Once a month, the tables at a Long Beach Panera Bread just north of Cal State Long Beach swap the soups and sandwiches for cards, tiles and Rummy Club members.
The multigenerational club occupies about half of the cafe’s dining room during this gloomy Feb. 17 meet-up, slapping down tiles, shuffling cards and catching up on life, but never, never keeping score.
But make no mistake, everyone is here to win. Though there’s no money on the line, bragging rights are the currency in the Long Beach Rummy Club, as friends take quick jabs at each other over laughs and pastries.
“We beat them so bad they have to leave,” Gail Mann, 80, teased as two of her friends got up to leave after two hours of playing rummikub. Mann, Marianne Baldino and Dusty, all seniors, met through the club and have since become friends who visit each other at home and take turns hosting rummy nights.
The group will be here well into the evening, says Drew Adams, co-founder of the club. He and his fiancé Lauren Gabbaian run the group together, equipped with a roll of name tags for members, a big red rule book, dozens of variations for people to borrow and a warm smile for anyone who wants to join.
“It’s a social game,” Adams says. “It’s a game that people are playing to connect with others, it’s not the intense chess game in the park, right? It’s a friendly ‘have a laugh at the cafe game.’”
Rummy evolved from a game called Conquian, once popular in Spain and Mexico, though its centuries-old history is still unconfirmed, and widely spread in America in the nineteenth century. It has similarities to the Chinese game Mahjong, while some variations are more similar to poker.
Adams didn’t grow up playing games often, but luckily he’s engaged to someone with a starkly contrasting background in that respect. Gabbaian’s family introduced Adams to their personal variant of the game when they met, and he was hooked.
“I just started buying, like every rummy variant I could find,” Adams said.
After living in Long Beach for two years during the pandemic, Adams and Gabbaian were having trouble making friends locally and craving connection. They thought of using rummy as a way to meet new people and planned the first Long Beach Rummy Club meeting in April 2023, expecting at most two or three rummy-curious people to show up.
To their surprise, a dozen people were already waiting for them when they arrived. They formed two groups and taught everyone Gabbaian’s family’s version of rummy, an emotional moment for Gabbaian, Adams said, and the club has only grown since then.
“It’s that little bit, the ounce of nostalgia, with the promise of making new connections over something familiar and nostalgic, that’s what’s appealing,” Adams said.
Gabbaian’s story is common, it turns out, as many of the Long Beach Rummy Club members can recall their family’s own variation and their first time playing—often decades ago. (Similarly, I remember learning the gin variation of rummy from my mother at about 10 years old).
“As a kid I spent a lot of time on our ranch where we played cards for hours and hours and hours,” said Natalie Jones, who attended the first meeting with her husband Peter and many since. “So it was a really happy memory for me, but since then everyone you know, all the older generation has passed away. So it’s not really something I would ever do anymore.”
Jones has since brought her coworkers along, whom she says sometimes just sit and watch them play, content to be in the warm environment.
“It’s super meaningful to me and I always really look forward to it … It seems like such a corny simple thing, but it ends up meaning more than you would expect it to,” Jones said.
Coming up on the one-year anniversary as a club, at least 30 friends descend on the Panera Bread every month, often bringing newbies along and earning wide-eyed stares from curious onlookers.
At the February meetup, most people have gravitated towards Rummikub, a variation that’s played with Scrabble-like tiles with numbers and colors rather than a traditional deck of cards. At least five games are going at all times, either in groups huddling close or couples and friends migrating to the other end of the room, playing quietly near customers set up with laptops, headphones and sandwiches.
Many members say that after just one meeting, they find themselves wanting to play again and purchase their own set of their favorite variation.
By about 5:30 p.m. at the February meetup, about a dozen people have left, but most have been replaced by fashionably late members filling in empty spots at tables. I find a spot with Mann and Baldino, who offer to impart their wisdom to me.
While most other tables are filled with constant chatter in between rounds, the two older women take their time to see every possibility before them. Baldino has been playing for decades, she says.
At one point Mann compares Baldino to a poker player counting cards at the table, and Baldino replies with a sly smile before prompting Mann to take her turn.
Mann considers saving three tiles for a more complex move in a later round, but decides, “why hold onto something? Just keep learning.”
The table next to us has paused their game to greet a player who just arrived. They spend the next ten minutes catching up, talking about life and current events while their tiles lay patiently waiting.
The lunch rush is over now, but it will be hours before the Rummy Club disperses. The constant clink clink clink of plastic tiles hitting the table and turns being announced has slowed to a low hum, making way for the main reason people continue to show up: connection.
Long Beach Rummy Club meets monthly at the Panera Bread at 2280 Bellflower Blvd. Meeting dates are announced on the club’s Facebook page and Meetup page.
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