Bowled Over
Formative years spent eating Taco Bell in subdivisions create a resilient identity: Bury your small-townness deep (my Ohio upbringing hides beside my spleen), but it'll eventually worm its way to the surface. That's when uncontrollable urges cause me to drink domestic beer and bowl, a pastime the suburbs do best.
Sure, downtown Manhattan's Bowlmor Lanes updates the seven-ten-split experience with flashy lights and inflated price tag. But that's as senseless as a truffle-covered Kobe burger. Bowling should be a bargain. Bowling should be beer-drenched. Bowling should occur at Sunset Park's Melody Lanes, one of the city's last old-time alleys-and a faithful re-creation of the suburban diversion.
Upon reaching Sunset Park (an express trip on the N or D), first patronize the Rainbow Café. This bar cum catering hall was built when Sunset Park was staunchly shamrock. Sit at the elbow-worn bar-surrounded by tvs broadcasting horse racing-and order a cheap domestic draft, like we did on a recent Friday night.
"Pints of Schaefer?" asks the bartendress. She's a heavily made-up woman with a face like a Picasso painting. Four-leaf clovers haphazardly decorate walls.
Ms. Bartender delivers our three-dollar beers and says, "It's karaoke night." She motions to a 13-inch tv, which a jolly man is attaching to a karaoke machine. Soon, puffy middle-aged men and women croon tunes like "You Give Me Fever." It's cheerfully creepy, like Chinatown's Winnie's, but with better prices. A near-pint of vodka tonic is not even five bucks. Even better, the Rainbow observes the tip-well-and-good-things-happen philosophy. "These are on me, sweeties," the bartendress said, filling a free third round. The sugary American beers send us stumbling to Melody.
It's a 1970s time machine: a snack stand offers deep-fried delights like curly fries, while a bar offers $9 pitchers of Bud. But Friday and Saturday nights, iced pails of four Rolling Rock bottles run a sweet $8. They're the preferred quaff for living the suburban dream: unlimited bowling for $15, from midnight until 3 a.m. Hello, Ohio. I've missed you so much.
My pubescent dating revolved around Thunderbowl's Rock 'n' Roll Bowl: $10 bought unlimited alley action beneath black lights, accompanied by hair metal. Melody Lanes follows this format: Lights are dimmed to make-out levels, allowing a disco ball to work its epileptic magic. Rump-shaking songs like "Sexual Healing" and "Gin and Juice" combine with crashing pins-and screams from drunk bowlers running the gamut from chunky-eyeglass gentrifiers to tube-topped women-to create sweet chaos.
Our posse-which has swelled to a dozen-signs up for three lanes. (The minimum is four people per lane.)
"Can we have-?" I start, before the maternal counterwoman cuts in with, "No, I'll tell you which lanes you can have."
She sends us to a far corner, beside apple-red walls and beneath the cigarette-yellowed tile ceiling. We sit in hard plastic chairs and input our names into the computer. Above the shiny lanes, colorful banners tout bowling's appeal to school camps and church groups.
"Pick up a spare for Jesus!" a friend says.
To avoid wayward wrath, I head to the bar. It's the territory of old-school character Peter Napolitano. Each evening, Bay Ridge?raised Napolitano tends to the tiny bar (little more than a glassed-in box with tables) clad in a jacket-less tuxedo, black cummerbund, suspenders and bow tie.
"Whaddya want?" he asks in a peanut-butter-thick Brooklynese.
Beer. In buckets. Lots of 'em. My order launches a rambling, 11-minute discourse about how "creatives" should join forces, like Voltron. It ends with Napolitano gently head-butting me. We'll save his life story for another column.
After all, we have buckets of Rolling Rock! Their paltry price turns our bowlers into Daddy Warbucks. Pails are emptied. One game becomes four. Shouts of "woo-hoo" and "steeeee-rike" lead to a high-five epidemic. It's a merry atmosphere, a return to a simpler time when pleasures could be found in a two-buck beer and a 10-pound ball hurtling, again and again, toward its unavoidable destiny.
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