 This is the Think Tech Hawaii and it's Monday and this show is the state of the state of Hawaii. So welcome. I am your host Stephanie Stoll Dalton. Today our topic is to focus on actually a little noticed activity in one of Hawaii's outstanding public spaces and I know you know it well it's Alamoana Beach Park. Now when you're in there if you're near the tennis courts you may have seen a low white brick wall and the white wall encloses a large manicured green built over a coral foundation many decades ago and made especially for the ancient and genteel sport of lawn bowling. Now that is actually alive and well as a sport here in Honlulu and my guest today will show and share, show some pictures and share about this sport and where it's played in on its very beautiful home green. So today I welcome Shannon Fagan who's president of the Boles Club and Judy Rasmussen who I know is a champion bowls player and special events coordinator for the club and Barry White who's the membership promoter to be here with us today. So welcome Shannon, Judy and Barry and thank you so much for being here today and to bring some attention to what I'm describing as a little noticed activity because it seems like a very large space with very dedicated players and probably you could use a lot more of them but I think it might be interesting to just talk a little bit about your involvement in the club and get into the history of it. So Shannon as the president why don't you tell us about how you came to it and and then we'll talk about the history. Certainly like local involvement often starts for us I got involved with members that had been there for a number of years and I've now been bowling with them for just over getting close to about a year and a half actually. What's fascinating about the club as you talk about the history is that as a Gentile sport it did not start as a Gentile location in the city actually it starts from the dredging of the Alawai canal and that earth was put over the coral foundation and what was low level trees in the city refuge site. Now this was in the back end of the 1920s into the early 30s when the city then dedicated that land to be a park for city of Honolulu that was then forming. Roosevelt came through and cut a flower ribbon and entered the park and we started seeing the start of the lawn bulls around 1935 or so when they formed the green. Now I believe the president Roosevelt was out here dedicating this out right so it has a rather auspicious beginning and the Mr. McCoy did some oversight of the development of the green also because that's a complicated project if you're not just dumping dirt there you've got to do some things obviously which has the coral foundation so it drains well and then you have to have enough dirt or oil to be able to grow the grass nicely and there's a person that is very specialized in that that works at the club now to mention his name and thank him later wonderful piece of work that's being done because you can see it from afar and it's quite beautiful. Well what else about the history when did the actual who was playing back in 30 what is that 1935? 1930s so it got started around 1937 a man by the name of Dr. Richard Evesworth who had been coming to Honolulu from Australia was interested in bringing the game from that country into Hawaii which was a territory soon to become a state and then had petitioned the city to take a look at building the green together with an architect firm called Harry Sims Bent and that's the same from that had built some of the monuments that are in the club or excuse me in the park to the state including the Waikiki Bridge which is where Roosevelt entered the park upon the dedication and the green stayed there it was used through World War II and upon the breakout of World War II it was turned over to the U.S. military and the army used it as some storage facility and like training and actually ironically after having been built and all the time spent to develop the green went into disrepair and was overgrown as a green through about the 1960s so through the Korean War and into the 1960s and by the 1960s the parks department had again been petitioned by someone who had come down this time from Seattle and was interested in the game meant by the name of Mr. Kirk Gillam and he was Gillam excuse me was part of senior citizens club that the parks department had put together and which later actually formulated into what now we know as the Honolulu lawn bowls club that was how the name transitioned from that with a focus on a park's activity for locals in the Honolulu area. 1969 towards the late 60s they actually took what was the original Paragola which was the area that they had probably organ failure or bind flower growing and that was changed into a clubhouse which now contains locker room, restroom facilities and repair facility and then that was put to the historic register of places in state of Hawaii and if you want a bowl in Hawaii this is the place to go it's the only place that we have in the entire state. Well maybe you could tell us a little bit about the bowling so we're mostly familiar with going to the bowling alley with our great big ball right Wayne whatever and our shoes and everything so what is the game actually like that Barry maybe you can talk a little bit about what the game is like. Oh absolutely yeah it definitely is a little bit different than your bowling alley bowling the bowl which is what we call the the ball that's about this large we use that to roll it down from one end of the green down to where we have thrown something called the jack it's basically a small white very similar to a billiard ball. Can we have a name? Perfect yeah there it is. Yeah exactly thank you for the picture so you