On a Thursday evening in late October, the rooms of a 112-year-old house on Fort Bragg Road will fill with the click and clatter of plastic tiles. Pine & Tiles, a group that teaches and hosts American mahjong in southeastern North Carolina, is bringing its Halloween party — Bams & Boos — to District House of Taps in Fayetteville on October 22, 2026, from 6 to 9 p.m. There will be light bites, costumes, a Best Costume prize, a Highest Open Play Score competition, and something the organizers are calling a Lucky Pumpkin surprise. The name is a pun on bams, the bamboo suit in the mahjong tile set, and boos, the Halloween kind.
The structure of the night is what makes it unusual. Players pick a track when they register: Mahj 101 for people who have never held a rack, Guided Play for those who know the basics but want a coach nearby, or Open Play for the experienced crowd chasing that high score. All three run in the same room at the same time, which means a first-timer learning to read a card can look up and see a table of regulars calling out a mahjong in the corner. Advance registration is required, and seats are reserved through the group's website, pineandtiles.com.
American mahjong is not the solitaire tile-matching game people play on their phones. It is a four-player table game descended from the Chinese original, played with 152 tiles, racks, jokers and a printed card of hands issued each year by the National Mah Jongg League. The league was founded in 1937 on the premise that the game could be standardized and taught, and for decades it lived mostly in living rooms, country clubs and synagogue social halls. What has changed recently is where it happens. Mahjong nights have migrated into bars, breweries and restaurants, drawing a younger and more social crowd that treats the game the way others treat trivia or bocce. Pine & Tiles is a small expression of that shift: its calendar runs Mahj 101 and open play sessions at District House of Taps and guided play at The Market Place in Pinehurst, plus gatherings in Southern Pines. It describes its mission simply as learning, playing and connecting through American mahjong in southeastern North Carolina.
The venue is a good fit for that mission, and it has its own story. District House of Taps opened inside the Hilltop House, a historic home at 1240 Fort Bragg Road in the Haymount neighborhood. The building is more than a century old — a 112-year-old house at the time of the taproom's launch — and the owners, Eydie and Paul Hammaker, converted it into a self-pour taproom and restaurant as their first venture of this kind, wanting to bring something unusual to their hometown. The centerpiece is a wall of 40 RFID-activated self-serve taps, the first of its kind in the area, pouring North Carolina craft beers, sours, ciders and wines. Patrons wear a wristband, pour their own samples, and pay by the ounce, which lets them try several styles without committing to a full pint. The house has several rooms, including a lounge, and a patio, so a mahjong night can spread out rather than cram into one open floor.
For the Halloween event, that tap wall will be running, but wristbands are purchased separately from the mahjong registration — a detail worth knowing before you arrive. The food side of the house is known for pub fare, including a loaded Italian sandwich called the Steel Town Sammy, built in the spirit of Pittsburgh's Primanti Brothers. Light bites are part of the ticket.
What the Lucky Pumpkin surprise actually is, the organizers have not said. It joins a small tradition of themed mahjong gatherings that lean into the calendar — the game's own vocabulary is full of dragons, flowers and seasons, so Halloween is not as much of a stretch as it sounds. The costume contest and the score competition give the evening two different kinds of stakes: one for the people who came to be seen, one for the people who came to win.
Bams & Boos runs 6 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, October 22, 2026, at District House of Taps, 1240 Fort Bragg Road, Fayetteville. Registration is required in advance at pineandtiles.com, and players should choose their track — Mahj 101, Guided Play or Open Play — when they sign up.