Ferraro finished his measurements and took the glossy blue ball over to a machine, where he secured the ball in position beneath the drill bit and turned on the motor. Curls of resin spiraled from hole as the bit descended toward the core. When he was finished, Michael Webster tried the ball and agreed that his thumb needed a little more space.
“We’ve lost population in league bowling,” said Ferraro as he beveled the thumb hole with a file, “but recreational bowling is up. We’re trying to get kids. On band nights we pack 160, 170 people in the place.”
Mid-City is part of the industry-wide trend toward Cosmic Bowling, which features a dance-club atmosphere and a light show, often with lasers and blacklights that catch the glow-in-the-dark paint on pins and balls. Additives in the lane finishes also show up under the UV lighting, and some alleys even have fog machines and DJs.
On the other hand, says Ferraro, “League bowling has been here forever — it’s like a family. We go to 20 or 30 tournaments together around New York State. Now we’re having one here. Around 180, 190 teams come here throughout the two months it runs.”
The Dave Ferraro Team Tournament is named after Ferraro’s father, a champion bowler who won the 1990 Firestone Tournament of Champions and nine Professional Bowlers Association tour titles. In 1994, he became the twelfth player in PBA history to crack the million-dollar mark in career earnings, and in 1997, after retirement, he was inducted into the PBA Hall of Fame.
In a Sports Illustrated interview after his Firestone win, he told a reporter that he didn’t like touring and couldn’t wait to get home to Kingston.
John Ferraro said it was his great-grandfather who got the family into the bowling business by building the HoeBowl lanes in the 1970s. Later he sold it, and the family acquired Mid-City, which was already in operation.
Dave started bowling when he was two, according to SI, and bowled a 156 at the age of four. While on the road as a pro, unlike most of his competitors, he jumped rope every day — 3500 jumps in 25 minutes.
John followed the family tradition, bowling on a college team and then professionally. He retired for a while due to an accident, but now he’s back on the lanes and running the business at the age of 24.
When Margaretville Bowl was built in 1960, its claim to fame was “the modern lanes,” said Finberg. “At that time, there were five lanes above the Granary Building in Margaretville, with pin boys to pick up the pins,” whereas the new alley on Route 28 had the recently invented automatic pinsetters, which produced a boom in bowling alleys.
In 1975, the newly married Finberg, a schoolteacher, was persuaded to go into the bowling business by a group of investing partners who asked him to run the alley. Now ready to retire, he said, “I like the fact it’s a community business, a local source of recreation. Bowling alleys in general offer a chance for interactive recreation. In winter, if one isn’t skiing there’s not a lot to do here, outside of bars and restaurants.”
The alley still has league play several nights a week and open bowling on Saturday. Finberg also rents the place out for wedding rehearsal dinners, family reunions and birthday parties. To supplement the bowling, he has installed an Internet jukebox, a decent sound system, a rec room with video games and a pool table, a locker room for league bowlers, and a room to have parties catered.
Aside from the scheduled hours, he can open by arrangement. “Someone will call and say, I have family coming up, will you be open? If the numbers are sufficiently large, I open. Summertimes we have camp kids. Sometimes we get a wedding party looking for something to do before the wedding.”
Though Finberg is in the process of installing Cosmic Bowling, which will transform the appearance of alley in some ways, he’s keeping the retro look that is, like the return of bowling shirts in menswear, so appealing in the modern world. He never replaced the original maple benches with molded plastic, and outside, there is still an eight-foot revolving bowling pin. Finberg says, “It was cut out of one piece of plywood by a local guy.”
