It is difficult to talk critically about culture without poking a finger in someone’s eye. Since long before Hammurabi, we have been poking right back. From this we have no doubt come to understand the wisdom in keeping one’s singular eye on things such as the ball, the bottom line, the road, the prize, etc. With these trepidations in view, I venture into the world of darts.
What seemed Byzantine in complexity turned out to be an interesting way of organizing an evening of arrows for between 10 and 16 people. As ESPN invariably flickered like a sad, decaying constellation in the background and Lynyrd Skynyrd hitched up his panties for another go at Freebird, with Joe Cocker limbering up in the box, some snuck outside for a “safety meeting”, everyone made sure their beers were full, the room filled with smoke and the game was on.
The BCDL kicked off at 8, finished by 11, and continually left me feeling either good about my darts and indifferent about the night, or badly about my darts and downright hostile for spending so much time and money thinking it was worth it. Nonetheless, I played another season (Season 43) of Tuesday nights in the BCDL (with two more trophies to boot), and then switched to the Triangle Dart League, now playing on a team called, Still Armed, More Hammered (see p. 2).
The geographic overlap between the BCDL and the TDL is minimal, only one bar, the West End Tavern (WET) hosts teams in each league. What these two leagues don’t cover in the Triangle the Raleigh Dart League with 8 divisions picks up in droves. All of these local teams and bars have an affiliation with the Piedmont Dart Association which has a fantastically complex and comprehensive geography of its own. But that organization is modest relative to the American Darts Organization (ADO) which is in turn humbled by the World Darts Federation. Successive levels of inanity each more befuddling than the next. However, if we look at the member countries, the ol’ British drinking game rears its head, with some EU company:
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Wait a minute…Who is that between Hungary and Italy? Perhaps the next president could establish some kind of “darts diplomacy” with our Persian brothers.
In short, the world of the BCDL and the TDL is a common one, where petty antagonisms and historical trajectories of intolerance manifest in predictable and lame forms. It’s almost hard to muster righteous cries of indignance when people are so grossly ignorant as to continue half-hearted, yet pointed attempts at making intolerance clever. Yet, in darts, it is ever necessary and increasingly important to get one’s point across. A small world in a large universe leaves little room for distinction.
April 7, 2008
Durham, NC
