Throughout the week, Trident Booksellers and Cafe is home to lively events, such as trivia nights, poetry open mics and movie showings, which allow locals to engage with one another over shared activities and a meal.
Trident’s trivia and poetry open mic nights, hosted Fridays and Sundays, respectively, have grown to such popularity that they have become part of the store’s weekly rotation of events. In fact, participants usually arrive almost an hour before Friday Trivia Night begins due to such high demand.
Trivia nights take place from 7-9 p.m. Competitors form teams of up to six players and partake in three rounds of trivia, each consisting of seven questions. Questions cover an eclectic mix of content ranging from identifying love song lyrics to deciding whether or not a given paragraph was written by ChatGPT or not. At the end of each round, teams submit their answers on a slip of paper. The two event hosts then evaluate the answers, and teams applaud the worst performance of each round. The top three teams often battle it out in heated tiebreaker rounds at the end of the night.
Since teams are required in order to compete, many locals who are new to the Boston area attend both themed and general knowledge trivia nights to meet and get to know others who share similar interests. One such “Gilmore Girls”-themed trivia night resulted in fierce debates over the show’s various plot points and love interests.
On Sundays, Trident is home to a poetry collective which hosts its weekly open mic nights from 7-9 p.m. and consists of two rounds of hour-long presentations. During the event, attendees share a piece of their own work or read from existing literature they find engaging or inspiring. Many poets share deeply personal struggles relating to health, personal identity, gender, sexuality, culture and more through their writing.
Since many attendees present at the open mic on a weekly basis, they have become well-versed in each other’s journeys outside of the realm of their written work. After open mic nights, many participants stay afterwards to share food, drinks and stories from the week as well as their lives as artists in the Boston area.
Those who regularly attend Poetry Open Mic Night have also formed a poetry collective that has come together to publish a book of their work available for purchase in the bookstore.
Trident also hosts movie screenings, silent writing time, speed-dating and other seasonal activities.
