Post by Zoo Master on Nov 23, 2009 0:15:01 GMT -5
Memory Lane: Back in Central with Jeff Kitter
By Gianmarc Manzione
8/31/2009
Long before the World Series of Poker attracted legions of fans to their television sets to watch gamblers crowd a casino card table with millions of dollars in prize money on the line, a place called Central Lanes just a short drive north of New York City swarmed with money and matches whose legends no main event in Vegas will ever outlive, a place where Jeff Kitter bowled future Hall of Famer Johnny Petraglia for $2,000 a game equipped with nothing but a 10-pound ball and two fingers as Johnny used only his thumb, a place where you always knew you could find a black jack game out back whenever you had no match inside.
"You still weren't there at 5:30 in the morning with your date," Kitter explains. "This was gambling."
Welcome to Jeff Kitter's 1960s, a time warp in which Richie Hornreich gathers friends by a rainy window in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge Lanes and places bets on which rain drop will make it down the window the fastest, where a young Mike Limongello borrows enough from Max the Shylock to make it through one more match as long as he agrees to let Max bet on him, and the action at Central Lanes in Yonkers is far too real to be outdone by the manufactured thrill of jackpot sirens and neon lights thousands of miles away.
"There were very few avenues to gamble back then," action bowling legend Jeff Kitter explains. "There was no sports betting to speak of, the Meadowlands race track hadn't even been built, Atlantic City wouldn't become a gambling venue for another fifteen years, there were no lotteries, people didn't even talk about going to Las Vegas because it was so far away. Just as the place to gamble was the pool hall in the '30s and '40s, the bowling alley became the place to go and gamble in the '50s and '60s."
In the time warp of Jeff Kitter's memory the pharmacies close at five, cell phones are the stuff of sci-fi jokes and the neighborhood turns desolate after dark. But if you're looking for action after hours, you can find it any night of the week at places like Leemark Lanes in Brooklyn where Richie Hornreich is battling Mike Limongello for enough money to pay the rent for several years, or Central Lanes where Larry Lichstein glimpses Ernie Schlegel for the first time in his life and finds him "pounding his chest like a gorilla, saying he is the greatest bowler in the world."
"Everything was closed on Sunday, so when you went to Central Lanes on Saturday night or early Sunday morning, the town was desolate. You would drive up Central Avenue-the bowling alley would be on it-nothing was open. There wasn't a delicatessen open, there were no supermarkets. You were living in an era where there were four or five TV stations and only a handful of people had color TVs and cars didn't have air conditioning," Kitter recalls. "But the first time I went to Central Lanes it was five o'clock on a Sunday morning, I took the first bus up Central Avenue and the whole town was desolate, but I got off the bus and the whole parking lot of Central Lanes was packed, and right away I had this strange feeling, like 'What are all these people doing at five o'clock in the morning at a bowling alley?'"
Now that a parking garage stands on the plot of land in Brooklyn where Leemark Lanes once stood and the 42nd anniversary of the day two tricksters started a fire in a utility closet of Central Lanes and inadvertently burned it to the ground is upon us, many of the bowling alleys Jeff Kitter speaks of endure only in the memories of those who were there. They are the places that Kitter describes as "theaters" in which names like Dirty Bruce, The Hawk and Billy the Kid were as common as names like Joe and John and even "Benny Cigar" the beer delivery man and his 160 average could find a match for hundreds of dollars a game.
"What made the atmosphere almost carnival-like was that you could find a match between two 165 bowlers for a lot of money. Benny Cigar bowled Joe Bera the bookmaker I don't know how many times, and it wasn't unusual for them to bowl for four or five-hundred a game, and they were horrible."
It was a carnival in which Kitter happily indulged, where Iggy Russo, perhaps the most mythical character to emerge from the action bowling scene of the 1960s, drove up to every match with a collection of loaded balls and lead pins which, if you wanted to bowl Iggy for any amount of money, you accepted as part of the deal. It was a carnival in which you bowled for as much money blindfolded as you did throwing the ball between your legs, a carnival in which anything-from the rain in the window to black jack out back-was a chance at getting a taste of the action.
"One of the things I never see written about are novelty games, but there was a lot of gambling done on bowling in all sorts of different manners-low ball which involved trying to pick off the corner pins but if you threw it in the gutter you got 10 plus whatever you got on the next ball, then there were matches bowling palm ball, blindfolded, house ball, between your legs, between chairs, with the other guy's ball, I'm not even thinking of them all."
But as Jeff Kitter says, a place like Central Lanes was as much a theater as it was a bowling alley, a theater whose audience arrived from "as far south as Philadelphia and as far north as Boston," a theater whose participants-however far removed from "the action" as they may be these days-tell their stories as vividly now as they did the day after they happened.