can see where the white the white ball is down there we will sit down send down at one end and then we will roll our bowl down and try to get as close as possible to the white jack we will go one person will go then another person goes another then another will sometimes play where we have teams of two will sometimes play teams of three against each other and sometimes we'll even do it or we get what we call a swing where we have an extra person who goes you know one after the other but the you know the name of the game is go back and forth about 12 to 14 times see who can get closest to the jack each time if you're the one who's closest then you get the point if you have three that are closer than your opposition's bowl you'll get three points if you only get one that's closer than their bowl you'll just get one point but we do that and see who's got the most points at the end well that's a great description takes about two hours to play this game there's a measuring tape there so this is a very serious about who's close to the jack and who's not right balls vary too and the balls the balls vary there's weight they're weighted so a forehand shot would roll to the right and toward the jack backhand would go the other way and toward the jack so you can choose which way you want to roll and some balls have more turn in them than others some are straighter so that's also a variation in the game so is that um that is quite different from alley bowling right or the american pastime that's most popular there there isn't in the in the big bowling balls those are supposed to go straight right is right yeah i think yeah i think a big differences with regular bowling in an alley that you're using the spin are trying to put spin on it to change the angle to get it to go where you want it which is different from you know the game of bowls because of the game of bowls your whole goal is to throw it as straight in the direction that you want and because of the way that the bowl is actually shaped it will turn on its own as judy was mentioning you've got to kind of learn how much it's going to turn and and just as judy said you know it turns differently depending on what kind of bowl that you have judy's goes really straight and she's really good mind have a little bit more curve to them so i have to account for that every time i throw them but i don't put a spin on it you just throw it straight and and learn how it's going to go so that's why having your own bowling balls your little set of those is advantageous right because you want to practice yes with the same ones you want to keep practicing with the same ones and then get used to them but even each rink each rink that you go on of the eight rinks in each direction that's 16 rinks you could be on and it varies it varies at every rink how your bowl is going to roll you know the grass conditions and whether was it rolled that day or not rolled and was it cut short or not cut yet or there's a lot of variations there's been times in the park's history when they survey the land and then they will take up the grass and put it back down because there are uneven undulations of the of the natural earth is there they did it once wouldn't mind it if they did it again probably a recurring expense i mean uh when he's awarded um i just wanted to say that uh the green is lying out there and without knowing the game um you're now explaining how there are no markers on that green there are no lines or anything they're just whatever the land offers right so the people playing the game make it happen through the jack and the balls and imaginary lines right so i i mean that's really interesting that there's anything going on there at all i mean there's all of this going on but it doesn't require markings they're all played within the game well what about during covid what kind of a game was this is this to play during our covid time as it does it expose people to danger we were closed for a while and then when the parks reopened we started up that we've always followed the rules very carefully uh like when it was no more than five people to gather we had no more than five usually it was four in a group we would only do doubles uh now that it's increased to 10 we can do triple triples games you know or have more people gather around but even when we have our tournaments and we have say maybe 20 people 22 people on tournament day uh we will keep that everybody spaced out so we're trying to always follow that we also always wear masks nobody's even allowed to come in and bowl or even watch without having a mask on so we're following all the rules so it's has been more difficult through these covid times um we did have our one tournament our barefoot bowls last february 2020 and of course it was cancelled 2021 um yeah seems like there'd be a quite a bit of protection because the the screen is outside but it's a low impact low context sports so people are naturally spaced out as they play during the downtime between each role right well barry why don't you tell us about the membership issues and how people can come in and when can they come in and how does you know those kinds of things so um when you're standing there looking at the low white up wall and seeing the green then what's the next thing you need to think about yes yes we're always looking for new members uh we have a total of eight different rinks or lanes that we can play in and typically on our most busy time which is saturday we have the most people show up uh we're usually using no more than four of those unless we have tournaments going on so we can definitely handle a number of more people out there so we always encourage you know getting some more members out there what you can do is you can come by at 