Hi all!

If you're looking to find a welcoming group of folks who like to get together, hang out, and play games, consider joining us at Dystopian Brewing* this Thursday (8/20), at 6pm! This will be my monthly post reminding people that yes, community exists, and you are welcome to join us!

Basically, what happens? Members of the community bring their own games. We share them, our only ask is that you try to respect them and try to put them back where you got them :) Any big games usually start between 6-7 since that makes it substantially more likely we'll finish them, but other new games start throughout the night. Whenever one game wraps up, people will shuffle around to find another.

It's a great way to meet new people (I moved here two years ago and have made many new friends through this group!) and in my opinion it is a diverse and affirming crowd, we try very hard to welcome newcomers, and if you're feeling shy don't feel bad messaging me! I can help you find a group to start in with and introduce you; it's totally fine! I'm a smallish redhead and I'll probably be in a cat shirt. You can't miss me.

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Some FAQs:

Food? The space allows you to bring your own food in. Please be kind and clean up any mess.

Nonalcoholic options? Yes, they carry NA beers and some sodas, if I remember correctly (I'll double check this week for a better answer next time).

Minors? Not explictly disallowed, I believe the space allows minors. However, we don't shy away from adult topics in our conversations and you may wish to attend without a minor first to evaluate suitability.

Ages? Most of us are late 20's and up. We're primarily people in our 30s but we have a large age range and I am not going to guess at the age of our oldest members :P

Type of games: There's no snobbishness here, play what you like. Anything from light party games to mid-heavy-weights (we still gotta finish before they close at 10). Want to play word games and just drink and hang out? You can! Want to play something that hurts your brain, and swap to something else every week? YOU CAN! And you can definitely find people to set up longer games with on the weekends, if that's your jam.

How often? I'll probably post monthly, but this happens weekly; the only times we've skipped in recent memory have been when Thursday was Thanksgiving or Christmas.

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* After a lengthy period of discussion and a group vote, the Thursday board game crew has decided our "home" will be Dystopian Brewing for the foreseeable future. Many thanks to the other suggestions we've seen posed--as a group, we discussed our priorities & needs and arrived at this decision with a strong majority vote after narrowing down between 20+ venues in town.

https://preview.redd.it/lsvrnmuj57kh1.png?width=2156&format=png&auto=webp&s=72466cd51bd2c3e34686165b992c472ee4d8691d

My mom loves octopuses. I love octopuses too, although my particular weakness is “genius octopus” videos. (Let's agree that I am not saying "octopi", btw.) Give me an octopus figuring out a puzzle, opening a jar or escaping from somewhere humans were quite confident it couldn’t escape from, and apparently I have plans for the next 45 minutes. They are my fave cephalopod.

They’re also firmly on my list of critters I won’t eat. Once I’ve watched something demonstrate problem-solving skills and an alarming capacity for jailbreaks, I feel like dinner is off the table.

So naturally I was delighted to discover that Puget Sound once hosted the World Octopus Wrestling Championships. Not delighted for the octopuses, obviously.

And before you accuse me of making things up, I need you to know this was absolutely a thing. They were held at Titlow Beach in Tacoma, right across the Narrows from us, and organized by a local diving club called the Puget Sound Mudsharks. I already love these people.

The octopuses in question were giant Pacific octopuses, which live throughout Puget Sound and can get enormous. They’re also intelligent, reclusive animals that generally have very little interest in wrestling humans. The humans unfortunately had considerable interest in wrestling them, although “wrestling” is perhaps overstating what actually happened.

Teams of divers would go underwater looking for octopus dens. Once they found one, they would attempt to coax or pull the deeply inconvenienced octo-buddy out, working its arms and suction cups loose until they could bring it to the surface. There were even different divisions. Free divers competed without scuba gear and received more points per pound of octopus, because apparently wrestling a giant cephalopod wasn’t sufficiently difficult unless you were also holding your breath.

The octopus was brought ashore, weighed, and points were awarded according to its size. And people CAME TO WATCH THIS. By 1963, 111 divers participated and thousands of spectators gathered at Titlow Beach. Twenty-five giant Pacific octopuses were hauled up that year, with the largest weighing 57 pounds.

But 1963 presented organizers with a serious sporting crisis. They had television coverage coming, they needed octopuses, and apparently the octopuses had not received the memo. So organizers caught several ahead of time and placed them in the competition area to make sure television viewers got sufficient cephalopod action.

THE WORLD OCTOPUS WRESTLING CHAMPIONSHIPS WERE RIGGED.

Imagine being an octopus, minding your own extremely intelligent business somewhere in Puget Sound, when you’re kidnapped and relocated specifically because television executives are worried there might not be enough octopus wrestling on Sunday.

The whole thing was apparently somewhat theatrical anyway. One of the organizers later described loosening an octopus’s suction cups from its den and admitted divers might roll around a bit to make it look more like a fight. The octopuses themselves weren’t particularly aggressive. Essentially, the humans invented an underwater professional wrestling league and neglected to inform the other participants that they were wrestlers.

What happened to the octopuses afterward varied. Some were released back into Puget Sound, some went to aquariums, and some were eaten (boo.) My actual favorite part of this story is what happened to the Mudsharks themselves. They started getting curious about the animals they’d been hauling out of the water.

