bocce hustlers

mr.ct and i wound up at union hall in park slope sunday night with the purpose of checking out bocce (pronounced boche-e). the very shortened version of the game is that there are two sides with different colored balls. a small white ball, the pallino, is thrown out on the alley and the goal is to get your team's colored ball as close to the white ball without hitting the back wall. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bocce

while i was slightly nervous, afterall i am terribly uncoordinated, i love these type of games- bowling, skee ball, even when i'm bad at it.

v: so how competitive are you?

mr. ct: don't worry about it. if we lose i won't mind. and if you never want to play again that's fine too.

whew, pressure is off, i can just enjoy myself.

v: cool. i'm not very good at sports so just a forewarning.

while he signed us up, i settled into my barstool. by the time we were up, we had had several rounds of drinks (boddingtons for him and random glasses of red wine for me). our competitors were another couple, friendly peeps from brooklyn. the guy appeared to be a seasoned player but the gal was playing for the second time. we had a jolly time. especially me as i had a beginner's streak. we actually won the round of bocce, closed down union hall, and i discovered a new favorite bar and game!