Editor’s Note: This month, The Erickson Tribune introduces “From Left Field,” a new column where we’ll take a fresh look at the state of sport and leisure in today’s world.
By Richard Daub
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE
It used to be that you could walk into your local bowl-o-rama and hear the BLONG! of a clean shot in the pocket or catch the glimmer of the fluorescent house lighting upon freshly oiled lanes and know that an hour or two of satiating entertainment awaited.
All you needed was a ball and a pair of multicolored shoes disinfected to the point of disintegration to be promptly transported to a state of recreational bliss.
Bowling, however, has changed.
New Gimmicks for an Old Pastime
Now when you walk into many bowling alleys, you are greeted by glow-inthe- dark lanes and music booming so loud that you can’t even hear the ball strike the pins. Fog machines and psychedelic light shows illuminate the walls and ceiling, and tenfoot wide projection screens above the pins allow you to watch ESPN while you bowl.
For today’s sophisticated bowler, it is not merely enough to take out your frustration on ten innocent pins lined up like good soldiers in perfect triangular formation waiting to have the tar knocked out of them by a 16-pound ball. The incentive is now derived from scoring monitors that react to each shot with animated smiley faces and exploding pins with likewise sound effects. Wasn’t the game noisy enough already?
Even the bowling balls have changed. Chipped, solid color house balls have been replaced by eyeballs and jack-o-lanterns with finger holes in them. Others are transparent spheres made to look like glass, the insides of which contain three-dimensional renderings of beer bottles, goldfish, and Yoda.