Last night I went bowling. There was a time when bowling was as American as cowboys and Indians. Now bowling balls are made in China.

Half a century ago, bowling mattered. According to the Wikis, "Bowling alley construction was considered an important facet of property development in the western United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s, described by the Los Angeles Times as 'small cities in themselves,' some of which cost tens of millions of dollars (in 1960s dollars)."

Fred Flintstone bowled. When I was a tween in a suburban subdivision in Medfield, Massachusetts, there was a Saturday morning bowling league in nearby Natick, and lots of the neighborhood kids partook, schlepped in mammoth station wagons by parents who also were also no strangers to bowling leagues.

Today, bowling has become a symbol of our disintegrating social fabric, thanks to Robert Putnam's book on social capital entitled Bowling Alone.

In Seattle, the decline of bowling was given an ironic twist in two cases where lanes were razed to make way for large apartment buildings: Leilani Lanes in Greenwood, and Sunset Bowl in Ballard. Ironic because the new residents brought by such redevelopment could help keep a bowling lane in business. And also because we urbanists like to believe that multifamily redevelopment is a key ingredient for creating the kind of walkable communities that will help rebuild our dwindling social capital.

But for West Seattle Bowl---where my gang ended up*---that same dynamic may turn out to be lifesaver. Right next door is a giant hole in the ground, the site of stalled project that will eventually bring in legions of new neighbors and foot traffic. And a block away is the nearly completed 195-unit Link Apartments. Who among us could resist a bowling alley within a few blocks' walk?


Hole in the ground at Fauntleroy and Alaska with Link Apartments under construction in the background---West Seattle Bowl is just out of the frame to the left.

Bowling is a highly social activity, no question. There's lots of waiting for your turn, so you have no choice but to sit with your friends and talk. Beer was made for bowling and bowling was made for beer.

And best of all, there's something deeply, primitively satisfying about throwing a big heavy thing at other big heavy things and knocking them around, that exquisite sound ringing out. The first ball I rolled last night was a strike. I was a rock star.

*An aside: The reason we had to travel all the way from the Central District to West Seattle in our personal greenhouse gas generator to go bowling was because minors aren't allowed to bowl at Capitol Hill's Garage, since it's a bar and Seattle has some very dumb alcohol laws. Methinks Republicans aren't the only hypocrites when it comes to "family values." The other reason was that Imperial Lanes on Rainier was booked solid. So perhaps there is hope for America after all..


How many new bowling balls are on that ship?

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