The small wooden stage is raised a foot or two above the barroom floor. There are posts at the corners and ropes stretched between them. Spotlights beat on it from above. It looks like a boxing ring for midgets.

But midget boxing matches don’t seem half as absurd as what’s actually been taking place in this ring every Wednesday night this summer. Thirty-two grown men and women, most of them with real jobs and no visible head wounds, converge on the Border Chophouse in the Fan. Only 32 can enter, but most weeks many more try and are turned away. The area around the ring is standing room only.

Why are they here, and why was I there a few Wednesdays ago? Why Rock, Paper, Scissors, of course. Border owner Art Merrit and barkeep Cole Bucholtz have turned that age-old dispute-settling method into a weekly tournament.

Every Wednesday 32 entrants, known only by their stage names, go into an NCAA tournament-style bracket. Each winner – and there will be 16 when the “regular season” is over on September 19 – advances to the final one-day event. The overall winner pockets a cool grand. There are corporate sponsors, men draped in robes, women stuffed into low-cut blouses, and drunken revelers. This is tournament RPS at its best.

I went to the Border to document this madness and wound up getting caught up in it. Bucholtz had 31 entrants around 10:30 and needed one more to round out the field. A guy at the bar with a t-shirt that read “For Rent By the Hour” suggested I grab the final spot. How could I pass up this opportunity at gonzo journalism? What better way to truly understand the growing phenomenon that is RPS than to take part?

I told Bucholtz I was in.

“Great,” he said. “Your stage name will be Brick.”

I’d done my homework on RPS (that is to say, I Googled it) and felt like I had the basics down. Websites like usarps.com and worldrps.com explain the rules in appalling detail. Everything is discussed and dissected—from how many times you pump your fist before throwing to the angle your hand must be at for each throw.

They’re also in a nasty little catfight. Worldrps stakes its claim as the first and only true RPS league and keeper of the World Championship. Usarps fancies itself the brash upstart American. In 2006, the owners put up $50,000 for the winner of a national tournament and somehow got ESPN to televise the event. Bars all over North American are forced to choose between sanctioned events by one or the other.

All that aside, I have a first round matchup with Legal Courtney staring me in the face. I need some practical knowledge.

Frank Flippo, who races motorcycles for a living, tells me rock is often the last-minute decision of the confused amateur because everyone starts with a closed fist. Plus, it’s boring.

“Rock is the missionary position of RPS,” he says.

For the Nature Kid it’s “all about deception. The Nature Kid talks trash,” he says. Like many RPS players, he enjoys referring to himself in the third person.
Falling Stone says that a losing streak has caused him to rethink his approach.

“There really actually is some kind of strategy, but it’s a mind strategy,” he says, straining under the weight of this offering. “Like I’m trying to out think you but you have no clue what I’m thinking so…This time I’m not going to have a strategy.”

Luckily I’m late in the first round. I can relax and watch how this is done.

The first round is a flurry of fists and fingers. A guy who claims his real name is Jack Bauer goes down in two throws. Mamma Lafawnduh crushes Bro Nack. Crowd favorite Blonde Bombshell, in her wifebeater t-shirt and pushup bra, celebrates with her cheering section after dispatching Smokey.

All stare in awe as Nature Kid pushes through the throng, his own theme music blaring. He sports a long blonde wig and a black robe with sequins that spell out his name on the back. The entrance doesn’t scare Injun, who finishes him off in two throws.

Now it’s my turn. I’m still not sure what I’m going to go with first. Flippo’s words ring in my ears. Legal Courtney, who’s just turned 21, is clearly hoping to distract me with cleavage. I block it out. I throw paper to her scissors. Ouch. No time to regroup. I throw scissors to her rock. Just like that, Brick is done.

I almost trip off the stage and find a seat at the bar next to a vanquished Nature Kid. He’s a Border regular who’s gotten as far as the semifinals in previous tournaments. Blonde Bombshell comes over to gloat about her win. By day she’s a bartender and waitress at the New York Deli. Like Nature Kid, Bombshell is here every week for the RPS, and like the Kid, she’s never won.

It won’t happen this week either. She loses in the second round to Binge Drinker in two throws then blames Nature Kid for the loss, claiming he gave her bad advice.

“Tell him he better get someone to walk him to his car,” she threatens, smirking.

“Sorry Bombshell, Brick has to go to the bathroom. Tell him yourself,” I say. This third person thing is kind of fun.

Bucholtz is at the sink when I reach the restroom. “Whaddya think?” he asks.

“Pretty absurd,” I say.

He smiles. “We love absurdity.”

Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament
Every Wednesday at
The Border Chophouse
1501 W. Main St.

http://www.worldrps.com
http://www.usarps.com

This sport is gaining in popularity and I appreciate the coverage.  My family has organized RPS tournaments for years at our Reunions and it is amazing how even my 77-year old grandma participates and taunts this loser.  RPS is a load of fun.