Bowling

It was Sarah’s idea to go bowling. She hadn’t been since she was a kid. As an adult, I associate it with the All Star Lanes variety of Elevated (expensive) Bowling Alleys in Shoreditch and stuff, set up to facilitate forced corporate socialising with expensive cocktails. I associate it with one specific dive bar in Gowanus that sells Narragansett and bowling by the hour.

Bowling is fun. The music is loud and stupid and overwhelming. The game is tactile and the right amount of difficult. There’s something intrinsically American in the scale and noise of it, in the fact that its well-suited to ordering mozarella sticks and beers to enjoy while you heckle your friends takes their turns. It needs space. The place we went to was sandwiched between a shopping centre and an IMAX cinema in the Uber enclave of Mitte. It could be anywhere in the world.

I bowled very badly. They said I’d probably be good if I took a minute rather than immediately throwing it down the lane as fast as I could. But it felt good.