Secrets of the Brooklyn Basement Domino League

For hundreds of Caribbean-American New Yorkers, a subterranean domino league offers a relaxed reminder of home. But when things get serious, they get really serious.

Photos by Meghan White

Eunice Griffith sits on her tan couch with her hand on her head, thinking over her new work schedule. She has more hours now, something a single mother of five, with two children at home, might be glad for, but a tinge of disappointment still slides through her voice. Her brown eyes and wide smile are warm, but tired. Well-loved family board games fill the large TV stand across from her, and a single tea candle burns in the corner. Her daughters are keeping to themselves, and she may be imagining less time with them, to cook dinner or help with homework or braid her seven-year-old’s waterfall of hair. But what she speaks of tonight is having less time for dominoes.

When she leaves the apartment, Eunice pauses on her way down the gray staircase, leans over the banister, listens. Sometimes she can hear loud slams behind the door to the first floor unit, a sure sign her father, Ken, is in there playing dominoes – a game whose goal is often to slam the tiles on the ta…