Now I'm A Pin Jockey - Bowling

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

OK I have this job driving an old fashioned elevator (see thread here)

So the manager of the club asks me as I was getting off Saturday night, if I wanted to come in for five hours then next day as a pin jockey.

I was like “what the hell is that?”

Evidently this club not only has an old fashioned elevator, and old fashioned phone booths, but it also has an old fashioned bowling alley.

There are six lanes in the sub basement and they are manned by pin boys or pin jockeys.

I had heard about these old fashioned bowling alleys, but never seen one. I need money so I said, yes, I’d come in.

The bowling alleys aren’t used everyday just for events, so they don’t have real employees man them. They just ask us minimum wage slugs who wants to make some extra cash.

The alleys look just like regular bowling alleys but when the pins get knocked down, you have to clear out the old pins. And you have to be careful not to knock any standing pins over in the process.

On second bowl of a frame, you have to gather up all the pins and put them in this device above the lane and jump on it and it lowers the pins back into the correct positon. Then you lift the device up and they’re ready for the next bowler

Then you grab the bowling ball, and bowl the ball back down the alley to the bowler. Then push this wires on this manual board which shows which pins were knocked down. That way they can keep score.

OK this was hard. And I was wiped out after five hours. Geez you have six alley and two pin jockeys so you have to cover three lanes a piece. And if the bowlers go too fast, those pins can fly.

There is a guard so it’s hard to get hit, but I guess you could do it. Plus the real hard part was trying to be quick to keep all three of my lanes ready. And then I had to bowl the ball back to person. The return lane is on the side, and if you don’t bowl hard enough it stops and you have to run down and get it.

So for $41.25 I spent the next day in bed sore, taking Motrin. I know I’m out of shape, but I never realized how physical bowling could be.

Just another example of technology we take for granted I guess :slight_smile:

2

Modern technology has paragraphs, too.

3

You’re getting all the cool jobs. :slight_smile:

4

Funny, just the other day I was going to start a thread asking if there are any pin jockeys anymore.

Thanks for answering my question!

5

If you don’t mind my asking where is this club?

6

It’s located through another dimension – a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Twilight Zone!

7

In Chicago. I can’t say which one, but there are actually A LOT of these clubs. I was suprised how many such fancy places there are.

We have reciprocal agreements, with similar style clubs all over the world. We tend to get a lot of English people at the club and I know there are six clubs in London with which we recipricate

My understanding is a lot of these clubs, not this one, date back to prohibition when they used to make these huge clubs and make them unassuming so they wouldn’t attract attention. This one goes back into the 1870s.

A lot of these clubs were converted to apartments or hotels, I was surprised to see just how many there are. They aren’t much talked about, as rich people get to bowl this way and not have to mingle with the common element.

Actually I must admit I am guilty of being the snob as, outside of a few people who want to get off on a floor they can’t (no women in the men’s baths and no men in the women’s baths), the people have been really nice.

I had one lady ask me where the Starbucks was and she brought me back coffee.

For rich people 99% of them are very nice. They shake my hand and welcome me to their club and say “it’s nice to have you on board.”

I asked the GM how much yearly member dues are, and he laughed and said, “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” But from what little I can over hear, I can say the yearly fees run at five figures for the basic bottom line memebership and climb up from there.

8

^Sounds like Illuminati.

9

I’m reminded of the club in a couple of Stephen King stories, where stories are told by the fire, where none of the books in the library are by authors anybody has heard of, where the items in the games room were made by unknown manufacturers, and where the majordomo/doorman/bartender knows a lot more than he lets on.

Andy, you haven’t heard anything slithering behind the walls, have you?

10

Is there a room full of hookers in another sub basement?

11

I remember the bowling ally of the 50’s, which was pretty much the end of manual machines at large establishments. The pin setters were largely alcoholics and school dropouts that actually lived in the back of the bowling alley. I filled in for the experience at times. The ball return rolled down an incline below the surface and came up at the player’s area. Getting hit by pins was a serious risk requiring constant attention and agility.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

12

I never cease to be amazed at what rich people will do to remind themselves that they’re rich.

13

Too bad they’re not candlepin lanes. You wouldn’t have to clear the wood after every ball, just after each frame, and frames are three balls instead of two. Also the balls are smaller so you might be less tired after bowling them back.

14

Pin Monkey, thank you very much.

15

But you kids and your one-spaced sentence breaks make sentences within paragraphs nearly impossible to pick out.

So just speaking for me, I tend to separate paragraphs much moreso than when two spaces was the norm, because on most fonts the text bleeds together too much.

16

Next week: zepplin wrangler!

17

This may be true, but that was HARD!! LOL

Especially when you have to send the ball back and it has to go back over that hump.

It looks like this



________________
                \___________________ ME

If they were drunks they were well coordinated not to get hit by the pins and strong to keep up with the balls and pins. OK maybe I’m a weakling or more out of shape than I thought (likely)

18

If you can do so without getting in trouble, take some pictures of the secrets of manual pin setting. You don’t even have to post them anywhere; just keep them to remember such a cool place by and to show your grandkids.

19

Are you kidding? He’ll be the ultimate Granddad. “When I was a boy we didn’t no fancy elevators with buttons for each and every floor! We had to drive the elevator ourselves and we liked it! And if it stopped a foot below the floor well too bad. You had to climb out.”

20

Pin boy is ok, but if they ask you to fill in as peg boy, DON’T DO IT!