A Tuesday club in Carrollwood teaches for free and keeps growing

Every Tuesday at half past noon, the second floor of the Carrollwood Cultural Center in Tampa fills with the click of tiles. The Carrollwood Mahjong Club meets there from 12:30 to 2:30 in the afternoon, and according to a November 4 report by Jim Mayhew for 92.5 MAXIMA, the room now draws about 40 to 45 players a week.

The club was not always indoors. Its founders, Jennifer Grebenschikoff and Susan Baxter Gibson, started out playing at VISTA Gardens, and the report says the summer heat sent the game inside. The Cultural Center, at 4537 Lowell Road, gave them a room, and the players followed. At the October 27 session alone, the report counts at least five newcomers.

Who comes to the table

The founders told the station that new players keep arriving every week, and that more of them are young. They mention teenagers among the newcomers and credit people in their 20s and 30s with much of the recent growth. Grebenschikoff pointed to a segment on a national morning show as one spark for that younger crowd, according to the report, which attributes the founders' remarks to the Tampa Bay Beacons.

The game is American Mahjong, played on the card of hands the National Mah Jongg League publishes each year. The report advises anyone coming to bring the 2026 card. Players who own tiles, racks and a mat are encouraged to bring those as well, though nobody needs a full kit to sit down the first time.

The cost is modest. The report says each player pays $5 per Tuesday, handed to the club contact on arrival, and tables seat four.

How a beginner learns here

What sets this club apart is the teaching. Both founders, the report says, spend much of every session helping newcomers rather than playing their own hands, and the lessons cost nothing. Beginners sit at their own tables instead of being dropped among veterans, which lets them learn at their own pace without slowing anyone else down.

The founders also steer new players toward the practical side of the hobby: where to buy tiles and supplies online, and where to get the year's official card. For anyone who has wondered how to start without spending a great deal or feeling out of place, that is a gentle way in.

The club is one of several groups that make their home at the Carrollwood Cultural Center. The Center's own website lists Mahjong among its clubs and groups, alongside bridge, a community chorus, a band and a book group, as well as classes, camps, a gallery and performances. The Center grew out of a partnership between Hillsborough County and the nonprofit Friends of Carrollwood Cultural Center, according to that site.

“We teach it for free.”Susan Baxter Gibson, as reported by 92.5 MAXIMA

Prim's view

This is Prim's opinion. A club that charges five dollars and teaches for free is doing something generous, and generosity is how this game has always traveled. Somebody sat you down once and showed you how the card works. The Carrollwood founders are doing that for strangers, forty at a time.

Prim is especially fond of the separate beginner tables. Nothing turns a newcomer away faster than feeling watched by a table of experts. Give her a table of fellow learners, a patient teacher nearby and a Tuesday afternoon, and she will be back next week with a friend.

If you live in north Tampa and have been meaning to learn, Prim suggests you get a 2026 card, climb those stairs on a Tuesday and tell them Prim sent you. Then come back and tell Prim how the table treated you.