It's a little after 7 p.m. on a Wednesday in the discount mattress district of the Inner Richmond, and I'm about to relive my childhood dreams in front of a skeeball machine. Buckshot Bar is starting to fill up for the seventh skeeson kickoff jamboree of the SF Brewskee-ball League. Good times are set to roll; PBR and Tecate floweth. I get in a few frames before more serious rollers arrive for spring training and bounce me over to the bar.
A gory B-horror called
The Rage
is playing above the bar and it isn't just bad, it's excruciatingly unwatchable. The bartender proudly says it's the worst. (That's a lie – the Wednesday after he had found an abysmal gem called
Sars Wars
to play instead of the Suns-Lakers game during the skeeson opener.) As the evil doctor drills into the screaming head of the movie's naughty backpacker heroine, I take the opportunity to survey the surroundings. The good-bad taste goes far beyond the movie.
Skee-ball is a game my mother played in an arcade on Coney Island when she was ten years old. Arcade visitors and fair-goers would collect tickets by rolling nine wooden balls up a lane toward either a series of central rings (20-50 points) or up at the 100-point, ball-sized, corner pockets. Brewskee-ball is a competitive bar game featuring the same table along with booze, a bevy of puns, and competitors over 21 who haven't given up the dream. Rollers in three-person teams compete in five cities for local glory and the chance for a trip to the national championship at the country's first designated skeeball bar, Full Circle, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn – the game's birth city. The national league has been covered by NPR and ESPN and spawned a magazine, ceremonies, titles, and a lingo that borders on a legitimate language.
How and why did this happen? Where will it end? There's a creation myth involving a trip to Coney Island – perhaps to the very lanes my mother rolled on in the early '60s. But after many skeesons, the game has outgrown fable and outlasted fad. Anyone who stops by Buckshot Bar on a Wednesday or Sunday night during league play can plainly see the enthusiasm is not failing.
From the safety of my home in the Lower Haight, Buckshot seemed like an odd name for a bar, but inside the steamed windows on Third Avenue and Geary the theme becomes glaringly, hair-ily obvious. A giant bear growls behind the DJ setup, and lining the walls it's all heads, horns, and hunting paraphernalia. Zebras, buffalo, deer, and every other horned animal ever to graze on the pages of
National Geographic
loom over drunken revelers as they toggle between games. And there are many games to choose from.
Old arcade hits like Tron (lost two bucks and still didn't get the objectives) and Gauntlet (made when games were actually hard) are in the back. New features like Call of the Wild are up front (I shot 0 of 32 pheasants in the New England bonus round – I'm an animal lover even as a gun totin' avatar). The middle is reserved for oldies but goodies: shuffleboard, darts, pool, and – most important for the hungry, thirsty crowds that will be packed in every Sunday and Wednesday for the next six weeks – the only league-certified skeeball lanes in the city.
It is Wednesday night, the first Wednesday of the skeeson, and what a night it is. Teams are rolling in to Buckshot Bar and cracking open two-dollar beers to celebrate. After recovering the ID I left by accident last week and sidling up to the bar for a customary pregame brew, I'm ready to see some action. I don't have to wait long because tonight the skeelebrities are out in force.
In a flannel shirt and signature fanny pack, J Cat approaches the lane with the determination and focus of someone . . . well, someone damn serious about rolling a ball into a ring. Staring reverently up at the hole of his desires – the score-boosting 50 – Cat touches the center of the lane several times before rolling a few imaginary balls. Like a point guard at the free throw line, his right arm winds and releases with a pointed-finger follow-through that lingers as if to grip the gloried brewskee-ball chalice. (He who bowls best shall drink brew from the fabled SF brewskee-ball mug of champions).
His dreams were dashed last year at the BROTY (Best Roller of the Year) national championship in Brooklyn. He was eliminated in the skeet sixteen, after, as he explained to All Things Considered, coughing up "hairballs," the skeeball equivalent of a gutter ball. Although he did not take home the gold – an appropriated bocce ball trophy – he still has high aspirations. Cat, who boasts of a 13-foot-lane in his own home bedroom, is looking into some marketing (there are photos of him in a spandex cat suit) and plans to make another go at it next year. In the meantime, he's got a game to roll right here in San Francisco.
