the great albany bowl-crawl part 6 - green island lanes

well hullo!

i'm back again with another installment of the bowl crawl. this week took us a bit north of albany to a town-village amalgam known as green island. though it hasn't been a real island since the 60's, green island is the smallest town (by area) in all of new york state! WOW!

i met christine around 8:30, so i was able to shoot an dusky ominous exterior shot:






went inside and got shoes ($1), and were put on lane 7. walked to the bar and got a coors light (shut up) ($2.75). checked out the snack bar, which unfortunately, was closed, but they have whole pizzas! took a while to find good bowling balls, the selection of 8-9 lb balls was really sort of pitiful, and the ball i did find really ripped off my finger nails, but that is a horse of another color entirely.

on to the games! i think we may have been out of practice. or maybe we were nervous because the men in the bar were cheering for us when we got spares. or maybe the bowling balls weren't right. but the air blower for drying off your hands was really strong (A+) and the lanes were in great shape and had really nice early 80's type of graphics overhead. here are some interior shots and a shot of the great bar which was really open and nice.







okay and like i said, we had an off night with our scores. but we may become pros very soon! (more on this after i show you the scores)





whatever. i won both games. okay so somewhere in there we started talking with tom walsh jr. the owner of green island lanes, and two other bowling alleys around town as well! we were talking about our bowling mission and how many places we've been and which ones are our favorites and what kind of things we like about bowling, because he wanted to know about 'occasional bowlers' he ended up giving us so many bowling tips and showing us how the pros bowl. he also said he would give us a free lesson, and gave us his card so we can call him before we go to one of his other lanes and he can be there to give us tips. he is also going to read this so i am trying to be as inoffensive as possible. not that there was anything to be offensive about, but you know what i mean.....

tom giving christine some hands on tips:




okay so now the best part. we were really chatting with tom about bowling and meeting his buddies and all of that, and then i mentioned how much i loved the shoes i had received from them that evening, and he said "you can take them" TAKE THEM!!!

I AM NOW THE PROUD OWNER OF THE BEST AND MOST COMFORTABLE BOWLING SHOES OF ALL TIME.



i am so happy! they live in my car now so that i am ready for whenever i might feel like bowling. ha! when i went up to the counter to pay for our games ($3 each) i told the counter guy "he said i could have these shoes" and he goes "pfft, yeah right" and some other guy said "no really, he did" and then i walked out with them! thanks tom! we can't wait to become pro bowlers!

score:
price: 4
equipment: 3
snack bar: 2.5
bar bar: 4
character: 4
overall: 3.5


see you next time!

the great albany bowl-crawl part 5 - spare time latham

well boys and girls, its that time again, BOWLING TIME!

so we missed last week because christine is going to be a lawyer and make a lot of money, but this week we made up for it by having about 100 times more people than normal at our bowl night!

i showed up first because the others were running a bit late, i knew right were spare time was because i often shop at the salvation army right down the street. it looks fairly generic and not too exciting from the outside:






spare time is a chain, so i had my reservations about it, but i was bowling with my friend clare and her family and they live right down the street, and it was probably the only way to have them come.
the inside of this place looks like being inside a video game! i was really surprised at how 80s future this place looked, plus it has TWO sets of lanes, one on each side of the place. the set up was definitely newer, but it wasn't as awful as i thought it would be. dare i say, i kind of even liked it!





got my shoes which were VELCRO (that's new for me) and cost $3 (which is also new for me because it is A LOT). got our lane-16-and headed out to find the perfect bowling ball. there were a plethora of 8-10 pounders, which i attribute to this place being very family oriented, and not so much for older people or leagues.



christine showed up and then the lanusse family also showed up with friends in tow, we needed two lanes! christine and i got beer from the bar ($3) and i asked the counter guy if there were free refills and winked at him and he said "sure, just don't tell anyone" SWEET.

so we started our games, me, christine and clare on one lane, and sean, chuck, sue, and connor on the other. here's a cute action shot of sean helping connor with the ball ramp. it was his first time bowling and he LOVED it! i would say his favorite part was the ball return, he kept making a "pllp" noise with his tongue when the ball would pop out.



this is what i look like when i get a snowman!



so clare, despite saying he never bowls, was actually an excellent bowler, and christine bowled like she had actually never bowled before and didn't even know what bowling was. here are the scores:





the second game everyones name had to start with c. and i won! well, to be fair, i don't know what the guy called cbre got in the end because i had to speed off to make it home for idol and i still missed the first 2 performances (if kris allen doesn't get voted off i will be LIVID)

here's a picture of parker before i get to the scores:



score:
price: 2
equipment: 4
snack bar: 3
bar bar: 2
character: 3
overall: 2.8

til next time, happy bowling!

the great albany bowl-crawl part 4 - del lanes

the crawl continues!
christine was in miami for over a week, so we had to pause our adventure times, but now we are BACK IN ACTION!

tonight we continued the crawl at our old haunt, del lanes, in delmar, our HOMETOWN. this is the alley we both basically learned to bowl at, so we have sentimental feelings for this place. that being said, i will try to set those feelings aside and rate this place fair and square.

