Beycoolen Beyblade Club at Rocks Cafe Whether you’re a pickleball addict, Netflix binge-watcher or matcha-crazed cafe hopper, we’ve all got our own ways of letting our hair down once we’re off the clock. But for folks of the Beycoolen Beyblade Club, they’re taking a page out of their childhood when it comes to destressing. As their name suggests, they’re a group of Beyblade enthusiasts – yes, those plastic tops we’d use to fiddle with in days of yore – that congregate occasionally to battle it out.
Long story short, one Instagram reel led to another, and a few DMs later, we found ourselves stopping by to partake in one of their weekly tournaments; here’s what went down. Heading to their usual meet-up spot at Rocks Cafe The time was 5.30pm, and it was business as usual on this Thursday evening. An air of restlessness was just about to set in around the office, but thankfully, we had places to be.
We set out for Rocks Cafe, an eccentric cafe tucked away in the recesses of Arab Street that’s roughly a 10-minute walk from Bugis MRT station. Not gonna lie, it wasn’t exactly the easiest to track down the cafe’s entrance. After turning left on the corner past Sultan Mosque, it’s located in the back alley of the first shophouse you come across.
Before you head in, the cafe’s exterior is adorned with a collage of posters and concave mirrors, making it quite the spot for your fit check snaps. After climbing a flight of stairs, Rocks Cafe didn’t look a beat out of place from its contemporaries along Haji Lane, except for one thing – in the middle of it all, a couple of Beyblade stadiums were already set up for the night ahead. Dusk was settling in, and rightfully, we had to quell our rumbling stomachs.
Clearly, the pizzas were so enticing that my colleagues took a chunk out of them before I could capture them whole. The cafe prides itself on whipping up refreshing cups of matcha and sinful servings of pizza, and after placing our order with the cafe’s owner, Mikey, we were in for a treat. The hearty 8-inch Burrata Caprese ( $18) and Pepperoni Pizzas ($14) were more than enough to fill us up, and the earthy tinge of their Ube Matcha Latte ($7) was just the thing to wash everything down.
Address: 98 Arab Street, Level 2, Singapore 199794 Opening hours: 2pm-11pm, Daily Contact: Rocks Cafe Instagram Getting up to speed with the current Beyblade X generation Syahid inspecting the Beys of a blader before a match. Most of Beycoolen Beyblade Club’s events are held weekly at Rocks Cafe on Thursdays from 7.30pm onwards, and pretty soon, the crowd started pouring in. We were then introduced to Syahid, 24, one of the club’s core members and a Game Master who’ll be officiating some of the matches for today.
He gave us a quick rundown of the events going on today – a G3 tournament and a community event – and very kindly offered to show us the ropes in the art of Beyblading. I don’t know about you, but it’s been a while since we’ve picked up one of these, so guidance of any sort was golden. He showed us how to hold the launchers, the right timing to release our Beys, and explained the rules of the game.
Launched in 2023, Beyblade X is the current generation of Takara Tomy’s Beyblade toyline, and the tops of today are quite different from the ones we might be familiar with. For starters, Beyblades, or Beys, of today are mostly made out of metal, making them much more robust than their archaic, plastic counterparts. The stadiums are also equipped with a nifty gimmick.
They house a rail-like ring near the perimeter, which meshes with the Beyblades’ grooves found on their tips to produce extreme speed. You need a total of 3 Beys to form a “deck” to compete, and there’s also a scoring system used for matches. Based on how you knock out or outlast your opponent’s Bey, you are awarded points – first to 4 wins.
We had some practice launches right after Syahid’s impromptu tutorial, and soon enough, the G3 tournament was underway. 30-odd people turned up, which was noted by Syahid to be one of the larger turnouts for one of Beycoolen Beyblade Club’s events. BTW, entry to the tournament is free, so there’s really no harm in heading down to have a go yourself. Taking part in an official G3 tournament Once the tournament commenced, the cafe roared with a cacophony of ripcords being yanked and the clang of cold steel.
With the way some of these Beyblade players AKA bladers were going at it, these whirling hunks of metal could very well cause some serious damage on an errant launch. Everyone was throwing their entire strength and weight into their launches, and we were warned on multiple occasions to stand clear of bladers who were about to let it rip. In between the intense matches, we also had the chance to speak with Dhanie, 23, the founder of the Beycoolen Beyblade Club.
The club was formed about a year and a half ago, in the classrooms of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), which served as the proving grounds for their first bladers. Mem