Bill High, one of the Mudsharks, became involved in octopus research and eventually became a fisheries biologist. Members of the club participated in tagging work to learn more about octopus abundance and movement. Eventually the wrestling championships disappeared, while our understanding of giant Pacific octopuses continued to grow. Washington now even has protected areas in Puget Sound where recreational harvest of giant Pacific octopuses is prohibited.

Which gives this wonderfully stupid story an unexpectedly nice ending. A bunch of guys started out wrestling octopuses for trophies and spent enough time around them to realize the octopuses were considerably more interesting than the wrestling.

Honestly, that’s growth.

Somewhere beneath the Tacoma Narrows, giant Pacific octopuses are presumably going about their lives with absolutely no idea that sixty years ago thousands of Washingtonians gathered on the beach to watch humans drag members of their species out of their houses and weigh them.

We were weird. I kind of love us.

Sources

Cosgrove, James A., and Neil McDaniel. Super Suckers: The Giant Pacific Octopus and Other Cephalopods of the Pacific Coast. Harbour Publishing, 2009.

High, William L. “Observations of a Scientist/Diver on Fishing Technology and Fisheries Biology.”

NOAA Technical Memorandum. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.“The Devil Fish and Octopus Wrestling.” Washington Secretary of State, Washington State Library.

Duchamp, Cathy. “Is There Really a Giant Octopus under the Tacoma Narrows Bridge?” KUOW, 19 Apr. 2016.

World Octopus Wrestling Championships Once Attracted Audience of Thousands to Shores of Tacoma.” KNKX Public Radio, 20 May 2017.

Hi neighbors, i live near Tacoma and am starting to really struggle with the price of smokes combined with the price of everything else. Anyone have an good spots to get discounted smokes? I have heard about the reservation being the spot to go but have no idea how to get there or where in particular to go. Any help would be appreciated. $14 a pack is really beating me up.

Thanks!

I'm 19M and looking to move close enough to work in the Tacoma area, I was wondering if (specifically on the industrial side) Is hiring and what you tend to make in the area. I'm in MO right now and compared to the cost of living here make pretty good money.

heyo! new to tacoma and having a hard time locating some private owners or apartments. does anyone have any recommendations or places to get in contact with them easily ?

Nothing against pit bulls, they can be great dogs with the proper care. I do not believe this guy, who I just saw chasing it down 6th, is up to the task.

The GS is not “well trained” as he’d have you believe either. I see it run into traffic regularly. Never on a leash any time I’ve seen them out.

Also I got banned from the other sub for posting this lmao.

Recently got into One Piece card game

This was removed in another sub and I was told that no one needed my dog PSA, even though I didn't violate any rules, there was positive engagement on my post and people were having fruitful discussions around this issue. I hope the mods of r/TacomaWA see the value in this post and allow it to remain.

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I can't speak for all areas of the city, but I am frequently in several neighborhoods walking my dog and exploring with her and it's insane how many times in the past six months I've had dogs who were off leash or on dropped leashes come at us and their owners seemed lost on what to do. Most were not aggressive but my dog is reactive, and regardless of the other dogs disposition, my dog does not respond kindly to other animals. She stays ready to throw hands.

Guys, I implore you to become more confident when recalling your dogs. Soft yells of come back and no! will not work when your dog is fixated on mine. You need to be able to really yell and shout at your dog to come back or at least purposefully grab and control their leash/body. And if you have a dog that is reactive or aggressive, you need to know how to break up a dog fight and be ready to apply those methods.

Last night I saw a dog being attacked by another near one of the parks in town, and a dog ran out of it's garage and attacked a dog being walked on the sidewalk. All three owners struggled to pull the dogs apart. It was horrifying to hear their screams as they were being bit and latched onto. To the people with the injured dog, I hope they're okay after that and that yall are okay too. I know I'm always shaking with adrenaline after each encounter.

And as far as dog fights go, anyone with a dog should learn different ways to stop one. If you haven't heard of it before, read up on the collar choke method. You'll grab hold of the collar and twist to tighten it so it cuts off their blood/air flow. They will let go quickly. It's an effective tool and if you can, grab the buckle part so it doesn't pop the collar open by accident. I don't know if the dog that was biting had a collar, but if they did this method would have helped diffuse that situation more quickly and with minimal harm.

I'm not trying to be uppity sharing this either. I struggle with my own reactive dog and it's stressful to have to deal with that behavior, but my guys, we have to take ownership of managing their care and taking preventive steps to minimize risk. Like leashing your animal when in public spaces.

Anyways, I've said my piece and it's already a novel so I'll leave it at that. Hoping all my Tacoma neighbors are finding moments of joy in their lives and that yall are doing as well as can be expected given the current climate. Peace!✌️

Saw him handing out beads and asking for donations in standard scam fashion. Friend of mine gave via card and the charge went to something called "Nan Fang Trading." Don't get got!

I was wanting to take my spouse outside the city to spend some time looking at the stars, but I don’t know where a good place is that would get us away from light pollution. Anybody have any suggestions for something not all that too far from Tacoma? Within maybe an hour or so?