I was horrified by what I saw.
At the same time I am happy to see Israelis out bowling for fun, enjoying themselves, and seeing bowling as a real form of entertainment and recreation.
Yet I was horrified for bowling. Maybe I just like bowling too much and take it too seriously.
Here are most of the examples I saw last night. With pictures.
Nobody was sitting. Everybody was standing, and in the bowling lanes. There was parties of 4 or 5 people in a few lanes, and every person in the party was standing in the bowling area while the person was taking his/her turn to bowl. The problem with this is really being dangerous, in addition to making it difficult to bowl. The approach area in Israel (in every bowling alley I have been to here) is significantly shorter than in the USA. When crowding in the approach area it makes it more difficult for the bowler to bowl. Additionally, when he swings his arm back, he can hit someone with the bowling ball, not even taking into account the possibility of the ball slipping loose on the backswing and it hitting someone standing there.
BTW, the young woman in brown was only standing further back in this picture because she is taking a picture herself. Most of the time she was further up with the rest of them.
I saw a group sitting on the side chatting. they were not bowling. I dont know if they had finished bowling, were waiting to bowl or were just hanging out. One of the fellows in the group was bouncing a bowling ball on the ground. He was dribbling it like a basketball while chatting. Ouch. Sorry, no picture.
Then there was the young lady who walked more than halfway down the actual bowling lane in order to bowl. I dont know why she didnt walk all the way to the end and bowl from right in front of the pins, or even knock them down with her hands and feet. I guess she wanted a little bit of a challenge.
The party in the lane next to ours got rambunctious at some point. In the last few frames of their game, they started double and triple bowling and even more than that. Sometimes it was the bowler throwing two balls (one after the other or simultaneously), other times it was the bowler bowling one ball with others in the party immediately following with more balls. At one point they had five balls in the lane at the same time.
At one point I said to my wife that they are going to break it with too many balls clogging up the ball-return machine, and that if they dont time it right they will also likely hit the machine that comes down to clear the fallen pins. And sure enough they did. Both. They hit the machine several times. After a few turns like this the machine got stuck and it took a few minutes for the technician to get it working again.
Then there was the group of four Yersuhalmim who came in late (late meaning we were nearly finished) to bowl. The fellow in this picture was tossing the ball pretty far in the air. None of them had any bowling form, but they were having a good time and were not really doing anything wrong, besides for all standing in the approach area the entire time.
Nothing to do with bowling but I was amused when he took out a smartphone (possibly filtered, I dont know) to take selfies and pictures
Everyone was having fun so all is good. Bowling will survive. I am not that worried about it.
------------------------------------------------------
Reach thousands of readers with your ad by advertising on Life in Israel ------------------------------------------------------
