I’m not here to talk about the fact that my bedroom smells like maple syrup, although it is disconcerting. If this post seems unduly Vermonty, you’ll know why.
No, I wanted to write about bowling. The great American pastime, right? (Until the Mets are in the playoffs, Major League Baseball can fuck off.) Great social function of the heart land, the preferred sport of fat people, that neat thing they do sometimes in “The Big Lebowski” and “Kingpin.” I spent a lot of high school bowling badly—my average’s been stuck at about 97 for years—and I admit a certain nostalgia for Melrose Lanes and Strike and Spare, those wood paneled dumps whose crowd was only 1/2 as trashy as the arcade game lineup in the back. When my A-1 Best Friend declared a desire for bowling on her birthday, I was right on board.
I mean damn, I love bowling.
My 1983 Guide To New York City recommends the borough of Brooklyn as “gritty” and “working class,” specifying the neighborhood of Williamsburg as a “fascinating enclave of Judaism.” Since God’s chosen people surely love God’s chosen sport, we set out on the L train for Brooklyn Bowl. With our $2,000 sunglasses and $9,000 boxer briefs marking us as pure Manhattanites, we expected to stick out garishly among a throng of black-clad, yarmulke-wearing construction workers. We were surprised to feel somewhat underdressed. Place looked like this:
All I can say is that Brooklyn Bowl is a very nice bowling alley. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. It has expansive leather couches, soft lighting (with those supercool neo-industrial lightbulbs that are so popular in pseudo-warehouse environments), and banging DJ sets. There are no plastic chairs, no sticky spots on the floor, the ball returns all work and the PA never played Sexyback, My Humps or Rockstar—three songs I thought one could not bowl without. Despite the bizarre string pinsetter (whose swinging ropes seemed to occasionally knock down an extra pin or two), bowling is bowling, and I like it.
I had read somewhere that Brooklyn had been infested by a rodent named the “hipster,” but that was not what I saw in evidence at the bowling alley. Rather, there were lots of very well dressed people, casting serious glances at the room and the band and sometimes wearing baseball hats which they may or may not have been in earnest about. Say what you will about ironic appropriation of Americana, even the irritating faux-poor of Williamsburg cannot afford $40 for an hour’s bowling, or $30 for a plate of (excellent) fried chicken. These were just regular rich people.
In between frames the other night (I bowled badly; my friends bowled worse. Hooray 97!), I was struck by the sensation that somebody was missing the point. Is it dumber to bowl in a nice bowling alley, or to feel betrayed by that alley’s niceness, as though clean floors somehow obliterate whatever I’m supposed to be experiencing when I pick up a ball? (On an unrelated note, I’ve always had trouble bowling in Nashville because my hands are too large for the tightly grouped holes on a 12 or 14 pound ball, but too weak to wield a larger one comfortably. The spacing on Brooklyn Bowl’s 14 pounders was larger, suggesting that the owners are counting on fragile-wristed clientele.)
I can’t decide if Brooklyn Bowl is reprehensible, for turning a simple fly over state pleasure into something upscale and grotesque, or if I’m an idiot for caring. Bowling is hardly something I can lay claim to—it’s not as though anyone in my family was ever in a league. Confidently, I can say that there’s nothing wrong with being bothered when a cheap pleasure is made expensive. The atmosphere of a low-rent bowling alley—the supposed simplicity of the sport, as though poverty is a virtue—is an intangible, with little meaning at all. Money is concrete, and if what matters is bowling qua bowling, it’s a lot cheaper at home than here.
All of this anxiety was obliterated about halfway through our first hour, when the waiter (I mean, really, a bowling alley has WAITERS?) brought over plates of ribs and cheese fries. “Are these yours?” he asked, and when we said no told us, “Oh. I guess these must be compliments of the chef?” We nodded as though that made sense, and wolfed down the free food well after another waitress had shown up wondering where Lane 9’s ribs were. The food abides, as it were. As I soaked my face, fingers and ball with gratis sauce, my ass sunk deep into the leather couch, I stopped worrying about the building and relaxed into the ceaseless crash of pins.
