Jul 24, 2008

The Golden Bowl -- Ayes and Buts

Elaine and I have been spending a lot of time at the bowling alley down the street. We’ve actually only bowled once, but the Golden Bowl has so much more to offer. As the picture in the post below indicates, the Golden Bowl has a bar with some seriously cheap beer. They have a couple of crummy pool tables, a dart board, a juke box, a free-to-use ping pong table, and good-natured karaoke on Friday and Saturday nights. There is also a surprisingly good Chinese restaurant inside the Golden Bowl – sort of like Chinese food at a mall, but a solid step up.


But the real reason we’ve been spending so much time at the bowling alley is that they have free Texas Hold’em on Tuesday and Friday nights. I’ve never bought a lottery ticket, much less been to a casino – I’ve always been afraid that I might like gambling a little too much if I ever started – but I generally enjoy just about any form of competition. Free Hold’em is actually a pretty dumb game; when folks are playing with imaginary money, there isn’t much skill involved. Nonetheless, we’ve had our share of success – 1 first place finish for Elaine, 2 firsts and a third for me – which gets paid off in bowling alley gift certificates. More importantly, it’s been a good way to meet local folks from all walks of life. I hope that as we become further integrated into Golden we find better things to do that playing free poker on a regular basis, but it seems likely that the Golden Bowl will continue to be a regular fixture on our social calendar.


Amusing Anecdote:


Poker gets played at 2 or 3 tables of ten players and a dealer. Brian is our preferred dealer, but they’re all pretty nice. One dealer is an attractive woman named Jolene.


One night Brian was complaining that there weren’t many players interested in sitting at his table. Barbara, one of our favorite compatriots, remarked that the younger guys wanted to sit close to Jolene – for obvious reasons. Barbara went on to lament that the guys probably weren’t even noticing Jolene’s best physical feature, her big brown eyes. At that point, Shawn, a recent transplant from North Carolina, drawled, “I’ve noticed them; I’m an eyes man.......

eyes and butts.”


Good times.

1 comment:

Chaotic Joy said...

I love this. The image of a community gathering at a local bowling alley for cheap beer and company. The description of the different characters. A sitcom in the making.