9 30 on saturday morning we uh that's we usually start at 10 o'clock uh with the actual game but at 9 30 if you're there we'll walk you through how to play give you a little lesson and then if you'd like to you can stay and do a game especially if you're a local the first couple of games that you do there's no charge for them we want you to test it out and see you know if you like it uh then you know you can decide if you'd like to join after that you can go to honoluluonbolts.com and you can also send you know an email over to us and uh if there's a different time you know that you'd like to meet out there we can also walk you through the game and and get you're accustomed to it and then you can come out on another time and and do an actual game with all the members now we were talking about you know how it's good to have your own bowls but the the club does have a number of bowls already so you don't have to have any of your own we'll provide those for you so all you have to do is basically show up we don't wear any fancy outfits you will have some people in some nice matching clothes when we have a tournament like what you're seeing on the screen uh but just show up in typical hawaiian type of attire and we will get you all set up now for those who are interested in joining it ends up running just $180 for the entire year so i mean that's a total of about like $15 a month i don't think there's certainly any sport that you're going to do in hawaii that you can get as much of a value you know out out of what you pay for it uh and especially you know with the with the beautiful club that we've got there and in alamwana park i mean it's one of the best places that we got in honolulu so i mean uh i think we're picking up with a few new members pretty much every week over the last few weeks i think since covid is kind of dying down a little bit too we had some more people joined we've had some younger members joined we've got um an age range probably from the 20s all the way up to well at least one who was up in the 80s so you know you can really not play the sport no matter how how what your age is i was like what was that duty i said not me no that wasn't that duty i know i knew you mentioned me just walk in i mean we have a lot of walk ins yeah especially on saturday beach goers yeah all right so they can feel um does anything happen to them when they walk in or they're just they walk in and kind of walk around and then what does somebody talk to them i guess yeah we we have a number of members that are going to be there and looking for someone who's you know peeking over the the gate or just you know walking in if we don't recognize them and we will then kind of get them acquainted to the club the greens and then start taking them through a lesson if they would like on how to play it and actually get some experience right away well do you ever have a day dedicated or saturday dedicated to welcoming newcomers like you know advertising it or um announcing it as something that that everybody's welcome to come i know it costs money we did have that one time and that's all i can remember since i joined i think it was maybe two years ago and we put out announcements and uh we did have a bunch of people come in and we gave them lessons and and spent a whole saturday just doing that that's a that's a good idea to maybe try that again that's been a complication because of pandemic times in order to oh yeah now we can't hear just to be okay to pre-advertise it but it is in the works for the 2021 to do an initiative like that and we'd like to focus on also bringing in other various groups such as school groups perhaps it's done it's very common in the uk or australia but it's it's not just a group of adults you know high school team playing with the kids going yeah give them a international plane up this game tell us the status of this game around the world we know that in the united states it's fairly low low key on that special places and maybe it's referred to as bachi ball in some places too but what what's the what's the game for the world well there's bachi ball and there's bachi ball in hawaii that's just a few here and there that play uh lawn bowls is international now uh bachi ball you see a lot more of it in italy than maybe lawn bowls but you go to any of the um well like i say australia new zealand any of the british isles you know it's mostly all uh lawn bowls uh lawn bowls they're gosh i think there's like eight clubs in california alone all the way up and down the coast uh new york central park has a lawn bowls club there's clubs in pennsyere there's clubs all over the place so it might not be a lot but they are all over the place it's growing it's definitely growing and well i understand that in the uk it's something that's a part of people's lives they know about this game play this game from childhood but what i hear from people i've talked to about it that it's a part of their they go looking for lawn bowls when they visit other countries and that they don't usually find that many in the u.s um and that and that's why we would like them to know that if there is one in hawaii and they come they come on the when we have an annual tournament which we call the barefoot bowls there we're getting a lot of uk members a lot of uh canadian members will come from across and a lot from vancourt particularly but also from the east coast and then from australia that participate and in those clubs they have to tell the stories of how they're it's a it's a much more socializing aspect for restaurant bar facilities games and on site and people go to eat drink and then also play bowls together which is interesting that's that kind of from what we do here that's a great picture that's from our barefoot