hard little ball. Invented in Uruguay in the 1930s, the game is FIFA-recognized and played by soccer pros, favela-dwelling South American kids and, as it turns out, Portlanders, who have been migrating in droves since 2006 to the three indoor courts of Portland Futsal, housed in a vast warehouse in Southeast (3401 SE 17th Ave., portlandfutsal.com). Don't be intimidated by the players' poker-faced devotion or the building's gray austerity: This turfless winter sport is all about grit, shinguards and fun—for every team of hulking pros, there's also a ragtag crew of casual players to square up against.

Best Way to Channel Your Inner Fourth-Grader

There's only one way to get over the lingering embarrassment of misspelling "tentacle" in front of 100 people in your elementary-school gym: a rematch. Sure, maybe 20 years have passed, and the bespectacled twerp that outspelled you has long since moved to the Midwest. That matters little to the folks at Mississippi Pizza Pub (3552 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3231), who have been hosting a surprisingly punctilious ("P-u-n-c...can I have the language of origin, please?"), albeit microbrew-muddled, Portland Spelling Bee every Monday night at 7 pm. Be forewarned, however: The injustice of failure stings just as much now as it did then.