Bowling?

For the past who knows how many months, whenever we are approaching a weekend night with no plans, my suggestion has always been “bowling?” Last night, when an investment banker’s absurd job dedication laid bare our plans for the night, we finally went bowling.

Our pin-toppling venue was the Diversey River Bowl in Bucktown. I had driven past this large shed on several occasions and had always wanted to pay a visit. The old fashioned neon signage evoked that sort of old ‘Americana’ feel I had only seen on movies, and once inside my suspicions that this was the kind of place that Tom Petty might have met a girl named Maria were immediately confirmed.

The retro feel stemmed from many sources. Most obvious were the music that spanned seven decades and the accompanying videos that moved around the front wall they were substandardly projected onto. More subtlety, a scrolling LED news ticker displayed news from January 2010, momentarily tricking me into thinking that Justine Henin was making another comeback. As for the drinks, Jello shots were available for $2 per ‘syringe’ (we didn’t try these) and the 100oz beer tubes were perfect for the lane side tables. Refreshingly, the staff weren’t robots obeying meticulous guidelines drafted in a corporate office and battered into them in training – when we weren’t ready for our lane, I feared that we would be forced to start our game or be relegated to the back of the order, but the man simply told us to come back when we had all our players and we could start then. Finally, there was a certain dinginess about the place, punctuated my brightly colored moving spotlights.

Step back in time at the Diversey River Bowl

All things considered, the Diversey River Bowl was awesome and the highlight was the music. It was an eclectic mix that both surprised and delight. There were old classics – that quintessential eighties anthem ‘Take on Me”, a cracking jam from The Clash, and a wonderful song from the fifties that prompted dance moves to become incorporated into bowling techniques, resulting in gutterballs across the room. There were timeless sing-along tunes like Lit’s “My Own Worst Enemy” and The Darkness’ “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”. There were awesome songs I simply never expected to hear by Sleigh Bells, Cold War Kids, and the Bouncing Souls. However, the song whose surprising transmission pleased me most was “One Armed Scissor” by At The Drive-In, an exhilarating rocker from the year 2000 that had my roommate and I screaming along.

 The less said about my bowling the better, so let’s just say that I failed to bowl a strike all night and my average speed was around 7mph.

My bowling wasn’t the only worrying site last night. There were a number of children present who were up and about staggeringly late. When we left at around 1am, we were followed out by two carfulls of kids, some who can’t have been older than five.