Durham, North Carolina. Dwelling of Duke College and its vaunted Blue Devils basketball staff. An anchor of the so-called Analysis Triangle, with a number of the nation’s high medical facilities, quite a few excessive tech firms like IBM and Lenovo, and life science companies like Merck & Co.
And, month-to-month, Durham has additionally develop into the positioning of a most uncommon drunken bar brawl often called Big Robotic Battle Membership.
Griffin Hennelly is the brains, brawn, and impresario behind these battles. He comes from a longtime hospitality background, having labored in bars and eating places in locations like New York Metropolis. By day, he presently bartends at The Federal, a beloved nook bar that’s been a mainstay within the metropolis for over 20 years.
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Again in New York, he additionally studied on the legendary Stella Adler Studio of Performing and went on to supply dwell reveals for almost 15 years. Upon settling in Durham together with his spouse final 12 months, he began fascinated about what sort of reveals may enchantment to locals.
“I spotted that each one the reveals which are fashionable right here contain some kind of athletic exercise and ingesting; some kind of a task enjoying, like a Dungeons and Dragons form of factor, and ingesting; or craft-making and ingesting,” Hennelly says. “And I used to be like, ‘Properly, what if we might match all this into one large present?’”
His imaginative and prescient got here collectively — sure, whereas ingesting — sooner or later at The Frequent Market, a cool comfort store-cum-deli-cum-coffee shop-cum ice cream parlor-cum-bar. Hennelly appreciated the way it had a basement bar area that might be considered from above from prospects sitting in chairs and standing alongside a rail.
“I used to be like, oh, this appears like a kind of coliseum,” he remembers.
The Frequent Market agreed to host the first-ever Big Robotic Battle Membership. Common supervisor Sharon Mahofski thought it was a becoming match of venue and occasion; the bar was initially designed as a neighborhood gathering area and, she says, “I believed it was the bodily finest spot to do that occasion.”
Hennelly took inspiration from Nineteen Nineties new wave comedian books — particularly Rob Liefeld’s work — together with WWF’s late-Nineteen Nineties/early-2000s Angle Period. He posted on native subreddits on the lookout for different oddballs fascinated with dressing up like robots in selfmade costumes and preventing in a basement bar.
“My spouse learn the outline on r/bullcity again in November 2024 and about three phrases in I stated ‘I AM DOING THIS,’” remembers Jeffrey Crews — a longtime electron microscopist specializing in imaging viruses, who has additionally been a tinkerer and a maker of “all types of issues” for many years, and a proud sci-fi nerd.
The primary battle was held in December of 2024. A various mixture of would-be robots confirmed up, every thing from Gen Z Duke college students to Crews, who has simply turned 60 and “who completely kicks ass,” says Hennelly. Their robotic outfits seemed like youngsters’ selfmade Halloween costumes, made from cardboard bins, empty Pabst Blue Ribbon instances, duct tape, and different repurposed objects. They gave themselves names like Thriller Machine, Theodorus Rex, Motherboard Superior, and Seam Ripper. Hennelly glided by Hotdog Henny. It was raucous.
“That is ‘essentially the most Durham factor’ I’ve ever seen,” thought Crews, who has since participated as robots with names like BAPHOMETRON 2.5, Pink Pony Clubber, and Metalbeast: CHROME.
On the first occasion, too many followers arrived to let everybody within the door. The fortunate hundred or so — a mixture of twentysomething hipsters and youthful “cool dad and mom” (some with their babies in tow) — packed The Frequent Market, ingesting cans of PBR and THC sodas as they cheered the robots beneath waging battle in a hoop set amongst beer colours and a wall of pure wine bottles.
“I’ve not but seen anybody wander in in the course of the present to select up a bottle of wine,” cracks Hennelly. (And, for what’s it price, Hennelly says the precise fighters sometimes “save their ingesting for afterward.”)
The primary battle adopted a kind of sumo-wrestling-style scoring system: 5 factors for knocking somebody’s foot out of the ring, 10 for pushing each ft out. Nobody actually paid consideration or cared, although. So for the subsequent present, he switched to judge-award scoring. Once more, nobody cared. Now the winners are decided by viewers approval.
Vinny Fasso began preventing as a strategy to honor his lately deceased brother, Chris; the 2 had liked watching animated sitcom “Futurama” collectively. Immediately, the 36-year-old seems as The Dread Bender — a Futurama reference to the present’s wisecracking robotic — and has additionally taken on a task because the present’s choreography coordinator.
“The mixture of crafting, preventing, silliness, and story-building has created a neighborhood of folks that need to escape from the world we dwell in to return to a spot from once we have been youngsters,” Fasso says. “A spot the place laughter, creativity, and creativeness are valued, and everyone seems to be accepted.”
Moderately rapidly, Hennelly and his occasions started to garner buzz in the neighborhood, each on these aforementioned subreddits and within the legit press.
For what it’s price, Hennelly’s household isn’t any stranger to accolades from the culinary press — although it’s sometimes a bit extra intellectual. Griffin’s brother, Austin Hennelly, is the bar director of the Michelin-starred Kato Restaurant, a sublime Taiwanese spot in downtown Los Angeles. (Austin has been a visitor on VinePair’s Cocktail School podcast, and appeared in a number of options.) Oddly, Austin sees similarities between his and his brother’s bar gigs.
“Whereas the work that Griffin and I do is undeniably totally different, our approaches are the identical and replicate the spirit of devotion to craft with which we have been raised,” Austin says, noting that their father was a multidisciplinary artist who did stage illusions for magic reveals, danced in The Nutcracker, and constructed intricate window shows for his wine store. “[Griffin] is a slapstick savant with an consideration to element that rivals any chef with three Michelin Stars. He’ll work tirelessly, perfecting and tinkering, revising and modifying, to make sure that the result’s the precise proper form of dumbest factor you’ve ever seen.”
However not everybody will get it.
“I’m most likely going to get some hate for this,” began one Redditor, “however I got here anticipating a scripted skilled wrestling expertise with flamboyant strikes and extra efficiency artwork reasonably than precise sumo preventing in cardboard bins.”
Like his brother, Hennelly needs to solely get larger — and extra acclaimed. He needs to stage larger reveals in bigger, ticketed venues and precise theaters. He needs to develop to different North Carolina cities like Raleigh. Subsequent month, he’s internet hosting a Battle Royale. Possibly subsequent, a nationwide tour. Can he get larger than that? He thinks he can.
“Absolute world domination,” he says earlier than we finish our name.
