Punk Rock Bowling 2010

Punk Rock Bowling, eh? Have you heard of this little soirée held annually in the sunbaked hills of Nevada?

You get a group of punk rock survivors from throughout this country, and gather them together in a third tier casino for a long weekend of drinking, music, drinking, reunions, drinking, and–oh yes!~ Bowling!

All well and good, but my Lord! did the Brothers Stern have any idea of the cultural maelstrom that was to come after christening their fledgling event thus?

I mean, we now suffer under the yoke of a hundred bastardized variations of Punk Rock Lifestyle items, all flown under the cozy punk flag……..

Go ahead and hit yer google tab up yonder and start typing in punk rock…..autofill begins spewing out a myriad of hobbies, all sharing the Punk Rock prefix……and I trace the blame squarely back to that initial combination of the radical and mundane, punk and bowling!

Punk Rock Knitting, Punk Rock Golfing, Punk Rock Bass Fishing….Hell, you got your Punk Rock Parents, Picnics and Scuba Diving!

So let me ask you, just what is it that makes all these harmless activities punk rock, hmm?

Is this re-branding an attempt to gather the tribe for protection?
Not likely, as punk is as mainstream as lowriders or scrapbookers these days.

No, the days of brutal police harassment and running from the jocks is regretfully long gone.
No need to circle the wagons anymore, brother!

Hell, you wanna stand out? It takes more balls to be Amish than to sport that pink mohawk nowdays!

Perhaps the Punk Rock asterisk is just an excuse to show up at the golf course or shooting range half drunk with bad tattoos and do a shitty job of it—–ya think?

As if by identifying ourselves as Punkers before we climb the high dive, that gives us the right to flip off the judges and do a bellyflop, all in the name of Anarchy!!

Eh. You know what? fuck it–let’s go bowling!!!!

The trip starts as it always does, a quick lighting of a candle at the Strummer shrine….

Another venue change, this year finding the shenanigans at the Sunset Station Casino, conveniently located between what the fuck? and where in the hell? avenues in Henderson……

And so this gathering of the tattooed and beer-bellied has expanded, as all good things must!
I heard a bit of grumbling from the veterans—–how the weekend has lost the charm of the days when it was fifteen people sharing 2 lanes and sleeping on the floor of Fat Mike’s suite…

But all those cynical concerns fall away as you walk into that blast of artificially chilled air, hear the mechanical squawk of the slot machine: as Pavlovian a signal to drop your paycheck as the aroma of Starbucks awakens the small intestine!

But then, the real draw of this weekend, the chance to see some of the old crew!

Really, this is what has made this annual event the closest thing we have to an old fucks punker convention……the chance to see the other survivors, toast our shared fallen friends and show off the tattoos of the latest grandkids!

This year even saw the return of old pals Stretchmarks!
And though their meager attempt to Roofie us and harvest vital organs failed, we still love those goddamn Canucks!

And bowling? Hell yes! Through our strategic use of stringers and sandbaggers, we finally advanced to bowl on Sunday as well.

Official results lists the mighty Team CH3 as finishing between 33rd and 64th out of 225 teams—let’s call it 33rd, shall we?

And somewhere in there, they put on a godamned punk rock show too!

As you nurse a pounding 3 day hangover and piece together the weekend out of bizarre images that flash across the brain, you gotta admit —- Hey! they really got something here, this is an event here to stay!

Hell, we might as well get in on this craze!

So we’ve gone ahead and trademarked the following events:

Punk Rock Colonoscopy
Punk Rock Priesthood
Punk Rock Curling
Punk Rock Child Labor Camp

Coming to a town near you soon!