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walruss

the state of bowling - 2006

I don’t bowl often. Sure, bowling is the only real American sport – besides football (the real kind), baseball, basketball, and competitive eating – but I’m hardly a real American. I must’ve listened to that damn Hulk Hogan song about 50 times before I gave up trying to draw correlations between myself and better men with bleached walrus moustaches. But recently, I found myself bowling for the first time in a decade, and I was very surprised at my findings; I didn’t change: bowling changed. What was once an innocent, gentle sport I played multiple times throughout the ages of 8 -10 has since become an impostor with a slick new veneer of impostoricity. By now, you can probably guess what all this means.

I went bowling, and you’re going to read about it.

Does bowling bore you? How about an entire castle of bowling? Yes, I thought so. The proposition of bowling took me to Boardman’s scenic commercial wasteland, route 224, where Camelot Lanes, the bowling alley in question, is located. This particular alley is shaped like a castle – in case you haven’t yet solved the mystery – which hearkens back to a simpler, kitschier time when Americans demanded their roadside attractions be as freakish as they were novel. On our vast roadways, we used to eat hamburgers inside a giant hamburgers, pump gas near giant concrete dinosaurs, and buy our colostomy bags inside of massive - I guess what I’m trying to say is that if we were going to go bowling, it was going to be in a castle, good taste be damned!

But Camelot lanes has come a long way since my last visit, and its humble roots since being built in Arthurian Times (I can’t find a source, so I’m just going to assume this.)

That night I walked into Camelot, anticipating the image of a run-down, dreary establishment I expect from a bowling alley. Instead, spotlights! Televisions! Teenagers milling about! Where was the stench of death (the familiar “bowling smell”)? Where were the old men living out the last years of their lives? And what of the massive second-hand smoke cloud that was as familiar as an old bowling partner? All of these elements were relocated to the bar. But they might as well have been gone completely; since the early 90s, bowling had turned from the sport of the drifter to big-time family fun, and I was left bewildered.

Normally able to adapt to most changes, I tried to take everything in stride and enjoy the night. The first clue that this was not going to happen came with my bowling shoes: neon laces. It’s like someone’s idea of fun from 1987 had been transported from the past, infecting the feet of me and my loved ones. This time capsule coolness did not just end with the once-dignified bowling shoe, however. As I reached my lane, I saw various images of Rod Stewart being projected on large screens. Was hitting Rod Stewart with a bowling ball some sort of new, exciting objective to the game of bowling? The manager angrily assured me it was not. Thankfully, Rod Stewart’s face and voice were not the only things filling the enchanted bowling castle that night; the screens also showed some of the best music videos… from 1993. Perhaps Camelot Lanes is trying to increase awareness of The Breeders, but they couldn’t hide their misguided attempts to make bowling cool.

Don’t they realize that bowling isn’t supposed to be cool? Bowling should be full of skuzzy men with the sour smell of unwashed bedding, in tar-stained denim jackets or windbreakers, passing time until their next suicide attempt. Instead, all I could see were 12 year-old girls dressed like prostitutes and seductively leaning over the air blower on the ball return for the benefit of their 17 year-old boyfriends. Bowling used to be something your parents did while you drank wine coolers in your closet; I guess now kids have “better” things to do. And all of this pizzazz added to the game of bowling has now made a night of the sport nearly twice as expensive as a trip to the movie theater. I never though I’d see the day when handling a greasy, used ball would cost more per hour than a chance to see an official Scarlett Johannson boob.

One thing did brighten my night of tortuous bowling, though. In the Camelot Lanes arcade, I saw a machine that dispenses little key chains with flashing LEDs inside. And one of the key chains featured was a crucifix – but Jesus was not unhappy at his predicament. Rather, his face was beaming almost as much as the little LEDs inside that plastic cross.

Kitsch never dies.