Game over

From its name, a tennis bar in East Village, New York City, obviously caters to fans of the sport.

Thirty Love, however, turned off some customers who came on 4 September to dine and watch the semifinals of the United States Open women’s tennis tournament.

The Central Park bar’s TVs were muted as it held its weekly trivia game while football was being played on the biggest screen on the upper floor.

The New York Post (NYP) reported complaints from some customers, though others told the news outlet that they came to play the trivia game.

“We want to give the neighborhood not just tennis, but every day of the week, to have something,” manager Guillermo Rangel said in defending the watering hole that opened in February, NYP reported.

Meanwhile, playing a parlor game backfired on a fire official of the city.

Former Fire Department of New York Assistant Commissioner Michele Maglione, head of the FDNY’s Youth Workforce Development, posted videos of Brooklyn high school students racing from one side of a classroom to the other, with cotton balls sticking to their faces that were smeared with petroleum jelly, on 21 August, according to NYP.

Maglione organized the cotton ball race game as part of a summer “leadership academy” for FDNY recruits. Teams of players picked up cotton balls with their faces at one side of the classroom and raced across the room with hands tied to their backs.

FDNY recruiters, however, saw the video as offensive, being based on the abuse of Black slaves who were forced to work by whites on cotton fields in the past. They complained to higher-ups, who then fired Maglione, who is white, from the school. She was also demoted and charged with an administrative offense.

Instead of facing possible disciplinary action, the 57-year-old recently resigned, NYP reported.

For playing the softy game, the repercussion was hard for the FDNY official.