Famous Ankles

The other day, I wandered by the eastern edge of Bryant Park and was confronted with the sight of people throwing large steel balls around. Not a problem, it’s called Petanque (pronounced, I’m told, as “pay-tonk”).

I have seen this small space in Bryant Park many times, but this was the first time I saw anyone using it.

The game is originally from France (where it was named “boules”) and appears to be the predecessor of lawn bowling.

Note the little orange object in the middle of the steel balls.  That’s the target.  The players throw the balls to see how close they get to this object.  …at least I think that’s the goal.

There are actually free lessons given in this spot between 11:30am and 2pm Mondays through Fridays.  I was there on a Saturday, and it was obvious that these people were also giving/taking lessons.  Either that or the games were really, really lopsided.  Some of those guys could throw those balls really well. 

 As you can tell, it was a pretty popular spectator sport. There were, I think, three games or lessons going on simultaneously. The area appears to hold up to four separate games simultaneously.
 
-H

This entry was posted on May 15, 2008 at 6:37 pm and is filed under Manhattan, Mid-town, Wanderings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.