Birminghamopoly

click on image to go to Birminghamopoly website

Yesterday evening my husband and I went to our good friends Pam and Eddie's home for dinner and to visit for the evening. We haven't been over there in quite some time, and we always have fun when we do get together. Pam made a very delicious dinner, and so kindly took my diet into consideration which I had told her that she didn't need to go to extra trouble, but she did anyway. She made skinless chicken breasts sprinkled lightly with breadcrumbs, steamed asparagus, brown rice and a salad. It was very good. I even splurged a bit and had a small piece of strawberry cheesecake for dessert.

After dinner was over and we had talked for awhile, Pam decided to take a couple of games out for us to play, and one of those games was Birminghamopoly. I know that they sell city versions of Monopoly and have seen Chicago-opoly sold at Marshall Fields before it was bought out by Macy's (which I am not happy about since Field's is a Chicago landmark). I like the game of Monopoly, so figured it would be fun.

A bit of background about Pam before I continue on with my story about yesterday evening's game of Birminghamopoly. Pam loves garage sales and she loves a cheap deal even better. She loves antiques, and bumming around stores that sell items of nostaligia and antiquity. Keep that in mind...

We sent up the board and sorted the money into piles, my husband organized the properties into sets, and we chose what color of game marker we wanted, and started playing. The properties are all places around the city of Birmingham like eateries, clothing stores, delis, bistros, etc. In place of where the railroad properties are in real Monopoly there are chains of Barclay stores...BUT all the properties only say "Barclay's" so there is no way to keep track of who owns WHICH Barclay's and so we had to keep very close attention in order to pay the rightful owner the rent due when landing on one of them. We thought that was lame, but thought no big deal since there were only four.

We kept playing, going around the board and then someone landed on the question mark over where Connecticut Ave. (light blue) properties usually are. It said "pick a surprise"...we wanted to know what was a "surprise"??? Where's the instructions? NO instructions! So, we made up a rule of what a surprise was and decided that would mean take a yellow card )in Monopoly this would be Community Chest"...

Then a couple more times around the board, we were buying properties and not really paying attention to names in particular until people started landing on more places where rent was due to the owner. My husband and Eddie had properties from the same color sets and would probably have haggled about it and wheeled and dealed later in the game in real Monopoly, but when Pam landed on an orange property and owed rent, she said the name and BOTH my husband and Eddie owned orange properties with that name and then we realized what was going on...many of the properties had the SAME NAME. WTF? My husband and Eddie both could not remember which orange property of the same name was their own. Who gets rent? No one remembered. Then Eddie asked, "Pam, where did the hell did you get this stupid game?" and she responded. . .

"at a garage sale"...Eddie tossed down his money and said "shit! game over!" and started laughing and got up to get a cup of coffee...my husband was laughing like crazy, and though I didn't want to chime in against my friend, I sat there grinning, trying to contain my laughter. After a few moments, Pam just had to laugh, too.