Greeted by a Smell

You would think that arriving at a business, the first thing to greet you would be an employee at the door or at the front counter, but none of them even said hello, the only greeting I received was by an odor that still lingers in my nose and floats in my mouth as I write.  For my Field sight I choose the Fish Bowl, a bowling alley here in town.

It’s a Sunday afternoon with strong overcast but no rain, the parking lot is full, suggesting a lot of people are there today.  As I approached the front doors of the old building I was shocked by the smell that was there.  It was an oily metallic smell, something you’d expect to find at a mechanic, not at a bowling alley.  Walking in only made it worse, it seemed that the smell was radiating from the walls.  Inside Halloween decorations suggested they were getting ready for the season.  There was caution tape on the doors, overhead ghosts made of wires and shredded cloth hung from the ceiling, and a sign by the quick service bar advertised potions.  I suspect that they weren’t done with decorating because a plastic spider web decorated with Christmas tree lights was left, in pieces, on a pool table with the spider thrown on top.

The employees spent their time talking to each other.  Two girls manned the shoe station; they paid me no mind, at the quick service bar people walked back and forth from the kitchen with Styrofoam plates and cups filled with various things.  On the menu were tacos, hamburgers, and nachos.

The Place was loud and restless.  In the background a mixture of popular rock and pop tunes played, the whole place was painted in sharp contrasting patterns of neon and dark colors.  Children ran around unattended by their parents.  In one word it was chaos. 

The building was organized in stations.  Walking in there were the shoes straight ahead, to the left there was the quick service food bar, behind it a bar station and the doors to the bar next door.  On the right there was a wall, separating the alley from a barren arcade.  That was where the children were running around, unseen by the adults playing.  Walking past the shoes were the lanes.  I sat on the far right end of the Fish Bowl, hoping to get a wide view of the place. 

When I sat down and wrote about the smell in my journal I noticed that I was unwelcome.  The adults three lanes away began to stare at me, making me uncomfortable.  The audience was predominantly Caucasian in appearance. 

From what I could tell the family of the adults were occupying all three lanes.  In two lanes there were what appeared to be parents and the grandparents, and excluded from this game was a teenage boy, who appeared to be their son, playing by himself, and relying on the display to teach him how to play.  After each time he would play he would read the screen, which, in-between notices to clean up after oneself, and that the pink and yellow balls were restricted to children only, would offer advice on how to knock over the pins that were left.  Though they watched me like a hawk his family paid him no mind even when it was time to leave. 

During their time there the adults would periodically leave, to go to the pool room next door, they would return with beers in hand.  In the time I was there they did not seem to grab more than two beers at a time.  The child was completely excluded from the game, but the adults would talk, laugh, and offer advice amongst themselves.  When they decided to leave each member of the family would take off their shoes and return them.  When they left the child trailed behind them.