bowls tournament and after the tournament on the final day we have a luau barbecue uh and then play some other fun games or activities too just to kind of joke around but uh we do have that's best from the barbecue that we have a each year after that and hopefully we'll be back doing it next february well the bowls tournament now you said that was canceled for 2020 right but for 20 no we had it in 2020 because it was right before right smack before everything closed down and and everybody went back home and uh and but we're having it again we wanted to have it in 2021 but of course we couldn't because things are still closed they and they can't come in they can't even leave australia to come here right now all the azi teams that wanted to come canada same thing they're still basically locked down in canada so uh there was no reason to try to hold an international tournament you know while covid was still going on but we're hoping 2022 we will have it again well so talk talk talk about the barefoot part of the bowls tournament what does that mean the barefoot question it's casual and actually it's quite funny because i noticed uh when we started having those that the azi's definitely the men loved playing barefoot they thought it was really cool even though normally no you're not playing barefoot uh but we called the barefoot bowls because we're here in hawaii if you want to play barefoot you can play barefoot take your own chances with your dropping a ball a bowl on your foot but you can play that way if you want most people wear shoes perfectly fine to be healed obviously a recommendation because of that quality of the green are the grains needs to be cared for what what is the requirement on shoes can you wear any kind of shoes out there or golf shoes or what do you wear oh nothing with spikes like the golf shoe no it would have to be just a regular athletic shoe athletic shoe or you can do it barefoot here in hawaii barefoot someone with flip-flops slippers yes that's true so um isn't the barefoot bowls usually held at night as i recall was always off day it's a Wednesday Thursday and Friday all day that a championship is usually Friday afternoon and then Friday evening is when we have the barbecue and the luau and then Saturday is our normal uh social play and usually all of the barefoot bowl entries will come back out on the Saturday and we'll just do random draws and can play those games just for fun well i know we had another um topic here to go into the fundamentals of the game um uh shannon or baird you want to talk about uh how you keep how what's the scoring can you tell us a little bit about well first of all how many balls does each person maybe we'd go into some of the more specifics of the game shannon you want to tell us certainly so the games are usually played with three to four a set of bowls comes with a set of four and they're different weights i this starts from about a weight of one to a weight of five and that's by the the heaviness of the bowl that you hold and then we've got and that includes also the size so persons with smaller hands when they use perhaps a smaller number and then you have got the bias of the bowl which is it's weighted to curve on the green in a particular direction depending on how you roll it and so the game what which number what size do men use and what do women use what's the is it the matter of the size of the hands or the ability to lift the weight of a ball a problem a little bit of both but i think for example i'm using a size four berry do you know what size you use yeah mine's a size four heavy okay so now the heavy how heavy is that bowl what's five chance six there's a few more ounces yeah i that's that's a really good question i'm not sure what the exact weight is it probably feels like about three to four pounds to me i guess well i know with with shannon we chatted a little bit yesterday and i he had such good ideas about bringing in community groups to familiarize the community with with this this game and then we even talked about children i mean certainly high school students could do this would be elementary even if it's older elementary and you're thinking also intermediate schools but little kids lift the balls right um bringing in you know the the youngster the really young ones the first second third graders but i mean i mean i'm just i mean i wonder when they start them in the uk i mean people are i guess taking their kids to the turn to to the balls and they're playing around with that anyway i was just curious because i too have a five-year-old grandchild now i was thinking oh it would be really good to see what she could do with one of those balls at five to see if that's anything they could even pick up i mean but that's you know the beginning of school but they can make children's bowls as i found online so in those countries where they start the kids younger in elementary school even they have smaller bowls that they're using we don't have those smaller bowls at the club so ours are more for maybe an intermediate age student oughta i think we've had probably eight or nine uh year olds that that have been able to throw our our size zero bowls we have a we have a couple of sets of size zero oh right well i think that's that's another idea is to have a junior league right um if if they wanted to come out and do that um but um i was just um thinking that uh knowing how to score it is another piece of the game that's very important and i know when i was playing for a while i found that very challenging can you talk about that score just a little bit it's not like bowling in the alley or with the big balls Barry can you talk about that scoring or Judy you're an expert at it because no Barry did a little bit earlier so