the great albany bowl-crawl part 1 - olympic lanes

okay sooooooo hello hello! sorry about my prolonged absence, i have a new project i am working on and i am here to report!
my friend christine recently moved back to the area and we discovered we share an extreme love for bowling. thus i found my partner to set my bowl-tour in motion. i have compiled a list of all the bowling spots within 30 miles or so, and each week we will visit a new bowling alley and bowl and eat a snack and drink beer and take a few snaps and then i will come home and blog about each and rate the aspects of each.


tonight we started our bowl quest at olympic lanes in menands!



olympic lanes is massive, and air-hanger-esque. you can see it when you drive on 378 to get to the albany rural cemetary, but reaching it is much harder than you would think. i got lost in deep dark menands and it was pouring rain! obviously i found it eventually, and christine was waiting with her shoes on. shoes were 2 dollars, which i thought was cheap. the desk girl said you pay for the lane when you are done bowling. cool. it took FOREVER to find the right bowling ball, which is fairly annoying. not sure where all the 8-10 lb ones were, but they were scarce!





started things out right with a pint of bud ($2.25) and an order of onion rings ($2.50) i wanted nachos but the snack guy told me "my cheese machine is broken today" bummer dude, total bummer.



here is the snack station. i wish i got one with the man who ran it. he was nice and had a nice face. the menu was pretty typical, but maybe a bit short, and it doesn't really have much snack bar character.



the first game i was semi-paying attention but i bowled pretty poorly. i chalk this up to a few things: sub-par ball, too excited about drinking beer and eating onion rings, catching up with christine, out of practice. i scored a 76 and christine kicked my ass with a 132. embarrassing pour moi!
second game was pretty even: 80 something to 90 something (christine won again)
third game: 100 to 103, i took this one!
the way i see it: at least i was on a steady incline.



we returned our shoes and found out we owed $9.75 EACH for the lane. apparently it was $3.25 per person per game. i think that is too much! this brings the place down a few notches.
i wish i had snapped the bar, because it was really big and had a pool table and its own entrance.

at the end we talked shop with the two owners, george and george (aka john). they are greek, hence olympic lanes. ha. they say this is the oldest bowling alley in the albany area, open since 1957, but if its so old then how come the inside looks renovated and not awesome?! hmmmmm?? george and george asked us to come back and bring our friends. i told them we were doing a tour and trying out all spots and they said "we are the best, why look around?" oh george! and george. you guys just don't understand our quest for the creepy!

rating (out of 5)(i may change this system):
price: 3
equipment: 2
snackbar: 2
bar: 4
character: 3
overall: 2.8

join me next time! whole new place and whole new set of rules! (i lie)