Golden Gate Mahjong started with a simple observation: adults almost never learn something purely for the pleasure of it. Not for work, not for the kids, not for a measurable outcome. Just because it's fun.

Then a friend of a friend sat me down at her Hello Kitty tile set one November afternoon, and the whole day disappeared — I still don't know if the click of the tiles was hypnotic or if I was just already hooked. Within months I was teaching friends, family, and eventually my husband's family in France (in French, no less), mostly so I'd have more people to play with. Then I noticed what happens at the end of a first session: someone always leaves saying they can't wait to play again.

So I built the thing I wanted to exist: evenings where the tiles are beautiful, nobody's phone is out, and four strangers get loud and competitive by round three. The game is the excuse. What's really on the table is a couple of hours of being fully somewhere, with other people, for no productive reason at all.