True Story©… Bowlerskating
I daydream…
I daydream a lot. One might say my days
are an ongoing daydreams with inconvenient breaks for reality.
One thing I like
to daydream about is what I would do if I came into a stupid amount of money,
think big lottery winnings level. As I explained
on The Ticket, there would have to be a certain amount made for me to quit my
job even if I found a space to go into business for myself.
Practicality would see me perhaps
building an apartment complex and expanding, so as to leave my kids something
when I am no longer here. WILD thoughts
include other erstwhile unrelated thoughts of things my friends and I used to
do in our early adulthood.
We’ll talk about that last one today…
Back in olden times (circa
1999-2002ish), an average weekend might see me rarely home at a decent hour
between Thursday and Sunday nights.
Living in a college town, ‘club nights’ would generally get to moving on
Thursday nights, then we would go to a different spot on Friday. On Saturdays, we would start at the bowling
alley before moving along to yet a third spot and on Sundays we’d meet up at
one of our favorite food spots and then go to adult skate night.
[Phlip
note: yes, every weekend damn
near]
A few weeks ago, my brain somehow
melded the concept of the above-described Saturday and Sunday activities, but
in one building…
“If I hit it SUPER big, I would find the
largest piece of land available in the city and open a bowling alley and skating
rink in the same location.” A few of
you lucky souls received this brainstorm as I was having it in the form of a
text message. As much as we enjoyed
adult skate night, the skating rink in our city is basic as fuck to put it
simply. Larger cities in other places
had larger and better rings and therefore better adult skate nights.
Putting a bowling alley in the same location could draw in different enough
crowds ready to have the kind of fun I missed.
I would call the location “Bowlerskating” as a portmanteau of the two
activities to take place inside. There
would be food and drink like at a regular bowling alley with no one who has
consumed alcohol to be allowed to skate.
This would be ensured with a wristband placed on everyone over the age
of 21, with the wristband automatically changing colors when the person has had
alcohol.
One DJ would be over the music for both sides of the building and there would
be a small arcade for people who just wanted to hang out.
I
had put way more thought into this hypothetical improbability than someone who
works for a living and hasn’t purchased a lottery ticket since December 22th
should probably be allotting. The
overriding opinion, though, was just how dope such a location might be.
… but the building for such an
undertaking would be prohibitively huge…
/daydream
Where my brain went from there was
not necessarily anything rooted in any seriousness, but moreso “what if we did
both of these things at once?” in some last-ditch attempt to cash in on my
daydreams.
It would be one HELL of an extreme sport!
Imagine the concept of strapping on skates before taking a longer than
standard approach with a bowling ball and attempting to bowl a strike? You have all at once to deal with balancing on
the skates, holding onto the ball, rolling the ball down the lane and stopping
the momentum of the skates all while avoiding damn near inevitable broken bones
and/or concussions.
Lightbulb moment.
After an
exhaustive Google search, I found myself with contact information to the
organizers of The X-Games. I sent them a
message explaining the concept of bowlerskating. I had devised a scoring system wherein there
is not only the standard scoring model of bowling, but with “style points” from
the judges as a modifier/tiebreak as well.
Basically, a sweetener to make participants REALLY wanna ham it up. In what I considered as my “pitch” to them as
a means of bringing in new interest to the games, I included suggestions for
uniforms/costumes as well as dropping names as possible ambassadors for the
sport. In my mind, I had come up with a
clever little sport and the idea of framing it as an “extreme” sport only made
things more interesting.
I mean, my idea of
what is or isn’t enjoyable to see unfold on the TV screen varies greatly from
most people and the defining line is often rooted in the fuckeuppedness of my
sense of humor. That said, I am pitching
the very real chance of life-changing injuries as a SELLING point of this “sport.” I had written out my notes, I had done some
homework about the ratings of previous X-Games years and made specific note of
the years that got more attention when someone was injured and further into
that point I noted the viewing numbers for the NEXT day after a publicized
injury. I related that back to the fact
that someone attempting to swing a 15-pound ball down a waxed wood lane while
also managing to NOT fall off of rollerskates would have viewers SALIVATING to
see an unfortunate outcome as much as they might a positive one. People tune in for carnage, to put it plainly.
So I got to the
right people, I made my point and sold it up well right?
RIGHT?!!?
Nope™!
I could almost hear them laughing AT me in the response to
my message. That is, of course, if you
could even call what I received a “response.”
It was just a meme…
Looks like I'm back to a different drawing board if I wanna make this particular daydream a reality.
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