Alley Flight
"Behind The Cover: Celebrity Edition"
Youtube user Saboruchan takes us on a journey through a “virtually untouched” abandoned bowling alley in Haikyo, Japan, that opened in 1973 and closed in 2018. Through the modern miracle of a cc-by-sa-nc Creative Commons license, the scene is soundtracked with “Chasing Flight,” a wordless track off my 2016 record Almost X.
Saboruchan’s affection for the abandoned-still-in-state space and its echoes of localised grandeur resonates through the video. I really dig, too, that a track from Almost X plays over these images. I shot the record’s cover at The Gutter bowling alley in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on 19 July 2010, time stamped at 4:04a.
Cat had done Grey Gardens and Whip It with Drew Barrymore in the year prior, and we all ended up friends - the kind of friends with whom you go bowling in Brooklyn at 4am. So that’s Drew on the cover. Here’s the original:
She hit a rather accurate shot for that side of the night, and continued her momentum with a graceful slide down onto the floor. The exposure was mid-way through a few seconds she spent contemplating an uncooperative 8-pin that teetered then stood tall as she stopped sliding, preventing her from putting a strike in her frame.
The photo’s called “Drew’s Spare.”
Cool to think that that night in 2009, the Haikyo bowling alley captured by Saboruchan in the video also hummed with life and the sounds of rolling balls and knocking pins.
“Almost X,” in the context of the album’s songs, posits “X” as a variable, like in maths or code, and so X can be anything that can be almost.
Almost there. Almost famous. Almost paradise. Almost doesn’t count. Almost war. Almost lost you. Almost love…
The record’s tracks collect and connect stories of folks who have to live an arm’s length from everything they ever want, but can’t quite touch. “X” embodies their dreams.
I keep waiting, though, for someone to put together that Almost X also references Drew’s “almost strike” in the photo, but alas the triumphant “X” on a bowling score sheet is less and less a universal symbol.
It would also read “Almost 10” in Ancient Roman, which in essence is the numerical summation of a 9 pins down.
Fwiw, picking up a single-pin spare takes an arguable higher level of finesse and precision that the brute-force attack required to cause a strike. In a way, since no one bowls 300 all that often, spares are where the game is won.
Lol I don’t recall if Drew picked up that spare. That said, later that year I watched her spear lobsters in 20-foot ocean at the edge of the North American continental shelf, so odds are that 8-pin met the same fate.
In any event, there’s nothing more apt than a track off that record soundtracking an abandoned bowling alley.
Almost X, indeed.
SABORUCHAN’S LINER NOTES FROM THE VIDEO:
I shot this in August 2021. Except for a broken office door window, some scattered papers and machinery removed from the lanes this much loved bowling alley had remained virtually untouched since it shut its doors in September 2018. It opened in 1973, at the height of a bowling craze spreading across the country. Perhaps the person most responsible for this bowling boom during the 1970s was Nakayama Ritsuko (中山 律子), dubbed the “Queen of Japanese Bowling” although in reality the number one female bowler at the time was her arch rival Suda Kayoko, 須田開代子), who shot to instant stardom when, on August 27 1970, she rolled the first ever perfect 300 game on a live TV match. As it happens, her good looks and fashion choices, a mini-skirt shorter than any of her other rivals, also added to her celebrity status. In 1972 the Inazawa Grand Bowl (稲沢グランドボウル) featuring 116 lanes was built. It has since been registered in the Guinness Book of Records as the facility with the largest number of alleys on one floor in the world. Just less than 30km south of Inazawa Grand Bowl is the Nagoya Grand Bowl (名古屋グランドボウル) which has 156 lanes on 3 floors. As many as 3,697 bowling alleys sprung up during the 1970s. By 2017 however there were only 784 operating in the country.
Sources:Japan Today: “Bowling enjoys revival among wide age spread” Nov. 15, 2017. https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/bowling-enjoys-revival-among-wide-age-spread #urbexexplorer #haikyo #bowlingalley #exploringjapan
“Chasing Flight ” (2016) by Westy Reflector from the album “Almost X”.(http://westyreflector.net/
originally published at westyreflector.net on 11 January 2023
I’m a musician and writer living in New York City who rarely refers to himself in the 3rd person. Find me at https://westyreflector.net, and @westyreflector anywhere else.