Warm Up Your Ping-Pong Balls!

Red cups, ping-pong balls, an 8-foot long table and a couple of pitchers of your favorite throwaway beer made for a great night of drinking in college. Sooner or later (hopefully sooner) you graduated, maybe took that beer pong table with you and set up your new life as a functioning adult. Before too long, you probably glanced at that lonely-looking table in the corner of your living room or basement and thought that maybe, maybe you had outgrown that favorite of collegiate activities. Eventually that table soaked in Coors Light, ramen noodles, fond memories (and maybe a little vomit) made its way to the garbage, never to be heard from again. Enter longtime friends Jerry Piscatelli, Sal Laudano and their brainchild, the Port-O-Pong.

The Port-O-Pong is a delightful hybrid of a beer pong table and an AeroBed. Inflatable (and thus floatable) with the prerequisite ten-hole formation for beer pong—plus a rinse cup—the Port-O-Pong is indeed the portable reincarnation of that more cherished collegiate pastime. Phillyist caught up with Jerry and Sal at the Atlantic City Beer Festival where they had set up a table hung from a tent. Jerry was manning the booth while Sal, clad in a deflated Port-O-Pong "suit" was mingling with the crowd. Both are intelligent, nice guys—no frat-boy douchebag behavior here. They hail from Connecticut but the idea for the Port-O-Pong came while on vacation in Florida.

Poolside at a hotel in Florida, Jerry and Sal began to think of how they could play beer pong while on vacation. Because neither of them had a table with them, they started to get resourceful. It began with trying to figure out how to play beer pong in the hotel pool without getting kicked out. Original materials included pool noodles and a myriad of other items—they knew they wanted this thing to float. They researched how beach balls were made, as well as the AeroBed. After making the first generation of tables, they added four grommets on the sides for added playing options. This is great for people like this Phillyist staff member, who does not have a pool in her yard but does have some lovely oak trees from which to hang an inflatable beer pong table! Sal shows us a "baby picture" of the first Port-O-Pong: a white raft-like object with drink cup holes on both ends. The prototype didn't have the logo in the middle, the grommets on the sides or a rinse cup (if you're playing in the pool, there's your rinse cup!) The new versions now have all of these and also come in a variety of colors.

The cool thing about Sal and Jerry is not that they've invented a way for us adults to rekindle the days of our college careers, but that they've got hearts of gold. They've teamed up with a charity called Keep-A-Breast and at the beer festival they had a pink Port-O-Pong signed by women that came through their booth with the table ending up at the Playboy Mansion. They work with hospitals and charities throughout the country donating their product, raffling it off with all proceeds going to the specific charity.

Surprisingly enough, Sal and Jerry have not done a college promotional tour. Jerry explains, "College students aren't our market. Our market are people like you—adults who are in the workforce, out of college who may say, 'Hey I remember playing this game—that was really cool.'' As it turns out, it's not just for adults anymore, either. Jerry says, "It's actually spanning generations. We have parents that tell us they play apple juice pong with their kids." Phillyist likes this idea but remember parents: Rock of Love girls aren't born, they're made. Proceed with caution.

On the whole, the Port-O-Pong is really cool. For those that enjoy it, this is a great way to enjoy some beer and great laughs with friends, get a little competitive, spend time outside on a warm summer day and when it's all over, pull the Port-O-Pong from the pool, the tree, the kitchen table, the truck bed—wherever—deflate it and resume life as an adult. Or if you're the last person standing, you just found yourself a bed for the night. Bottoms up!

Image Credit: portopong.com