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Boston bowling back, but no longer 24 hours
By adamg on Thu, 07/16/2020 - 1:50pm
The Dorchester Reporter alerts us that Boston Bowl on Morrissey Boulevard is once again open for kegling, now that Boston is in Phase 3 of Covid-19 re-opening, but says it's now only open until midnight and weeknights and 1 a.m. on weekend nights. Also, every other lane is shut and the billiards and arcade rooms remain closed.
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Comments
says you
the beauty of kegeling is that i can do it anytime
Wait
Didn't you say that you were a dude?
EDIT: I looked up kegel, and didn't realize that it's for men and women.
What about Ron's?
I'm looking for some candlepin action!
(I also dislike that Boston Bowl makes you buy their stupid sox.)
One of 5 Best Places in town
Boston Bowl has always had candlepin and the socks are free.
?
You have to pay to rent shoes at every bowling alley I've been to, at least Boston Bowl gives you a free pair of socks along with the rental.
Alllll the points for dredging up the word "kegling." I learned
that one from the Times crossword, haven't seen it in years.
My tiny nowhere Masshole hometown had a tenpin alley *and* a duckpin alley, but I spent most of my time in them playing pinball. Decades later, a childhood friend is still pissed that I named a particular blunder after him -- letting the ball sneak between the lower left-side double flippers on Capt. Fantastic -- as it was his Achilles' heel and the name stuck in our crew.
(Fun fact: my parents' honeymoon consisted of going bowling in another town an hour away. They were 20, Dad with his first job out of the service, both with toddler memories of The Great Depression: from circumstances.)
I'm mostly mediocre when I bowl every couple of years, but I've had a few good moments. I once rolled a 230 at tenpin -- six or seven Xs in a row plus a couple of spares, if memory serves -- after four Bud longnecks in Fort Lauderdale. Closest I've ever been to that pro athlete's "Empty your mind: be the ball" feeling. I still have the tiny, purple-inked dot-matrix printout of that score somewhere in my archives.
Another favorite night was at Kings on Dalton Street. The staff asked me and the boys -- our wives were at Jacque's for a bachelorette party -- to move from the big room to the private two-lane room to accommodate a group that needed two adjacent lanes. We were in there ten minutes when Kendrick and Rondo strutted in with a glamorous entourage to use the other lane.
"Be cool, dudes!", I stage-whispered to my mates. Both the Celts stars were terrible: Perkins threw big, looping lobs that put booming dents in the alley; Rajon skipped every ball before the foul line like a twenty-bounce worm-burner grounder. I thought, "I will lose half the time to any of my fellow got-no-game buddies at Horse, but at least I could beat those millionaire roundball studs at tenpin." We almost got out without looking like dopey fanboys, but at the last second, one my pals couldn't resist going over to gush at them for an awkward 30 seconds. So close to preserving our dignity!
And I won the bowling tournament (at another Kings -- lord, their food is pitiful) at my company's holiday party back in January. A few 130-ish games was good enough. I'll guess the trophy cost $7, plus I won a pair of Sox tickets shittier than the small season share of grandstand seats I've had since before the Title Town era. I suspect that championship will stand up for a few years. I don't know many people willing to rent shoes previously worn by a thousand strangers anymore.
Did you say Duckpin?
Was that town near Rhode Island? They love Duckpin bowling in Rhode Island. I miss Candlepin bowling in Boston. I swear it was the thing that kept kids off the streets in the 1960s and 70s. Once the Candlepin bowling alleys disappeared gangs started to form.
Yep, on the South Coast. I always found duckpin
(as with candlepin) much more challenging: a 70 was a great score for me. Definitely more strategy playing the deadwood. Last I looked, no one in history has ever rolled a verified perfect game in the sport. I was always impressed by the old dudes who would really wing that little ball with serious english on it and make those pins explode.
A 2016 Times article cited only 41 duckpin alleys left in the US. I expect most of those are gone now. Having played it myself is another Abe Simpson story, like when I tell the kids at work about museum-grade tech: "You'd plug a landline handset into a 300-baud acoustic coupler that would make a noise like the Oooold Scratch Himself imitating an asthmatic bull elephant, which was the style at the time. The only computer porn was monochrome ASCII art of 1960s Playboy centerfolds: the zeroes and the backslashes of that one girl, oh lordy. You'll excuse me, but I have to go regale my 500,000 TikTok followers with a short dance video tribute to how COBOL grampas saved us from Y2K."
For some reason, I just now remember my dad telling me about his teen job as a pin-setter in the pre-automation era.
I can see a 70 being good at
I can see a 70 being good at duckpins but at least a 100 for a good score in candlepin for recreational bowlers. The deadwood was easier to read with candlepin.
10 pin bowling i got to 120 with the lightest ball in the lane. :)
Jeff Foxworthy:
Jeff Foxworthy:
frustrated shopper - But - Your sign says "Open 24 Hours"!
shopkeeper - Not all in a row!