Bowling Joints Want You to Strike the Word <i> Alley</i> From Your Vocabulary

Centers. Centers. Centers. Centers. Centers. Centers. Centers. Centers. Centers. Centers. Centers. Centers.

I am doing penance for referring to bowling alleys. I recently posed the rhetorical question: Would you rather live in an area known for its golf courses or its bowling alleys?

I got a hot response from Diane Elliott, marketing director for Leisure Time Sports Inc. of El Cajon, which runs six bowling alleys/centers/lanes/places/ establishments in San Diego County.

Elliott wrote that I’m obviously outdated, biased and sexist. All of this from my comments regarding golf versus bowling. Wow, wait until she hears my political ideas!

She invited/challenged/dared me to visit North County Lanes in San Marcos to see how things have changed. I accepted/acquiesced/knuckled under.

North County Lanes is one of Leisure Time’s newest: a clean, well-lighted place, with 60 lanes, video games, cable television and free child care. (Try asking your golf pro for that .)

Also, a lounge, snack bar and, this being the holiday season, a fully loaded Christmas tree. The chandelier is a nice touch.

There are senior leagues on most afternoons and junior bowling on Saturday. Nearly all leagues are co-ed.

Jim Murtishaw, the teaching pro at North County Lanes, is constantly correcting people who say alleys.

“Bowling has an image problem it is trying to shake,” he said. “Some people just refuse to believe that bowling is no longer a bunch of beer-bellies smoking cigars and knocking down pins in some cellar.”

That image is obsolete at North County Lanes. Like pool halls before them, bowling alleys have been converted to “family fun.”

I remain retrograde, however. I worry that something has been lost in the sanitizing and wholesome-izing. The old hairy-knuckled alleys had their place in the social order.

As either Mike Royko or Joseph Campbell once said, there are several hundred thousand social workers in this country but only one Minnesota Fats.

There is wisdom there somewhere.

New and Improved?

The political whirl.

* Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt held a fund-raiser Sunday at the La Jolla home of investment broker Michael Hands. She needs to pay off a campaign debt of $140,000.

Aren’t you glad the “new politics” has given us council members who don’t need to run expensive campaigns and beg for money from the well-heeled?

* Here are names being floated as possible contenders for Lucy Killea’s Assembly seat.

Among Democrats: former Killea aide Chris Crotty; school board member Susan Davis; San Diego City Councilman Bob Filner; attorney and former Fair Board member Byron Georgiou; Rich Grosch, former aide to Mike Gotch; community college Trustee Evonne Schulze, and attorney Howard Wayne.

Among Republicans: one-time Killea opponent Earl Cantos Jr; Jeff Marston, former aide to Gloria McColl, and Wayne Raffesberger, aide to Ron Roberts.

But It’s Supposed to Be Fattening

Tres mas.

* The San Diego Truffle Works is working on a chocolate Truffle Lite.

State law requires food to have 30% fewer calories to be called “lite.” Truffle Works owners Todd and Karen Keegan have trimmed only 20% off the usual 375 to 425 calories per 2-ounce confection.

Research and development continues. I’ll keep you posted.

* The Navy hopes to airlift the 300 officers and sailors from the destroyer Kinkaid back to San Diego by Christmas.

The Kinkaid had been due back this Friday, before it collided with a merchant ship Nov. 12 off Malaysia. Repairs in Singapore and then Subic Bay will take until early spring.