Introducing: Brunch!

Chef Anthony’s chicken and waffle fries, served with maple syrup and hot honey.

Our Kickstarter campaign said, in part, “We want to build Free Parking into a location you keep coming back to. This is one of the main inspirations behind the name. The Free Parking space is the only space on the monopoly board where nothing is expected of the player. We want Free Parking to be a place where nothing is expected of our guests besides having some fun and joining a larger community commitment to that same goal.”

We are hoping to become a third place—your home is your first place, your work or school is your second place, and your third place is somewhere you go regularly where you are welcome and missed, where community is built and plans hatched, where news is shared and respite is received. In the past a third place might have been the town’s post office or pub, now it might be a library, a coffee shop, a ceramics studio, and very commonly, a bar.

We have big plans for Free Parking—tournaments, community connections and fundraisers, even food-based games night!—but the life blood of this concept is always going to be the players that claim it as their own. And as the title of this post says, we’ve got brunch! Come by on Black Friday with the family for delicious food and games!

And, if you are interested in creating a space where all are welcome, where joy is found, and where the parking is free, please join us and tell your friends!

Play Kimbo!

You’ve heard of Game of Thrones, now play Kimbo: A Game of Fences!

One of Free Parking’s regulars mentioned she’d played this game when she was a kid in the 1960s. Librarian Alice looked it up and fell in love with the atomic age style and the possibilities of the fences. She found a cheap copy and, blammo, we’ve got it in the library!

Kimbo is similar to classic games like Sorry! and Parcheesi in that players work to get their four pawns from start (at the corners) to home (in the center). The twist is that pawns cannot turn once they set out in a direction, unless they hit a fence or a thick black line. Each player has six fences that can be placed at any intersection on the board (the slots you can see in the photo above) to force a 90 degree turn. This small addition can be helpful when played defensively (if I place the fence here, it gives me a straight shot to the home space) and so satisfying when played offensively (if I place the fence there, you have to find a longer path to home). The board quickly becomes a labyrinth of fences and pawns, chaotic in the best way.

Our regular who remembered this delightfully aggressive game was thrilled to play it again and we think you will be, too!