bowling league night is tuesday
Last night, as I do every tuesday, I hit up Amf white plains bowl. It was a pretty standard night of bowling, although we only won 10 points (out of 20) - basically a tie. Which is a bit frustrating because I had a pretty good night. Not the point.
The event that is worth writing about from last night occured as the night was winding down. The league is full of characters, and I mean serious characters - anyone who has been with me to any of my league nights can attest. At the end of the night one of these characters, Gerald - a 350 pound 6 foot 3 black man, is at the bar - he is being loud and doing shots of jack daniels. At the other end of the bowling alley is a group of college students slowly consuming their weight in alcohol. They repeatedly send the same girl to the bar, held up by Gerald, to replensh their stock. Slowly Gerald and the intoxicated 120 pound pasty white girl become chattty. She starts to come back more frequently and before long she is part of the bowling group, leaving her friends with out drinks. Gerald then proceeds to invite her for a shot for shot jack daniels competition.
I shake my head and leave.
one two punch
punch one:
Wednesday night I went to watch the knicks play the raptors (not an overly exciting game at first glance), but we were taken by a representative from AOL. Which meant we ate at the knicks clubhouse (a full course affair), the best part about our clubhouse experience happened as we walked out… our waiter ran up to us with another round of drinks for the walk to our seat. He gave them to us in plastic cups and told us to enjoy the game, great touch. Our seats were so money, about 10 seats behind spike lee’s courtside view. The game came down to the final shots with the knicks pulling it out by two.
punch two:
Thursday I took off of work to go watch the US Open - bowling - out in Jersey. This is the one tournament that is open to anyone all year long, so you have every joe schmo who could ante up with the $500 entry fee. We ended up staying after the tournament was over having beers with norm duke and mike machuga, it ended up being a great time.
is it? no its not!
Man, I keep thinking that today is friday. For those of you like me, let me tell you - it’s not. I just looked at outlook and it told me that today is tuesday. What a let down.
on a good note though, it is tuesday. ANNNDDDDD… that means it is my bowling league night.
15 bucks and bowler’s tape
I went to lunch with Amy yesterday in the upper east side by my apartment. It was a fun little place called the barking dog. Everything went well and the food was ok (although wasn’t a huge fan of my omelet). But when we went to pay with a credit card they said they only take cash. Hmm… would have been nice to know, right? I am sure there is a sign somewhere that says this, but I didn’t see. You would think that a place that has $15 breakfast items would take a little plastic. We scrounged around in our pockets and came up with $15 bucks, a half pack of gum, and some bowler’s tape. Not gonna work. Amy ran to the bank and we paid… but I wish we would have tried to sell the bowler’s tape through.
bowling league returns
I know many of you were concerned about the fall of fiesta bowl. Well lay your worries to bed, because I started my second season as a new york bowler in the “Miller Classic” bowling league via White Plains bowl. The league is, as indicated by its name, is sponsored by Miller and is one of the more competitive leagues in the area. My 3 man team consists of myself, TK (a private investigator) and a man named Buddy. Our team appears to a little above average in the league and hopefully can cash in at the end of the season (35 weeks from yesterday - sept. 6th).
If you have ever bowled in a league before (I will assume most of you haven’t) you know that the first night of league, you have a meeting. In this meeting all the league rules are set… for example, who can be a sub, does the sub pay?, how much money will go into a prize fun, etc… All of these items are voted on - city hall style - by the captains in the league. This has happened in ever league I have ever bowled in… so, why do I bring it up? What happened last night was out of control. The meeting went on for hours - HOURS! The. meeting. got. intense. I felt like I was at court. Teams were being called up and had to make a case for this or that and certain teams were being grandfathered in and other teams were over the cap so they were using out of county averages and this and that and more. BREATHE.
We finally got on the lanes at 11 or so and got out of the bowl near 1:30. What a late night. We did win 18 out of 20 possible points, so I guess it was a success.
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fiesta bowl | no more
Tonight the owner of my bowling alley announced that the bowl will be shutting down in one months time. August 16th is the alleys last day… the problem is, that our league was supposed to go 2 weeks past the 16th. So we are doubling up for the first two weeks in August, bowling on both Monday and on our regular night, Thursday. It is sad to see any bowling alley close (this one is being turned into a pharmacy or something), but it is especially sad for me to see this one go - as it was my place of refuge when I first moved to New York. I started bowling here weeks after I moved into the city and have met many friends there in the past year.
Here is an excerpt about my bowling league night from September of last year.