March 2, 2015

"I find the use of bowling balls as lawn art to be undeniably quirky. For me, that starts with the premise that bowling itself is whimsical..."

"... an antithesis for the social isolation of our era.... Left without a single alley today, we [the people of Berkeley, California] compensate with bowling balls as lawn decoration. Sometimes it is a single ball, sometimes a cluster. Sometimes black, sometimes bright colors. Sometimes overwhelmed by weeds, sometimes proudly landscaped."

Hmm... I've seen that in Madison. Blogged in a 2009 post titled "What if hippies had money... and good taste?" My photo:

DSC05566

13 comments:

madAsHell said...

Pink flamingos.
The black porter (that was painted white after 1965).
Bird baths.

So, why not bowling balls?

traditionalguy said...

Theme of the day could be be Ballsy. Stay tuned:

Walker is ballsy, for a midwesterner.

Netanyahu is Ballsy, or is that life and death chutzpah.

Saying Jesus's name by the Holy Spirit, or any spirit for that matter, is always ballsy.

All political Gerrymanders are ballsy as hell.

And kicking Lebron James in the balls is, well ballsy.

MadisonMan said...

It seems to me that if you have bowling balls in your yard, and you live on a hill, and teen-aged boys often walk past your house, the inevitable is going to happen.

Wince said...

Suddenly, crazy Al says
"S-say, Don, there sure is something familiar about that bowling ball"
To which the terrified Don replies...


"Oh my God! That bowling ball, it's my wife!"

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Bowling pins make fine garden ducks so there's a missed opportunity going on there.

traditionalguy said...

MadisonMan...Query, where do they keep the hills in the old glaciated midwestern areas a/k/a the Great Plains? I remember riding a train out of Chicago for Oregon and it was smooth flat the whole way as far as Colorado

MadisonMan said...

@Tradguy, there are slopes all over the midwest, else rivers wouldn't flow. Madison is all full of hills.

Dad tells a story -- he grew up in the flat middle of Iowa -- of taking a big can of waste oil, puncturing a small hole in the bottom, and walking along the RR tracks, dribbling oil for a mile. The next train could not make it out of town, up the slight incline. He was not turned in by his friend who worked at the Filling Station where he got the oil.

Marc in Eugene said...

My landlady here in Eugene has accumulated at least a score of bowling balls... 'for a project', an as yet to be determined one, I guess, since they are just waiting outside next to the driveway. For two years at least. There are four black ones. There are at least four bowling alleys in the Eugene area.

Scott M said...

Is there any aspect of bowling that's NOT whimsical.

traditionalguy said...

The origin was was italian lawn balls game called bacce balls. Done indoors the lawn was harder to keep alive.

Rocketeer said...

Wow, all those poor people in Berkeley. Not a single bowling alley, so...total social isolation. God, knowing that if only there were a bowling alley, you wouldn't have to be so disconnected from your potential friends and neighbors - and yet, what can you do? I mean, no bowling alley, people! - that must really stink.

Peter said...

As far as I know, bowling in the USA peaked when Eisenhower was president.

I always wondered where all the no-longer-used bowling balls went.

Abdul Abulbul Amir said...

Good taste? Surely you jest.