Dartoid’s Column

The last time I was in Seoul I made the mistake of getting talked off the oche and over to the pool table by a little hustler named Lee Min Kyu. I still haven’t figured out how much I lost!

In my life it’s 3:00 in the morning. I’ve just put down the phone from talking with my darts partner (Chris James of the Cousin’s Cannibals) who has just packed up his darts after winning his ’01 back in Hyannis, Massachusetts. It’s 9:00 in the evening (yesterday) back home and league play is in full force. Damn, I’d rather be there…

Located in central Tokyo is a great little place to throw darts. Getting there takes committment and patience, particularly if your command of the Japanese language, like mine, is limited to “hello, bathroom and beer”. Absolutely mandatory though for a day in Japan is a thick, thick wad of cash.

I couldn’t have been more amused when sometime back I read how horrified the British Darts Organization was when it learned that topless women were throwing darts on the beaches in Australia. “Demeaning to the sport” they hollered, as if such activity isn’t the least bit demeaning to women!

It goes without saying that the descent into Ho Chi Minh City is like none other in the world. Eerie. Almost surreal. To think of Vietnam in terms of the present is impossible. For one’s thoughts to be drawn to the tragic, wasted, past is inevitable. It’s so terribly sad…

It was like Groundhog Day today here at the Groundhog Tavern (just across the road from Hooters) in downtown Atlanta, Georgia (94 Upper Prior Street).

When many people think of England images of rolling emerald hills, colorful rhododendrons and red phone boxes tucked along side winding country roads come to mind. Small towns. The quiet life…

When Sir Stamford Raffles claimed Singapore for the British East India Company in 1819 it was nothing but a swampy, thickly jungled island populated by a handful of fishermen and sea gypsies. Today this tiny island is a vibrant, modern city-state of almost three million people and, arguably, the regional center for much of Asia’s trade, transport, banking, tourism and communications. Sandwiched just off the equator between Malaysia and Indonesia, Singapore also just happens to offer more darts bars per capita than any place I’ve ever visited.

While the time-worn debate over whether darts is a “sport” or a “game” will probably go on indefinitely, in the year 2002 anyway darts has an opportunity to make its way near to the very center of where — at least in my opinion — it rightfully ought to be.

Over the past week I have experienced some of the best Southern Africa has to offer. I have followed elephant families in South Africa’s Addo National Park, drifted in mekoro deep into Botswana’s Okavango swamps and even white-water rafted the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe — but all I have been able to find in the “darts department” is an electronic board in a bar in Johannesburg. And it sucked big time!