More than a decade ago, the game of shuffleboard ignited a fire within James O’Brien. Now, fresh to Vancouver, filled with ambition and toting a library of boards to distribute, he plans to kindle the same passion in the hearts of pub and club patrons the across the Portland metro area.
“This is obsession, passion, my life’s work,” he said. “I feel like an evangelist when it comes to it, trying to just preach the gospel.”
O’Brien and his wife, Sara, are the owners of O’Brien Shuffleboards in east Vancouver. Through dedication to the game and embracing a niche in selling, renting and servicing local shuffleboard tables, the two were pioneers of a new San Francisco shuffleboard scene. They plan to apply a similar formula to replicate that success here.
O’Brien’s company does just about everything, including service calls and custom logos, restorations, and new table and game accessory sales. They also plan to start a shuffleboard league in Portland.
“I’m the only person I even know that does this anymore,” O’Brien said. “When I come into a place and I say, ‘I want to fix your table,’ they’re like ‘Oh, we’ve been looking for someone to fix our table!’ ”
To the uninitiated, playing shuffleboard means shoving four biscuit-sized metal weights to the end of a 22-foot by 20-inch slab of laminated wood dusted with grit.
For players such as O’Brien, that grit is called wax. It’s made of different blends of materials — silicone, walnut shells or cornstarch. In a one-on-one or doubles match, opponents stand on the same side of the board and duel to have the most weights on the board closest to the end — often by knocking an opponent’s weight off in the process.
Once a ubiquitous feature of social clubs and bars in the mid-20th century, shuffleboard — the tabletop version, not the one associated with cruise ship decks — waned in popularity over the years. However, O’Brien and others involved in the game say it’s on a recent upswing with a new generation of players emerging. But there aren’t many technicians left to care for the boards.
O’Brien’s company started about five years ago in the Bay Area renting and selling shuffleboard tables to local bars and tech startup companies eager to build office game rooms. Then the O’Briens started a city league, with local bars hosting tournaments that attracted a loyal following.
“In San Francisco, nobody had even heard of a shuffleboard table prior to James getting involved,” said John McDermott, president of The Shuffleboard Federation and director of the North American Shuffleboard Championships, who has known O’Brien for about five years. “People thought it’d be crazy (for bar owners) to dedicate that kind of floor space to a shuffleboard table, but he, somehow, started off with a couple of tables and built a following — to the surprise of many.”
O’Brien’s first foray into the game was a Friday night lark around 15 years ago with his older cousin and mentor.
“I asked if he wanted to play poker on a Friday night. He said ‘No, I actually play shuffleboard,’ ” O’Brien recalled. “I was like 21. He was like in his 40s at that point. He showed me this whole world.”
That night was the start of a whole new future for him. In early 2012, he and Sara played shuffleboard on their first date; she won. Later that year, he proposed to her at the national shuffleboard championships.
In 2014, O’Brien and his cousin went go on to take first place at the North American Shuffleboard Association Championship Division 1 Doubles, the highest place you can take as an amateur.
“It’s still a highlight,” O’Brien said.
Before moving to Vancouver, O’Brien knew he was going to be working from home until he found a suitable shop space, he said. While the couple was hunting for houses in Vancouver from their computer in California, James would measure the garages with Google Earth to make sure the space would be big enough to work on a shuffleboard.
They moved to the area to be closer to Sara’s family, but the prospect of living in the Portland metro area — with its storied shuffleboard history — was a bonus.
“(Portland) was a major hub for shuffleboard,” he said. “Old-time hustlers from Texas and Mississippi used to come up here. … Old-school hard dudes that used to travel to win money, and for them Portland was this destination city.”
Some of the biggest tournaments in the game — especially during the 1980s — were at the Black Cat Tavern in Portland, before it was demolished in 2013 to make way for an apartment building.
McDermott said there’s a flickering of a new shuffleboard scene in the Northwest. His Michigan-based company has sold several tables to brewpubs, historically atypical venues for the game, in Oregon and Washington. But whether those tables prove their worth and bring in new customers or become albatrosses around the necks of local business owners depend on someone with a passion to play.
“James has got that in spades,” McDermott said. “I think it’s conceivable he’ll be quite successful because he was in San Francisco, which, in my mind, is a much tougher nut to crack.”
