By Drew Wilson
Great news if your New Year's resolution was to have more fun in 2015; Play Mile High is offering a LGBT Skeeball League in January at Barker Lounge. Yup, skeeball! The silly but addictive carnival game you loved as a kid is back and better than ever thanks to the magic of teams and cocktails! I spoke with Elliot Jeffords, director of Play Mile High, to find out more about the company, the league, and socializing in the Mile High City.
Drew: Being director of something called Play Mile High sounds like the
worlds funnest job, Elliot. How did you get involved with the company?
Great news if your New Year's resolution was to have more fun in 2015; Play Mile High is offering a LGBT Skeeball League in January at Barker Lounge. Yup, skeeball! The silly but addictive carnival game you loved as a kid is back and better than ever thanks to the magic of teams and cocktails! I spoke with Elliot Jeffords, director of Play Mile High, to find out more about the company, the league, and socializing in the Mile High City.
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| Elliot Jeffords |
Elliot: I went to college in Washington, D.C. and I was doing a summer
internship and got connected with Giovanni (Marcantoni, Founder & CEO) who was starting the
Baltimore Bocce League. He wanted to expand to D.C. and that grew and we added skeeball in the winter
in Baltimore and from there it just took off to different cities and we added
more and more sports and activities.
Denver must be an excellent market for you guys. We’re always being voted Most Active City this and Most Social City that.
Yeah, it takes a while to build brand awareness but we had a really big
initial boom and now we’re looking to expand on that.
We’re not just a sports league. We like to think of ourselves as a lifestyle
brand. You may play basketball or volleyball at the beginning of the week and
then maybe a silly dodgeball or skeeball type league in the second half of the
week and then we have social events a couple of times a month; pub crawls or ski
trips or anything like that. We’re
working really hard to make 2015 a huge growth year for us.
Our leagues are for everyone, whether you played
college sports or never touched a ball in your life. Every market we go into we
start with skeeball and bocce, things anybody can do. You just have to be able
to move your arms and have fun! Everything we do is built around the social
aspect and fun. Like, our kickball leagues are kickball and flip cup. So the
teams play kickball and then go back to the bar and play flip cup. Everything we
do has a social or bar element.
Social is good.
That’s the thing, in Denver there’s a lot of great activities but there’s not necessarily that
super social element, that go-play-something-meet-people-have-a-lot-of-fun-on-a
Thursday-night-with-your-friends-or-your-office type of thing. Play Mile High is the full social and
active experience. The types of activities we do really help people meet and
socialize, it’s a total icebreaker. How are you gonna play skeeball and not
talk to the people next to you?
Skeeball is not something the average person realizes is missing from their lives but everybody I've mentioned it to has a huge response to the idea. So are we talking, like, the kind of skeeball they have at Chuck E. Cheese's or Dave & Buster's?
Skeeball is not something the average person realizes is missing from their lives but everybody I've mentioned it to has a huge response to the idea. So are we talking, like, the kind of skeeball they have at Chuck E. Cheese's or Dave & Buster's?
That's exactly what it is. We’ll have two skeeball
machines and we’ve developed all different types of games. Each week you play a
different team and it’s fun and social and super fast paced. It's become wildly popular
in Baltimore. Last year we had just under 2000 people in Baltimore playing skeeball.
As a matter of fact, our problem is that our vendor in Baltimore ran out of
skeeball machines. We have so many bars wanting to do it with us but we just don’t have the capacity to
do any more.
And it's being held at Barker Lounge, a very fun place. How did you get hooked up with them?
I was looking for a bar to partner with for LGBT events and met with them. It was a great fit and I think the space is a good intimate space for a league. Everybody I talk to says it’s a fun place to go and drink and hang out so it should be a great fit.
So the LGBT skeeball league is obviously gay-friendly, but what about the other leagues?
Oh,
absolutely. No matter who you are, you are welcome in any
of the leagues. The only reason we designate LGBT leagues is, I went to
high school in Boulder and I had a bunch of
friends from high school who live in Denver now and they’ve told me that
that
they love socializing but that there’s nothing like what we’re doing for
the LGBT community. The feedback we got was that the community wanted
designated leagues and so we are developing that identity for the
league. Obviously, they can and do play
in other leagues with everybody else but if they want something LGBT
specific, we have that too.
Honestly, not a week goes by that I don’t get calls and emails asking me for information about how to find LGBT-themed events and activities in town.
That’s the thing, the leagues are all friendly and social but
sometimes you just want to meet people in your own group. I want to go out and
meet 22 year-olds just out of college. That's my demographic and that option is a
good thing.
When it comes to your leagues, which would you say are the most popular and which are the hidden gems you would invite people to check out?
I think our most popular is definitely kickball. And I would say people need to give skeeball
a try. Everybody thinks it sounds cool but I think people aren’t sure how a
league would work so they are hesitant to sign up. Same with cornhole,
everybody’s like “Yeah, I’d love a cornhole league. I play all the time." But
then they don’t sign up.
You aren't kidding. Denver does love cornhole. I know a lot of people who play all the time. Some of them even make their own fancy boards and equipment!
Yeah, everybody loves it. But the hard part of my job is
getting people to go from just talking about it to actually signing up for the
league. But when people do sign up for skeeball, they get hooked, I have teams
right now in Denver who play skeeball four seasons a year. They love it. They
can’t get enough.
So why is now the best time to sign up for the LGBT skeeball league?
Winter is the best time for skeeball. I mean what else are
you gonna do on a Wednesday night? You’re gonna sit around. It’s cold and you
can’t go skiing on a Wednesday night so why not get five friends together and
go play skeeball? It’s a perfect winter activity. And you make another 80
friends with everybody in the league. Signing up now has advantages as we
continue to grow in popularity because you get first dibs on the next season. We
have some leagues that fill up within seven days of registration opening and 80
percent of them are teams from the last season.
So if they're waiting around until they see how much fun league play is before they sign up ...
People sit there and see it and it looks super fun but then they’re too late to sign up for this season and have to wait until next season.
People sit there and see it and it looks super fun but then they’re too late to sign up for this season and have to wait until next season.
What message do you have for readers of MileHighGayGuy?
I would tell them to get signed up soon for that league. We’re about 40 percent capacity already so if people want to play they definitely want to sign up this week. And we’re not just gonna stop with skeeball, we’re gonna have an LGBT kickball league in the spring and go from there! We really want to build and give people options and opportunities year round.
I would tell them to get signed up soon for that league. We’re about 40 percent capacity already so if people want to play they definitely want to sign up this week. And we’re not just gonna stop with skeeball, we’re gonna have an LGBT kickball league in the spring and go from there! We really want to build and give people options and opportunities year round.
