City Banana Bowling
After reading the papers when I got up this morning—war, terrorfucks, carbombs, Israel, lipstick—I decided to go for a long bike ride.
When I stopped to take in the views from—and, er, at—Gasworks Park I spotted a couple playing a game that looked like cricket as interpreted by a couple of drunks in Wisconsin. A man was standing behind a single bowling pin set on a brick about twenty five or so feet from a woman standing just behind a brick with a bowling pin set on it. Using one of those plastic flingy thingies—see this picture and you’ll know I’m talking about—the man flung a hollow plastic ball at the ground about six feet in front of the woman.
The ball bounced up off the ground in the general direction of the bowling pin. The woman picked up the ball and flung it, cricket-style (but, again, using one of those plastic flingy thingies), at the ground, it bounced up, and past the man’s bowling pin.
The point of the game, obviously, was to get the ball to bounce up and hit the pin, knocking it off the brick. The man was able to do it a couple of times while I watched.
“It’s Banana Bowling,” the woman told me when I asked her the name of the game. “We invented it!” They were using blue flingy thingies today in Gasworks, but they had been using yellow ones when they came up with the game. I didn’t catch the rules, but the game looked like fun. And when I started to ride off, a couple of teenage boys came up and asked if they could give it a try.
Ok, when I saw this title and photo, I assumed that the game must use ACTUAL bowling balls and ACTUAL bananas, which would be INFINITELY more entertaining than this lame-O whiffle game. The slope of Gasworks would make for an awesome alley, though you would likely only get to use your ball once before it went into Lake Union. And now I like the idea enough to round up some people to play it.