NEW YORK – Hustle and bustle filled Chelsea Market restaurant Creamline on Thursday as patrons chowed down on cheeseburgers and waffle fries. But burgers weren’t the only things grilling in the diner. Amidst the jazzy tunes and scattered chatter, the voice of emcee Christina Gibbs boomed over a speaker: “The Great Gatsby is often considered a quintessential portrayal of the jazz age, and featured prominently in the novel is the Valley of Ashes. The real life location is home to what largest park in Queens?” 

Gibbs is one of many trivia hosts working for the NYC Trivia League. Founded in 2010, the organization offers public trivia nights for local diners around New York City, including Creamline. So far, the company has brought trivia events to over 130 bars and restaurants across the city.

Teams of up to six people take shots at answering questions on various topics, from sports and geography to more niche subjects like theater. Frequent players accumulate an overall season score and casual trivia-goers play for fun. The league announces winners at the end of every season, which lasts around 4 months.

Gibbs’s job includes announcing prewritten questions and scoring the games. Thursday’s trivia night was Gibbs’s first time hosting at Creamline after working in the league for two years.

“[The questions] are all across the board, and that’s why it’s so great to have a bunch of people come in and have different people from different walks of life,” Gibbs said. “They really make it versatile so that when you create a team, you can use so many different heads to figure it out.”

Gibbs grew up in Southern California and studied journalism at the University of California, Riverside. She moved to New York in pursuit of a new change in life and joined the Trivia League after attending a trivia night with a friend and talking with the host.

Over Gibbs’s trivia-hosting career, she has traveled to different bars and businesses across New York City, each with varying degrees of competition. Participants in Brooklyn seemed more laid-back when answering questions. Gaming bars were a different story.

“Especially in East Village areas, they’re crazy,” Gibbs said. “They’re just so competitive. They get wild about trivia.”

At Creamline, the participants competed more casually, gathering around a large table and splitting into two teams of six. Starting at 6:30 p.m., Creamline specially reserved a row of tables for the event.

“This is my first time doing it, but I like that I got to come here with a big group of friends,” trivia participant Lee said. “We were looking for a good spot to go to, and one of my friends knew about the trivia of this place.”

The trivia night doubled as a reunion between friends who don’t see each other very often. While working out answers to the trivia questions together, they also had chances to talk to one another again.

“It was a really fun bonding activity,” trivia participant Cidney said. “Our friends are here from out of town, and we wanted to see [them]. I really like trivia too.”

At the end of the event, Gibbs conversed with participants and congratulated the winning team. She noted that many attendees start off hesitant about their knowledge, but as the game gets going, they become more comfortable with the process.

“I really like when people come in thinking that they’re terrible at trivia, and I always try to convince them that it’s not that awful,” Gibbs said. “When they actually start to get some stuff right, I love seeing the joy on their faces. There’s harder questions, but there’s easier questions too. There’s questions for all, and that’s what I like about the league.”

And to Great Gatsby fanatics left hanging: the answer to the opening question was “Flushing Meadows-Corona Park” or the “Corona Ash Dump.”

Additional reporting by Anwen Hao.