By Gianmarc Manzione
8/31/2009
Long before the World Series of Poker attracted legions of fans to their television sets to watch gamblers crowd a casino card table with millions of dollars in prize money on the line, a place called Central Lanes just a short drive north of New York City swarmed with money and matches whose legends no main event in Vegas will ever outlive, a place where Jeff Kitter bowled future Hall of Famer Johnny Petraglia for $2,000 a game equipped with nothing but a 10-pound ball and two fingers as Johnny used only his thumb, a place where you always knew you could find a black jack game out back whenever you had no match inside.
"You still weren't there at 5:30 in the morning with your date," Kitter explains. "This was gambling."
Welcome to Jeff Kitter's 1960s, a time warp in which Richie Hornreich gathers friends by a rainy window in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge Lanes and places bets on which rain drop will make it down the window the fastest, where a young Mike Limongello borrows enough from Max the Shylock to make it through one more match as long as he agrees to let Max bet on him, and the action at Central Lanes in Yonkers is far too real to be outdone by the manufactured thrill of jackpot sirens and neon lights thousands of miles away.
"There were very few avenues to gamble back then," action bowling legend Jeff Kitter explains. "There was no sports betting to speak of, the Meadowlands race track hadn't even been built, Atlantic City wouldn't become a gambling venue for another fifteen years, there were no lotteries, people didn't even talk about going to Las Vegas because it was so far away. Just as the place to gamble was the pool hall in the '30s and '40s, the bowling alley became the place to go and gamble in the '50s and '60s."
In the time warp of Jeff Kitter's memory the pharmacies close at five, cell phones are the stuff of sci-fi jokes and the neighborhood turns desolate after dark. But if you're looking for action after hours, you can find it any night of the week at places like Leemark Lanes in Brooklyn where Richie Hornreich is battling Mike Limongello for enough money to pay the rent for several years, or Central Lanes where Larry Lichstein glimpses Ernie Schlegel for the first time in his life and finds him "pounding his chest like a gorilla, saying he is the greatest bowler in the world."
"Everything was closed on Sunday, so when you went to Central Lanes on Saturday night or early Sunday morning, the town was desolate. You would drive up Central Avenue-the bowling alley would be on it-nothing was open. There wasn't a delicatessen open, there were no supermarkets. You were living in an era where there were four or five TV stations and only a handful of people had color TVs and cars didn't have air conditioning," Kitter recalls. "But the first time I went to Central Lanes it was five o'clock on a Sunday morning, I took the first bus up Central Avenue and the whole town was desolate, but I got off the bus and the whole parking lot of Central Lanes was packed, and right away I had this strange feeling, like 'What are all these people doing at five o'clock in the morning at a bowling alley?'"
Now that a parking garage stands on the plot of land in Brooklyn where Leemark Lanes once stood and the 42nd anniversary of the day two tricksters started a fire in a utility closet of Central Lanes and inadvertently burned it to the ground is upon us, many of the bowling alleys Jeff Kitter speaks of endure only in the memories of those who were there. They are the places that Kitter describes as "theaters" in which names like Dirty Bruce, The Hawk and Billy the Kid were as common as names like Joe and John and even "Benny Cigar" the beer delivery man and his 160 average could find a match for hundreds of dollars a game.
"What made the atmosphere almost carnival-like was that you could find a match between two 165 bowlers for a lot of money. Benny Cigar bowled Joe Bera the bookmaker I don't know how many times, and it wasn't unusual for them to bowl for four or five-hundred a game, and they were horrible."
It was a carnival in which Kitter happily indulged, where Iggy Russo, perhaps the most mythical character to emerge from the action bowling scene of the 1960s, drove up to every match with a collection of loaded balls and lead pins which, if you wanted to bowl Iggy for any amount of money, you accepted as part of the deal. It was a carnival in which you bowled for as much money blindfolded as you did throwing the ball between your legs, a carnival in which anything-from the rain in the window to black jack out back-was a chance at getting a taste of the action.
"One of the things I never see written about are novelty games, but there was a lot of gambling done on bowling in all sorts of different manners-low ball which involved trying to pick off the corner pins but if you threw it in the gutter you got 10 plus whatever you got on the next ball, then there were matches bowling palm ball, blindfolded, house ball, between your legs, between chairs, with the other guy's ball, I'm not even thinking of them all."
But as Jeff Kitter says, a place like Central Lanes was as much a theater as it was a bowling alley, a theater whose audience arrived from "as far south as Philadelphia and as far north as Boston," a theater whose participants-however far removed from "the action" as they may be these days-tell their stories as vividly now as they did the day after they happened.