Go Bowling With The NYC Tech Community

Comments (Archived):

1. Side story not really related.I once had a founder of a video game company (you would recognize the name) shoot a game of pool with me to decide a deal.Lessoned learned–If someone has a table in their beach house you will loose.I lost bigtime. We signed the deal anyway.

   1. i have a pool table in my NYC apartment and my ski house. but you can beat me. i am good but not poolshark territory.

      1. Spoken like a true hustler 😉

         1. Everyone watch out for these two..

            1. I recently rewatched The Hustler, The Color of Money and The Grifters btw.

         2. I’ve always wondered about that. If people can go town to town and hustle people at pool doesn’t it mean that in most cases people who drift into town don’t win? Otherwise why wouldn’t it be a huge red flag that people avoid? Or do the town pool players just have so much hubris that they think they can out hustle the traveling pool players?For example you learned the lesson of the beach house pool table if you had 20 such experiences and only lost 2 games you wouldn’t have made that statement I would guess.NB: I know nothing about pool but, hah, I’ve seen a few movies.

   2. .I learned many a good lesson at the Blue Diamond in Red Bank, NJ while waiting for the train from RBC HS.One day I cleaned the house — the house being primarily working class men who did not like a kid in a Catholic school blazer taking their beer money.For a while I had a damn good thing going as I would never fail to leave with at least $20 of someone else’s money. That was a bloody fortune in those days.I did have a run in or two with the nuns about rumors of my pool playing. [Pro tip: pool chalk is very easy to detect on a navy blue wool blazer.] I always classified it as “counseling” and who doesn’t need a bit of counseling at such a tender age.It all ended unceremoniously when a gent who had contributed his beer money to me wanted it all back — he had a knife. I did not. I had not yet been to Ranger School and I was admittedly a bit intimidated. In later years, I would have disarmed him and jammed that knife…..well, you know what I mean?I was however faster than he was and left expeditiously only to forego the balance of what had been a promising endeavor.It’s no longer there now in the gentrification of Red Bank but I continue to apply the lessons learned.JLM.

      1. I was never great but knew how to make loosing an advantage though.

   3. “If someone has a table in their beach house you will loose.”The house we bought came with apparently a really high end pool table which is in our basement. I haven’t played a single game and it now sits covered with a ping pong table board for the kids. They already lost interest in that. God knows I would love to sell that pool table but it does look nice sitting there and the size makes it impractical. It’s a piece of furniture kind of the way you keep a piano even when nobody plays piano.Given what you just said I wonder if I could use that table to reverse hustle someone?”How about if we play a game of pool and if I win you do this and if I lose I do this”?

2. Fitting as the first standardized rules for pin bowling were established in New York City, on September 9, 1895.

   1. You Googled that. Admit it. 😉

      1. You Betcha!

   2. rules? just knock ’em over. isn’t that it?

3. Maybe some ice fishing on the Hudson

4. Have fun. Wish I could be there.

5. ‘Le Tour de Tech’, a mass bike ride around the NYC web tech scene on an ‘open day’. Helmets and sandwiches obligatory. No legal liability entertained. Off street route planning desirable.

   1. Wrigley Field 100. Come to Chicago in August. We ride 100 miles for African Bike relief, then party on the field.

      1. I’d like to come but I’m afraid I’ll be 100 miles late…

         1. we will put a motor on yours

6. Pics and vines will be appreciated.

7. .This makes me chuckle. The reverse socialization of the cutting edge of socialization in America — bowling.It is a healthy development and should be videoed.Fred, I urgently beseech you to broaden your personal brand and get into some rented bowling shoes and throw the rock.JLM.

   1. my best is about 180. but these days i can’t get to 150. i am happy with 120.

      1. Granny-style is good technique to default too to obtain a relatively high score.. Will result in some good photos too..

      2. Bowling is the ultimate in intermittent reinforcement activity. And something that takes really no skill at all to get started at and get that reinforcement. (Other than a 5 year old hitting the gutter every time, any adult, no matter how few times they have played, has knocked down plenty of pins at some point..)Compare Bowling for example to tennis. Tennis is much higher on the that scale. Or baseball. Or skiing. [1]Generally most games with broad appeal have this aspect which draws people in and creates the funnel.Even those jeopardy like shows on TV sprinkle in a bunch of questions that anyone can answer mixed with difficult ones so everyone is a winner and remains interested. So everyone can feel smart. (That’s the draw. Same on even Shark Tank or The Apprentice).[1] In rc helicopters the hobby didn’t take off (it is huge today) until gyros and electronics allowed everyone to at least hover and the copters were small enough that a crash didn’t require rebuilding. So people were reinforced whereas before they were not unless they persevered.

      3. .Few folks know how hard bowling really is, no?Most folks struggle to top their IQ.JLM.

8. Bowling is so fun. TURKEY FTW!

9. Loved that you used your avatar on the sponsor page. I reckon it has more brand recognition than USV.