go ahead there yeah well i think probably the best person for that is shanna and since he's the one who actually scored the highest in our last tournament and was the winner of a tournament uh so he's pretty good by beauty um yeah so whoever you know got got the bowl uh closest to the jack gets gets a point or up to however many bowls that you had between you and your partner uh that were closer than the opponents so i guess in some situations we have triples so there could be three sets of three so you could have potential up to nine points uh that you could get at one end and then when you go to the next end you know it starts all over again if you won you get to do the toss and determine where the jack is going to land so if it's going to be a long roll or it's going to be a short roll um and then from there you know it starts all over again whoever gets closest again gets gets the points if you don't get closest you get nothing okay so you only get the point when you when you get close even when you're the closest to the jack yeah when you're the closest yes yeah so i mean it is it is a little different or maybe it's just me but i mean i just think that it's a little different way to um to think about the game i mean there aren't any um detractions i mean you don't lose anything you only gain from the ball okay we'll talk about the social aspects i know um shanna and you can talk about the advantages of being there um to your to your mental health and to your well-being and to your social life now how does it improve all those things what's wonderful about this sport is that there's a almost a zen meditative component to it and that there you're rolling a ball it's the size of a softball basically and you're learning how to control body motion but also your thought process in a psychological sense to deliver on a routine you know pendulum through a roll using you know knees and ankles to bend down and release and then you're watching that as you're aiming it towards the jack on the other end of the green and so you sort of you psychologically prepare yourself for that so there is this aspect of play and downtime play and downtime and then within the club on the other side of it is you get a wonderful chance to meet your other members that are playing with you and converse with them or on either end of the rink or you know on the lane so there's a lot of ability of time to meet new people when when coming to play and we also do as part of after the people gather together to have a snack together and discuss and just like politics their work it's a nice time to spend together well and i think people are so very devoted to it they are uh yeah really and um i think they they share that in the way they play the game and sometimes they're very concentrated on it so when people come in they can see um that kind of um focus and attention on it but they can also see that people are having a lot of fun yeah it is good well it's a well hard time for us and what we'll have to wrap up unless there's some final comments anybody would like to add do you have any final comments let's see go with each one of you judy can you say something i just want to mention our next tournament coming up is a mixed doubles tournament it will be held April 24th uh and we're asking club players to be there by 9 30 in the morning and they'll probably run till about four and i can't really invite people to come and watch because of the covid thing and the numbers but i guess if they're in the park that day and want to come over and look over the wall and see what's going on and watch the game a little bit they can learn a little bit that way and maybe decide to come out the following weekend and that'll be on the website right if we can put the website up again uh one more time um thank you so that you'll have that announcement on the website so they can go check if they see this and want to come they'll know where to go check on it on the website is it barry are you doing that or is brian doing the website yeah that brian's got that up there yeah okay all right good some final comments yeah i would just say hey please come by at 9 30 if you're interested over at our location in the alamona beach park uh the place where you've got a big white brick uh wall around it that's where we are so show up at 9 30 on a saturday and we would be happy to show you around introduce you to the game of bowls also if you have any questions give us shoot us an email at directors at honolambolls.com okay thank you thank you shannon um any comments yes patience it can take weeks or months don't be surprised if it takes half a year to get good at the game it looks so simple to do but it's a lot of fun in terms of your gaining skill with such a simple movement of the body and and rolling the bowl across the green and again it's it's interesting it's uh i i really appreciated that through the practice that often i've done you know through on the weekends or in the evenings you get better and better and then you're just amazed that one day it starts clicking and that's where you get excited yeah that's the thing is you're going to have a fun fun time with everybody there while you're learning it's great well i am delighted to know more about it and uh we've been talking remotely with Shannon Fagan Judy Rasmussen and uh Barry White about Hawaii's Lawn Bowling Club in the Ala Moana Beach Park and that looks like you are invited on Saturday mornings and very welcome to play with the group and their lessons and free free entry um if you can just get yourself there it's quite beautiful and you'll be delighted i'll see you all again in two weeks on the next state of the state of Hawaii Mahalo for your attention everyone thank you and thank you thanks