Nathalie Graham goes lawn bowling at Jefferson Park. by Nathalie Graham In Beacon Hill’s Jefferson Park, tucked between the driving range and sweeping views of downtown Seattle, 30 women gathered for an evening of lawn bowling. In addition to the food, drinks, and mint plants brought by members, there was also a cache of lawn bowling memorabilia. “I've been bowling for a long time and I’ve collected a lot of T-shirts, both for this club and the northwest division and other places,” said Rikki Ricard, a 69-year-old psychoanalyst with a bouffant of white hair and glasses. “I'm culling my closet so they're free. But, they're not going to work on the tiny ones,” she said with a laugh.  The freebies included complete sets—shirts, pants, and shorts—from the U.S. Women’s National Lawn Bowling team, when Ricard competed with them in Malaysia. Fifteen years ago, Ricard had never heard of lawn bowling. And then one day, her neighbor in Beacon Hill coaxed her into visiting the Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Club. “I would be out gardening, and she lived across the fence, and she would say, ‘You got to come try this. You got to come try this,’” Ricard said. “Finally, I came and tried it. I realized that I kind of had a knack for it which is always a cool thing, right? When you realize, ‘Oh, I can kind of do this.’” That experience was new for Ricard. Lawn bowling was the first competitive sport she’d ever participated in. She didn’t realize how good competition was “for the spirit and the soul,” she said. Competition, it turned out, really jived with Ricard.  “I became really competitive,” she said. “I mean, you can ask people, like, I became very serious. It was a little obnoxious.”  The sport let a part of her personality out that she kept bottled up. For instance, Ricard didn’t swear much, if ever, in her regular life. But, she swore all the time while bowling.  “Lawn bowling kind of saved my life,” Ricard said. With lawn bowling, Ricard interacted with the world differently. “I just found this place to be physical and different and be kooky. I let my freak flag fly.” Now, she doesn’t bowl as much, but she still comes to Bowl Busters, the Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Club’s women’s league which meets every Wednesday in June and July, for evenings of eating, drinking, and at least some lawn bowling. I met Ricard on a blue July evening in Beacon Hill, sat in a plastic lawn chair with a plate full of three different pasta salads, homemade Rice Krispie Treats, garlic herb cheese and artichoke pinwheels, and a heaping pile of raspberry crumble. The sun, on its nightly detour to whatever lies beyond the Olympic Mountains, bathed the greens of the Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Club in warm yellows. The laughter of the women around me nearly drowned out the Beastie Boys shout-singing “Fight for your Right” through the club’s speakers.  After 18 years, Bowl Busters is more than a league—it’s a community. The Busters have their own traditions, culture, and a sliver of Beacon Hill they can call their own one night of the week. This special place, built by mostly women, and this weird sport, allows them to let their guard down and be their true selves. For my latest exploration into Seattle’s subcultures, the Bowl Busters embraced me with open arms, plied me with food and drinks, and taught me about the topsy-turvy world of lawn bowling.  Before the Busters Lawn bowling is like a “fussy” version of bocce ball, according to lawn bowlers. The goal is to roll bowls, the sport’s oblong, weighted ball, as close to the jack, a white ball in the middle of the grass “rink,” as possible.  Some people say the Ancient Egyptians threw the first bowl. However, the sport as it is known today started around 13th century England. In Jefferson Park, lawn bowling began in 1942 when a group of avid lawn bowlers asked Seattle Parks and Recreation if they could take a sliver of Jefferson Park for their own manicured green next to the golf course’s driving range. With the land secured and the club formalized by 1945, the Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Club officially started with 45 men and 10 women. By 1959, the club’s popularity grew so much it needed an official clubhouse to accommodate its 73 members. In 1968, with $35,000 in city money and $19,500 in member-matched funds, the club built its dream clubhouse—a mid-century masterpiece of warm wood and big windows.  Lawn bowling went on for decades at the park. The clubhouse hosted tournaments. It saw talented bowlers off to national championship victories.  However, come the early 2000s, the aging club’s membership was, well, dying. That’s around when graphic designer Kat Marriner, 59, and her husband, local bike activist, Willie Weir, stumbled across the club.  Back then, Jefferson Park didn’t have a park. The green space below the lawn bowling club was two reservoirs lined with razor wire.  “There was no kids’ soccer, there was no Tai Chi in the morning. There was no Samoan cricket, no skateboard park, no picnics,” Marriner said. “There was nothing.” She and Weir had joined the Jefferson Park Alliance, a volunteer group focused on turning the space into a park. Soon after, with money from the 2000-era pro-parks levy and in response to a post-9/11 federal mandate to cover reservoirs for health and safety reasons, the city turned those reservoirs into what it is today: Jefferson Park.  “The whole time we were meeting at the clubhouse here,” Marriner said, referring to lawn bowling’s headquarters, a squat cottage with entire walls made of windows to capture the cityscape views. “The [lawn bowlers] would say, ‘Well, since you've been here, do you want to bowl?’” Marriner described the club as “adorable little old people.” But, membership was down and no new members seemed to be coming. “They were so charming and so welcoming and so forgiving and so open and accepting that we joined just to be numbers,” she said. “And, of course, then we got really involved.” Throughout the club’s extensive history, at different times it featured a strong social aspect or being a place for dedicated bowlers, according to Marriner. At the time when Weir and Marriner first joined the club, it wasn’t at its social peak. The club only had one evening league in the summer, Twilight League, for mixed pairs of men and women to bowl together.  “We started inviting friends for a drink on our patio afterwards, and there our desire to bring a more social vibe back to the club was born,” Marriner said. They wanted to blend the competitive with the social.   Twenty years ago, Weir started Men with Big Bowls, the men’s league. He invited his friends to join, and enshrined a laid back, youthful attitude in the club. (Of the 17 original members, 13 are still playing.) Marriner started Bowl Busters two years later.  “I needed community. I needed to find people,” said Marriner, who worked at home alone. “I grew up  in a family that had church, but that wasn't my place. And I wanted a place that gave me the kind of social support that something like [church] offers.” Now, the club offers that community year round. Men with Big Bowls and Bowl Busters are the men and women’s summer leagues running in June and July. After that, in August and September, the Late Summer League runs. October and November is when the Die Hards start. In the dead of winter, the Frostitutes bowl. Come March and April, it’s time for the Spring Rolls. They host Church of Bowls games on Sundays. They have sunset parties and pajama days.  “What they did was huge,” Ricard said of Marriner and Weir. “Kat and Willie really were the foundation of what this club is.” Marriner, uncomfortable with the praise, said she and Weir were just emulating the welcoming spirit of the original members.  “Community is my driving force,” Marriner said.  It’s Always Lady’s Night When I arrived at the Park, bowlers milled about near the potluck. “Blue Suede Shoes” by Elvis played. Jenny Mears, 49, a sixth-grade science teacher and the co-leader of the Busters greeted me with a hug. She then led me to the food table. I made myself one of the suggested cocktails, a “Jet Lag,” made by Angela Hazeltown, 58, a tax accountant who serves as the league’s unofficial bartender since she worked as a bartender back in college. (“Oh Mama is so tired from her trip…” the paper with the Jet Lag recipe read and then instructed people to mix their favorite clear booze with sparkling juice, lavender syrup brought by a Buster, and mint from Mears’ garden).  After crowning the league frontrunners with Wonder Woman capes, Mears went over the bowl matchups for the night. As the penultimate night of Busters, things were heating up. Only the winningest Buster would get the honor of drinking out of the Bowly Grail, a trophy with a removable cup on the top. On that final night, Mears reminded people, the league would wear white. In typical lawn bowling, wearing white is mandatory. In Bowl Busters, they just wear it on the last night of the league. Sometimes people wear their wedding dresses, Mears said.  Before bowling could begin, Mears went through the other important announcements. She asked the circle of women if there was anything else to discuss. “We want to know who made the tamales,” one Buster said.  “I didn’t make them, I just brought them,” the tamale supplier said.  “Where are they from?” “Grocery Outlet Bargain Market,” she said. The Busters erupted into cheers.  Hazeltown, jetlagged and sipping a Jet Lag, said she appreciated the women-centric aspect of the league.  “When I started seven years ago, I was in a smaller firm and I was used to being around men all the time and I’d come up here and it was a different vibe,” she said. “It was nice to be around women where everyone is just their authentic self.” Like the oblong, funky-shaped bowls, the people who play this sport are also kind of weird.  “It's not an obvious thing to do, and so the people who tend to join this and stick with it are just interesting people,” Kathryn Rathke, a local illustrator said.  When she won the league years ago, Rathke was out of town for the final celebration, so she made masks of her face for her friends to wear as they drank from the Bowly Grail in her honor. Outside the Busters, the lawn bowling club has a longtime member, Roger, who dresses as a pirate.  Individuality is a big part of the game.  “The quirky thing I love about the sport is how subtle differences make huge…changes,” Marriner said. “I like how everybody's [lawn bowling] body language is different, everyone finds their own individuality.”  I learned that firsthand when Alex Vander Bos, 72, taught me to bowl.  On the Bowling Green “It’s like dancing a waltz,” Vander Bos told me as I gripped the bowl with my fingers. We stood on a mat facing down the jack, the small white ball in the middle of the rink that was the target for the bowls. “You're gonna dance,” she said. Standing next to me and going through the motions at the same time, Vander Bos counted me off: “One,” we crouched in a soft squat. “Two,” we stepped our plant foot forward and swung the bowl back. “And, three,” we brought the bowl forward, released it, and followed through with our throwing arms.  I watched my bowl stutter across the green.  “You had it pretty good,” Vander Bos said. “You want to be a little smoother. You're kind of pulling it over there.” She gestured to a place that was not where the jack was.  We did it again, and again. One, two, three. Release. “That was much better, but you're still kind of off balance,” she coached. “You don't want to look at the jack.” I had to look past the jack and keep my body pointed toward where I wanted the bowl to go.  Finally, I released the bowl, aiming it hopefully in the right place, and it rolled—albeit slowly—in the right direction. We celebrated.  “It's very technical,” Vander Bos said. “That’s the cool part about it—it's just a freaking amazing game.”  Vander Bos started playing in 2009. She’d gotten one taste of lawn bowling and became so dedicated she booked herself private lessons in Vancouver, B.C. which she commuted to from the Seattle area  “every single weekend to get better,” she said. She’s been to the Bowls USA National Championships four times. Now, Vander Bos, who’s headed to nationals in Milwaukee this month, spends most of her time at Bowl Busters coaching the women.  “I made a commitment to these guys and I've been coaching them for three years,” Vander Bos said of the Busters. When she first joined the club, all of the leagues were segregated by gender. Now, in other leagues, men and women can compete together.  “Coaching these women is really awesome and we're getting more and more [participating in] tournaments,” she said. “I have this thing for the women—It's like, I don't want them to feel like they’re somehow not good.” When Marriner first started the league, fewer than 20 women participated. Now, 18 years later, there are around 70 Bowl Busters.  White Out  On the last night of Busters, I wore white. So did the rest of the Busters: teachers, bus drivers, restaurateurs, roller derby players, artists, consultants, psychoanalysts, etc. The competition for the Bowly Grail was on, yet the main draw was the time together. We sipped Moscow Mules and ate more pasta salad.  Mears awarded standout league members with socks she personally picked out for them from The Sock Monster in Wallingford. Then, as is Buster tradition, she serenaded them with a lawn bowling parody song. This time it was a parody of “If I Could Turn Back Time” by Cher. Tears stung my eyes. What the hell? I loved these people. I marveled at this community of women and the effort they put in for each other: (mostly) homemade food and drinks, hand-selected playlists (theme: I Hear Dead People), and helping each other learn the sport.  As I’ve gotten older, I’ve cherished the friendships I have with other women more and more. I’m holding strong to the friends I made when I first came to Seattle, women who allowed me to fully be myself. Our lives are changing now with marriages on the horizon and cross-country moves in the recent past, so it will take effort and care to keep each other in our lives. When I look at the Busters, I see the way they’ve built a space for those kinds of relationships to flourish.  And their love for each other just barely rivaled their love for this place.  “When I moved here to Beacon Hill about 27 years ago, I wasn't familiar with it,” Marriner told me as we looked out at the sunset-kissed skyline. “I walked up to Jefferson Park and I saw that view of the Olympic Mountains and Elliott Bay and the sunset and this breeze that blows on a warm summer day, and I think it's a magical place. I love being reminded all the time that I live in a really beautiful place. So to me, this is it. This is something to cherish about living here in Seattle.” She waited for a beat and, deadpan, said, “Don’t tell anyone where it is.”