Tuesday August 06, 2002
"I come to bury Ceasar, not to praise him." - Anthony, Julius Ceasar, Act 3. Sc. 2
This is a painful post for me to write. The Hollywood Star Lanes, familiar to fans of The Big Lebowski as the spot where Lebowski & co. went bowling, and (in my humble opinion) the best bowling alley in Los Angeles, is shutting its doors for good on Wednesday, August 8. It will be torn down and replaced with some crummy school for kids to learn stuff in.
I ask you: where better to learn stuff than a bowling alley?
The Hollywood Star Lanes was where I first went bowling with my friends in Los Angeles. It was open 24 hours a day, every day, with a full bar where many a White Russian was consumed by my gang and I. Sometimes, if we felt daring, we'd order a "Red Eye," which is basically beer & tomato juice, but usually it was such a pain in the ass to get the required beer/tomato juice can/emtpy glass combination from the bartender that we stuck with drinking Caucasians. Another attraction of the place was that the hottest girls in Hollywood hung out there. I'm not talking the plastic supermodel actresses that you see hanging out at The Bourgeois Pig or in front of the Sunset 5. I'm talking the hot, punk-rock, dyed hair, wife-beater-wearing 18 year-olds. Bowling girls that you just wanted to go up to and propose marriage...not to babble too much, but I loved the Hollywood Star Lanes a lot and basically considered it a culutural and emotional landmark.
But I'm not telling you this just to bitch & moan about some old place people love being torn down. I'm gonna tell you about how I gave it a proper sendoff.
***
Sunday night, I'm at a party, talking with friends. One of us mentions the Hollywood Star Lanes shutting down, the other asks, "When's that happening?" and David Leamy's girlfriend pipes up, "Wednesday."
At that point I realize that either I'm going to bowl at the HSL that night, or I'm never going again. (I have to hop on a plane the next morning and won't be back before Wednesday.) So I go around the party asking people if they wanna go. Everybody expresses initial interest, but don't want to put in the effort of actually driving out there. Only one person agrees to go with me: the man, the myth, the legend that is Big Al Ewald.
When I say "Big Al," just imagine Robert Shaw as Quint in Jaws. He's a hell of a guy; big, charismatic, and he wears his heart on his sleeve. (He and I are co-founders of the Mustaches for Kids charity organization, and even in the off-season he spends about two hours a week working on it.) He was down with bowling at the Hollywood Star Lanes at 3 AM. We went.
***
Walking in the final time, I noticed the things I loved about HSL. The hot girls. The bar (where Big Al and I planted ourselves and immediately started pounding White Russians). The jukebox. The jukebox was really kicking it that night; I heard a lot of Queen, some Kinks ("Lazing on a Sunny Afternoon") and a ton of Rolling Stones. "You Can't Always Get What You Want" was played twice, which made me really happy because that's my favorite Stones tune. It really is the little things in life, isn't it? We talked about HSL and what it meant to us, about the good times we'd had there, about when Bob Duffy once forgot to turn in his shoes and was so embarassed that he never went back to pick them up, and how sweet it would be to own a pair of HSL bowling shoes.
When they finally called our names, we had our pick of lanes. I requested 23 because it was the lane next to a hot girl Big Al and I had been ogling at the bar. We wound up being pretty friendly with everyone bowling around us by the time all was said and done. There was certainly a communal feeling in the air; we were all united to celebrate the Hollywood Star Lanes. We were all friends. We were all bowlers.
And how did the bowling go, you ask?
WE THREW ROCKS
My best game of the night, I rolled a 151 (not my greatest game ever, but close), and Big Al bowled a 148. On the flip side, Big Al consistently beat me over the long run. We basically didn't want to leave so we kept rolling one game after another. I don't know if you, the reader, has ever bowled five games in a row, but it's not easy.
Especially drunk. Which is what this experience was really about. It was about Big Al and I slamming as many White Russians as we could. It was about us sneaking cigarettes, crouched out of sight behind the chairs (the Hollywood Star Lanes being a non-smoking environment). It was about partying to celebrate the best bowling alley ever.
Where am I going with this? I'm babbling. I'm sorry, it's easy to get carried away because I loved that place so much. I'll wrap this up.
***
Our final game, I rolled a 127. This was, may I say, admirable...considering that I was plastered to the gills. Big Al had been behind me going into the final frame. He needed a strike and a spare, at the least, to beat me. He got the strike, knocked over six or seven pins, went to pick up the spare...and missed by one pin. While this appeared like a robbery at first, when we looked at the scoreboard we saw that it meant his final score was also a 127. We had tied. Our last game at the Hollywood Star Lanes.
"I can't think of a better way to end it, Danny," Big Al says to me. I concur. We gather up our stuff to go...and magically discover an extra pair of size 9 bowling shoes with our stuff.
"Where did this come from?" I ask.
"I don't know," Big Al says casually, stuffing them into his jacket's pockets. "You're a size 9, right?"
"Damn right I am," I say. We go up to the counter, pay for our five games, and leave. This takes a little longer than expected because Big Al insists on giving the place one last walk-around, then peeing on the floor of the men's bathroom.
***
I'll let the final word be Big Al's. We were in my car, listening to Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" as I drove Big Al home, and he summed up the Hollywood Star Lanes as well as anyone could. "I loved her, Danny," he said. "She didn't mind if I drank too many White Russians. She didn't mind if I threw rocks. She didn't mind...if I drank too many White Russians."
No Big Al, she certainly didn't.
R.I.P. H.S.L.
fatazzjonez says:
Gone the slazzin' way of Marvel Mains. This stumma bowled a 211 at HSL.
RIP
FAJ
sadbastard says:
Is that crummy school that's replacing it at least the kind where they force the girls to dress in those hot plaid skirts?
monkeymagic says:
I heard via the radio waves that travel through me that human kind was finding the surplus of car dealerships to be of grave inportance and that theses very stucture will be transformed into fine establishments of higher learning for the common working humans needs. oohooh wahh ah.
E.L.Splice says:
I had a really amazing night about a month ago.
I bowled a turkey in the last frame of the first and second games I played and in the third game I bowled a 160. That's my personal best.
Just to add, I once bowled at the Hollywood Star Lanes. It was pretty cool for L.A. It seemed to have actual character rather than the fake Hollywood kind of character. Maybe they'll open a bowling school.
A. Game says:
the only sport i've ever played in L.A. is shooting guns.
with Daniel Strange, of course.
|
