St. Patty's Schnitzel Soul Train

I meant to finish this entry last weekend, in honor of St. Patrick and our love for all things Irish. The short story is that me and D went bowling and ate German food in Alameda on Saturday night with some friends. Not your traditional corned beef and cabbage, green beer pukefest, but I'm not 22 anymore, and we did wear these festively flattering leprechaun hats Damian's mom had sent us (just long enough for the picture), so it all worked out.

It started off innocently enough at Speisekammer, a pretty decent German restaurant in Alameda, but not quite up to par with Suppenkuche, here in SF. The potato pancakes were excellent, nice and crispy, and my Jagerschnitzel (pork cutlet with mushroom sauce) gave me the special energy I was gonna need to showcase my bowling prowess at the alley. My entree came with some kind of pickled beet, carrot and cabbage side salad, which was tasty enough but mostly irrelevant with that big plate of sauced-up pork and spaetzel in front of me. There was an excellent-sounding band called the Frisky Frolics playing in the front room, featuring such classic German instruments as the ukelele, kazoo and clarinet. Anyway, it sounded good and added to the lively German beer hall vibe.

But we had bigger schweinebraten to fry up the street at the AMF bowling alley where we learned how the players in Alameda thug it up on Saturday night at Xtreme Bowl. Seriously. I might try and "talk hip hop" every now and then for dramatic effect here in my tiny blogosphere, but our bowling adventure in Alameda was the real deal. The rizzle dizzle. The music was an urban retrospective of great bowling jams from Tyrese to Tupac, Mary J to Mobb Deep. Who knew that the ten-pin tango was bigger than my white bread history of league-bowling uncles and aunts?? I felt like I was in a hip hop video, and we were the token funny white people. Definitely the minority, but once we got all fixed up with two lanes, and our very own "lane attendant" named Lakeesha, we lost ourselves in the bass-thumping urban vibe and D ended up flamboasting with a very respectable high score of 158 for the night. Erin go bragh!