that being said, i have an EXCELLENT story about the following picture. when i was in 11th grade i decided to throw a "punk" show, and del lanes was my venue. i called this event (cleverly) "punk rock bowling" and it was a complete success. i had local bands play, and there were so many people there that the owner of this bowling alley gave me some money at the end (which wasn't part of the deal, and i think he gave me like $100 bucks) anyways, someone climbed the building and stole the bowling pin that was cut in half and mounted after the bowling ball in the sign below. that was TEN YEARS AGO. they still haven't replaced it? fine by me, i get to tell an excellent story about it.



we picked del lanes because they had an awesome deal: dollar shoes, dollar games, dollar sodas, dollar pizza slices. sweet!



ball selection was great and they had a plethora of 8-10 pounders. i went to the bar and got a giant blue moon for $4.75. all was set. we began our battle.



the lanes were packed, so i was a bit distracted, plus they were bumping some r+b hits which really had a negative effect on my game.

here are the scores:







so christine basically kicked my butt the entire time, save for the third game where we TIED! which is really pretty incredible. second game c got her highest score EVER. congrats christine! very impressive!







here's the snack bar, which was way more depressing than i remember it being. we didn't order any snacks so i can't really talk much about the quality.



all in all, not too shabby of a night, and it cost us $4 each! can't beat that!

price: 5
equipment: 4
snack bar: 2
bar bar: 3
character: 3
overall: 3.4

the great albany bowl-crawl part 3 - town 'n country lanes

well well! its been but a short time since our last bowling excursion, but this week is a busy week so we decided to go on monday so we wouldn't lose a week.

this week brought us through the countryside of voorheesville, down western ave into uncharted territory to town 'n country lanes in altamont, ny!



not too bad from the outside. we went in, paid for our shoes ($1.50 - cheapest yet!) got placed on lane 7 and set out to find the perfect bowling balls, which were easy to find!



headed to the bar for some beer. decided on blue moon ($3.50) pretty sure no one round those parts even knows what blue moon is because it was definitely old and skunkz. bummer. started our games. for a few frames i bowled with a johnny bravo engraved navy bowling ball, but it wasn't heavy enough, so i switched to plain green 'smart house ball' and it did a much better job. here are the scores from our first two games. interspersed with a few lane shots.









headed to the snack bar for some fries ($2.50) they were pretty delicious. snack bar was average. here is christine posing next to the swivel stools.



decided to play one last game because the bowling vibes were with us. it was a pretty disgraceful one for me but christine fared fairly well.



wound down, returned shoes, paid for our games ($2.90 each), and drove away down western ave into the wilderness of new scotland.







now, this experience managed to leave barely any impression on us, other than i am fairly sure i saw someone i graduated from h.s. with bowling a few lanes down but was too chicken to shout his name or act like any sort of grown-up person at all. the whole thing wasn't good or bad. it was almost like a non-time! i did enjoy driving there because you get to use the backroads and i remember so many things about them from my childhood. let's get to the ratings!

price: 4
equipment: 4
snack bar: 2
bar: 3
character: 2
overall: 3

the great albany bowl-crawl part 2 - redwood lanes

wow! what a fun night!
tonight christine and i really wanted to get fish fry from bob and ron's on central ave, so we found a bowling alley on central that wasn't the played out sunset lanes, and decided to make a night out of it.

first a picture of where we had dinner/dinner:





okay. with those gems out of the way (and full bellies) we headed down central ave past colonie center to redwood lanes, in albany, which is actually located on nicholas ave, but, unlike olympic lanes, was very easy to find. basically it was love at first sight.



went in and paid for shoes ($2.50) shoes seemed to be sort of iffy, some not broken in at all, some were broken in too much. took in the scene. commented on how much we loved the interior.



went off in search of bowling balls and beer, in that order.



when i found the USA ball i knew, KNEW, that i would return many many many times to redwood lanes. ball selection was here and there, most were either too light or too heavy. ended up with a row of 8 pounders. headed to the bar for a pint. i got a coors light and christine got a bud, $2.50 each. back to the lane to start our game (funny coincidence: we've been placed on lane 12 both times so far)

bowling at redwood lanes is quite a pleasure. the ball return is the above ground manual type, and the fan that dries your hands has a button to turn it off and on, and was very strong and effective. A+!



first game was a warmup at best with a final score of 76 to 95 with christine in the lead. second game i stared using some positive brain power and extreme focusing methods (or i got drunk off one coors light) and ended up bowling the best game of my life. here are some action shots of christine and i, and then the shot of the final scores of game two.







143!!!!!!!!! i can't believe it! it was AWESOME. although to achieve it i had to abandon the USA ball :( settled our tab at the register and each game was $3.50 so we each owed 7 bucks. more than olympic lanes but worth it. plus they have dollar games on monday and tuesday nights from 9-midnight. i will be back!

because of dinner we didn't end up eating at the snack bar, but i did snap a picture for document's sake, and i also took another one of the pro shop on site.





other bowlers were definitely regulars and were very friendly. we seemed to be in the middle of the space, to our left were older bowlers, and to our right were younger metal-head types who were blaring slayer on the juke ALL night. a fine time for all.

let's get to the ratings, i decided to add another category, equipment, to the mix, because i believe this to be a very important factor. this includes: shoes, balls, lanes, mechanical stuff, etc.

price: 3 (it was more than olympic lanes by $ .50 but i don't think this is enough of a hike to deduct 1 full point)
equipment: 4
snackbar: 2
bar: 4
character: 5
overall: 3.6

next week i believe we will be visiting a TWO STORY bowling alley in scotia, ny. stay tuned!