Illustration by Jorge Colombo

It is a happy paradox that the human soul thrives on both the familiar and the unknown. Five years ago, when new ownership reconceived this tiny parlor, once home to the legendary Village Chess Shop, as a thrumming snack hall with an emphasis on novel and esoteric board games, they made sure to hold on to the classics. Nowadays, patrons can play any of about a thousand games, for a fee. On a recent night, a group of friends bought a few ten-dollar cups of frosé and a mini-bottle of champagne. They carried a battered box containing Ticket to Ride, a game that was created this century but looks like it came from the last, to a room decorated with Magic: The Gathering banners and a framed poster that charted varieties of beer. As the players started laying down boxcars on a map of North America, following preassigned secret routes, a nearby woman in a floral-print dress explained the rules of a fantasy game called Dominion to her date, a man in an athletic-fit polo. “Do you understand why this is important?” she asked, impatiently, pointing to a pile of cards. “If you don’t understand something, tell me.” Her date rubbed his temples as she dealt a hand. Mercifully, a bottle of white wine appeared. Quietly, he poured. Soon, the Ticket to Ride train lines stretched from New York to Oklahoma City, Winnipeg to Seattle. The players revealed their final cards and tallied their points; whispers of “holy shit” and “goddammit” passed between them. “Wasn’t that fun,” the winner, a woman in a white tunic, said, as she shimmied in her seat. Her defeated friends walked outside as two cavalier men in sports caps entered, minutes before last call. One of them ordered Session lagers. The other grabbed the game Risk. Were there but world enough, and time. (230 Thompson St. 646-543-9215.) ♦