Austin, by contrast, is a self-proclaimed aging veteran who claims to have transformed the game like the Sun's NBA point guard. "I'm the Steve Nash of skeeball," he says. "I used to dominate and then everyone just got better." His unconventional wind-up mimics a professional bowler and although the veteran lacks a whiskery moniker, he can still bowl a good frame. In a match his team, Skeevy Wonder, eventually lost to Whiskee Dicks, he bowled a 630, which requires some strategic rolling. In order to break the barrier 450 points – the highest achievable by aiming at the central rings – skeeballers must leave the safety of the center lane and reach for the "hundo" hundred corner pockets.
There are two main categories of skeeball rollers: those who "find-the-40" by rolling up the center of the lane, and the risky "hundo hurlers" who aim high and sometimes score low – 90 is the classic botched frame, with all nine balls landing in the 10-point gutter. After nets that corralled balls into the left-hand hundred were tightened in a controversial move to regulate the game, Austin and many other local rollers switched to hybrid rolling. He starts off every frame with a few risky throws to the corner – if he lands them he continues to aim for the skies; if he misses he scrambles for some 40s and 50s to save his score. It's the new way to roll.
This game isn't a gents-only affair. Early on in the evening four uniformed ladies from the team formerly known as skeeasauraus (they're now represented by the female symbol ♀) won their first contest of the skeeson. They consider themselves a consistently middle-of-the road team, but still, they take their scoring skeeriously. A dark-haired, intent-eyed, lady-in-blue named Nicole requested an adjustment after the machine recorded some of her 50s as 40s. The women will have to keep a sharp eye in these tough times. Their MVP roller moved away from the city last year and Alexis Mansinee (not to be confused with the Mancini of the nearby Sleepworld mattress empire), the night's designated score-skeeptress, may also have leave for real-world concerns. So far they're a female-only team – and while they wouldn't mind some male mates, it just hasn't happened. Maybe next skeeson they'll pick up a free agent to plug the roster holes.
Dave from the Whiskee Dicks says they're in it for the fun as well, but, as he points out, "you can't help but get competitive." His teammate Joe is living proof. Baseball-capped and always ready for the next challenge, Joe's part of Sunday Recess, a San Francisco multi-sport adult recreational league that organizes weekly competitive games like kickball and ultimate Frisbee. Every Sunday Recess ends with a round of extensive drinking at the Abbey Tavern just down the street, and Joe often sneaks out to the Buckshot during flip cup rounds to squeeze in a few practice frames.
Unable to find friends willing to dedicate six weeks of their lives for the potential glory of skeelebritydom, I have to get in all my love-of-the-lane during free throws on sign-up night. Anthony Trivisonno, a.k.a. Triv, a retired member from the SF dream team Marky Mark and the Hundo Bunch and now a league Skee-eee-oh (coordinator), is handing out singles from a roll that would make a stripper blush. After collecting 10 bucks – enough for one match – I approach the lane to roll 90 balls of pure bliss.
I'm a middle-of-the-lane kind-of roller – no full circles (360 points made by nine 40s) or cherries (all 40s and 50s) here. As I reach for the first wooden ball, I try to keep Triv's advice rolling through my head: left leg against the lane, ball in the tips of the fingers, a relaxed pose, and a long follow-through.
The frames pass like memories of afternoons rolling at Mr. T's miniature golf and arcade on Long Beach Island. I may never be a serious roller, but as the Heineken poster by the dartboard says, in the Buckshot Bar's brewskee-ball league, as in life, "there are no innocent bystanders."
Want to get in on Skeeson VIII action? Signups for brewskee-ball are ongoing; all you need are three rollers and a punny name. Email sf@brewskeeball.com. Competitive bar games don't end there. You can check out more typical bar games (and drinking culture) at Sunday Recess or foosball tournaments at Kennedy's Irish Pub and Curry House.
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muchable
Great meeting you Sam and fantastic story about San Francisco Brewskee-Ball. It really captures the essence of competitive skeeball and all the senses that are stimulated during the game. Hopefully we'll see more Bold Italic readers on the lanes in upcoming skeesons.
- Joey the Cat
http://joeythecat.com
Alex M
Damn I love this town.
-A
www.photosophic.com
Run Your Mouth