Rocket Scrabble
There’s a place in Kalamazoo we like to go to. I used to describe it to people by saying: “It’s like a bunch of computer students built a little shop for themselves to chill out in. Electrical outlets all around the walls, wired in stereo system, tables all over, arcade machines in the back, all of that. Then art students swooped in and took over, painting it green, covering the walls in art, and making it a coffee shop.” While I doubt that particular origin story is true, the result is the same, and what you have is the Rocketstar, a small coffee shop and hangout for students across Kalamazoo.
One of the coolest things about the Rocketstar, aside from the atmosphere, is the selection of things to do that they offer. Arcade machines in the back, a pool table, a stash of games in the front, and a collection of interesting ‘zines to flip through when you’re bored. Not to mention the people.
My friends and I used to visit all the time just to hang out and chat over milkshakes. Recently though, we often just go to hang out and play Scrabble. Scrabble at the Rocketstar, however, is more of an art than a game.
Originally the Scrabble set they possessed was as normal as any to start off with. Of course, over time in a place where it’s used fairly often, the occasional tile is lost. Now and then, a new tile is found. Sometimes someone would bring in extra tiles from home, and they got mixed in. Sometimes someone would take a sharpie to a tile to change what letter it was. This new tile set we started calling Rocket Scrabble.
Eventually the Rocket Scrabble tile set was tossed and a new set bought for the Rocketstar. It lasted for all of a month, or something like that. Jon and I were there a while back to play scrabble, and discovered we were short on tiles. Quite short. In fact, while a normal Scrabble tile set contains 100 tiles, this one contained only 58. We played an entire game before we realized just how short we were. One thing we realized at the end was, it was e-less Scrabble. Not a single E tile existed in the set.
It was surprisingly fun.
As an aside, here’s the tile set as it was after our game.
AAAA
B
DDD
FF
GGG
HH
IIIIIII
LLLL
NNNNN
OOOOOOOO
PP
Q
SSS
TTT
UUUU
VV
WW
X
Z
