When players enter Hana House in downtown Brooklyn, New York, they hear mahjong before they see it: a staccato waterfall of plastic clacking together. It’s been the background soundtrack in many Asian households for over two centuries since the four-person tile game was invented in China. But today’s scene is a far cry from an auntie’s living room.
Enter Green Tile Social Club, New York City’s hot mahjong social club, which celebrated its second anniversary at Hana House this weekend. A DJ spins electronic dance tracks and over 100 players bob to the music. Tea is swapped for cocktails with soju, matcha syrup and lychee. Most surprisingly, a large swath of the crowd is under 30. And Green Tile has doubled the numbers of attendees since October from 4,000 to 8,000.
The self-described “untz untz mahjong extravaganza” is geared toward young people looking for a different kind of social gathering outside of or supplemental to traditional nightlife. It’s part of a larger New York City nightlife shake-up with members-only clubs becoming increasingly popular while Gen Zers are drinking less and less — a product of the pandemic shifting priorities and social habits.
“We see people drawn to events where they already know what’s going on — ‘if you know, you know’ events,” Bowen Goh, co-owner of Mood Ring, a Bushwick bar, said.
Mahjong is more than just a replacement for the bar trivia night. Players have to make combos of matching tiles or successive tiles to win. It’s often compared to poker or rummy. The Green Tile tournament — where players don’t just have to win each round, but are scored on the difficulty of the winning hand and the way they won — can get heated.
But it never was about winning. Green Tile is among other party collectives, Asian-themed bars and pop-ups that are all centering social life around the Asian American community and giving the culture a modern twist.
When Goh opened Mood Ring in 2017, “there were no…
Read the full article here
