When I was growing up, we used to go bowling fairly frequently at Sacco’s Bowl Haven in Davis Square, Somerville. There was always a good reason to go to Sacco’s. It was somebody’s birthday, or someone was visiting from out of town, or my Mom just wanted to get us all out of the house. Sacco’s featured candlepin bowling, which is regular bowling to most of us New Englanders and comes off as fairly bizarre to anyone who is used to “big ball bowling” as we like to call it. Candlepin bowling features smaller balls, making it harder to build up enough force to knock down all of the pins. But you get an extra ball per turn, so it mostly evens out.
Ok, I’ll admit it, no matter the size of the balls, I’m a pretty terrible bowler.
Sacco’s also featured a juke box full of Elvis Costello and punk rock, a back room filled with pool players, smoke and alcohol and just enough grime that we saw fewer and fewer kids birthday parties there over the year. It was a hipster’s paradise, about a decade or so too early.
Sacco’s closed down a couple of years ago. It was subsequently remodeled and then reopened as a Flatbread Pizza Company. The shady back room is now a restaurant and it takes over an hour to get a table or a bowling lane. It’s definitely more family friendly these days, but I have a certain amount of nostalgia for its former rundown charm. Sure, there was always the danger of getting a foot fungus or hepatitis, but you didn’t have to make reservations to bowl and you could play “Lost in a Supermarket” on the jukebox four times in a row and nobody ever seemed to mind.
Friday night, Kristian and I attended our friend Dave‘s surprise birthday party at O’Lindy’s in Quincy. O’Lindy’s has all of the same charm that Sacco’s did in its glory days, with the added bonus of an electronic scoring system that was probably top of the line twenty years ago. I love me some candlepin bowling, but I’ll be damned if I know how to properly score a strike or a spare.
(It’s probably a good thing that I rarely knock down more than six or seven pins at a time).
O’Lindy’s also features a juke box, but it is far less grimy than Sacco’s was at the end, and I hope that this bodes well for its future. I also saw a fair number of hipsters while we were there, so that’s probably good for them as well. Although maybe not so great for the clientele. Hipsters do have a tendency to take a place like that over.
Kristian and I had a great time Friday night and it brought back all sorts of happy memories. I suppose I’d forgotten how much I loved going bowling when I was younger. In high school, my friend Jared and I regularly headed out to check out different candlepin bowling establishments around Boston. We normally awarded points for style, which is good because I don’t particularly recall either of us being very good at bowling. I have a sneaking suspicion that many of our old haunts have long since closed (they mostly occupied prime real estate and were never very crowded), but I’m glad to know that there are still places in the area where I can get my fill of old school candlepin bowling.
Oh, and for the record, my belly is now bigger than a bowling ball. At least of the candlepin variety.
Aww! Loved this post. I actually worked at a bowling alley throughout college. They are definitely all filled with good memories ^_^
Seriously adorable belly you are growing there doll 🙂
Ooooh! I bet that was fun! I’d love to work in a bowling alley.
Thank you!!!
We used to bowl a lot when I was younger. Mom and her sisters bowled in leagues for as long as I can remember. I got into league bowling when I was in middle-school. I remember the Christmas that I got my own, custom drilled, purple bowling ball.
I never saw the type of bowling with the littler pins and smaller ball until one time when visiting family in Connecticut. They called it duck pin bowling. I was better at the regular form.
Duck pin bowling is slightly different from candlepin bowling. I think they pretty much only have it in CT.
One of the women on Friday had her own set of pink balls. I was sightly jealous. But a purple ball sounds even better!