many of us were dreading dodgeball….. the childhood scars had not fully healed. stories were told of middle school playgrounds or gyms with creeps and bullies. some had to deal with using a basketball for dodgeball….. picture that hard-ass wilson basketball tattoo’n you in the back or legs…. ahhhh good times.

we arrived early and practiced. we were ppretty alone for awhile…. making us hope nobody would show up and we would win without every have to feel the pain of getting hit. sadly others showed up and forced us to battle.

we fought hard and threw well… in the end it wasnt meant to be.

it is hard to take pictures of your team playing… while you are playing. so here are some shots of others playing.

in the end we played well, but lost. but many of us now dont fear the game as much as we used to. we all have happy thoughts to think of in the dodgeball section of our brains.

we arrived early, determined to practice and get good and win tonights Skeeball challenge.

we also practiced looking tuff….. this is bout the best we could do.

from behind we looked much more menicing

and so we Ball’d (skeeballed)

no n, by all means you go first. that way i will now how many points we need to win.

having failed in skeeball we decided to make friends and eat chicken fried bacon.

have eaten some bacon and made some friends…… we tried to win the day by making everyone as cute as us.

as you can see, we ruled at cuteness.

It was a another night of brews, bros and well-handled balls, as the inaugural Saucony San Francisco Winter SkeeBall Tournament ‘09 (S.S.F.W.S.B.T.’09) commenced at the Buckshot Bar and Gameroom. The evening ended in triumph and tears as the boisterous rookies over at SF Weekly walked away victorious for the second week in a row, first defeating Hyphen Magazine in a tight first-round match and then going on to pounce the purple-shirts over at Frog Design SF in the final round. But everybody wins at S.S.F.W.S.B.T.’09: the evening’s two first-round losers, Hyphen and KQED, consoled themselves with post-defeat games of billiards, jenga and shuffleboard, all of which were on hand inside the bar, while Frog, nursing their collective wounded pride, stuck around to play a few games of TRON and OFF-ROAD and kick back some beers. In all, a wonderfully good time.

UP NEXT: We trade in the small balls for the big ones, as we all pile into Yerba Buena for some good ol’ fashioned bowling!

I LOVE SKEEBALL.  There, I said it.  The thrill of the lights, seeing the tickets spew forth from the machine after each round, releasing a half-assed throw but then getting lucky when the ball rolled back down the lane so I had a second chance. I even had a game-playing strategy:  find my sweet spot by rolling the ball to the right side of the lane with such force to propel the ball up off the bumper and into the 50-point hole.  I don’t remember my all-time highest score, but I do remember the best prize:  a mini-fan that ran on batteries that my mom let me clip to the dashboard of her car all summer.

Tonight (Wednesday March 11) we’ll pit the San Fran players against each other in skeeball at the Buckshot Restaurant, Bar and Gameroom.   Good luck teams! If anyone scores a perfect score (450, or all 9 balls in the 50 hole), there will be a prize, but I can’t promise it will be as cool as the mini-fan!

Shuffleboard was awesome, it was very well suited to the skills of our group, non-physical and drinking. We should have dominated. Alas we did not. it seems the folk from Hyphen skills were better at drinking and sliding.

the barren table was surrounded by spectators and awaited battle.

then the battle began… we fought and slide and distracted…

we sent our secret weapon (debbie) to attack their most potent weapon…… all she managed to do is “hug it out” with that wile Mike Lee

left with no choice….. we drank. well some of us.