Story and photos by Johnny Puke

Back in 2002, I was doing some touring with Alkaline Trio. They began to tell me about a cool gig they were doing in Las Vegas that winter, a ,unk rock bowling tournament for lifers and professional punks put on by the Stern Brothers from Youth Brigade and BYO Records. It sounded as crazy as it ended up being when I finally decided to go, by myself, at the last minute on a fun-seeking whim. It ended up being a wild punk bacchanalia, a no-rules weekend for people I mostly knew, from all over the country...with some bowling.
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Back in those days and for many years after, one of the requirements to register a bowling team was that the company your team represented be involved professionally in punk rock in some way, be they a band, booking agency, label, or fanzine. When I arrived home from this life-affirming weekend I immediately put in a call to our humble editor Jim Testa to tell him this was something we, as a fanzine, had to get involved with; the very next year The Jersey Beaters Bowling Team participated, as we have every year including this, our 13th year. I know I speak for Jim as well when I say that this annual bowling tournament has become special to us in so many ways, from the amazing shows we have seen, friends we have made, to say nothing of a guaranteed weekend once a year where we know we will hang out together, in the glorious environs of Sin City. If you visit Jim in New Jersey you will see a glorious 4th place trophy displayed and if you visit me in South Carolina you can see our 3rd place trophy. Needless to say, Punk Rock Bowling (or "PRB") has become a cherished tradition for the Jersey Beat crew.

PRE GAME- THURSDAY MAY 21
Jim is no stranger to arriving a day early to Las Vegas before the start of the actual tournament weekend, just as my tradition became staying a day after, mostly because flights back to South Carolina are red-eyes that leave around midnight. Back in the old days, the BYO boys would hold a poker tournament on the day before the tourney start and Jim was always there, but these days he comes early to lower the airfare on Memorial Day weekend. I came early this year to attend my good friend Timmy LILLINGTON's wedding at The Venetian so Jim and I got to hang out that evening, gamble a little, and catch a dinner together. I had always heard good things about Downtown's Nacho Daddy so we had dinner there, Jim devouring a great fajita plate and me doing my best to tackle a mountain of shrimp nachos made with jalapeno corn chips. You can get a real (dead) scorpion in any shot at this place too for an extra $3. Jim and I planned to go see SQUIRTGUN's reunion show later that night so we skipped the scorpions.

Vegas evenings will go as planned and Jim knew his weary bones wouldn't make it till SQUIRTGUN's late night stage time so he bowed out. Then all the folks from ME FIRST AND THE GIMME GIMMES got out of their rehearsal for their Friday night show and I began to get texts like "Meet us for 'a drink." Needless to say, I never made the SQUIRTGUN show and the GIMMES and I shut down two different bars at The Plaza Hotel before we all left in a haze. By a weird turn of events I ended up with LAGWAGON'S Dave Raun's phone at the end of the night and texted some friends of Dave's whose numbers I had in my phone to let him know I had it, so he wouldn't worry. One of these friends was Joey Cape.



FRIDAY MAY 22nd-LET"S START THIS OFF WITH A BANG
The next morning I get a text from Joey which was one of those "Share Contact" things you do on Iphones when you send a friend another friend's number. It was Dave Raun's. I had Dave's phone in front of me so I texted Joey that. He replied " Yeah, but you can tell him and he'll come to you." Not long after that I began to get GIMMES related texts on Dave's phone in a group ring that included all the band members and my buddy Kent, their manager. Joey texts the group, which for this one show included no less than half of BAD RELIGION (Jay and Brian), "I think we should open with 'Survive' not sure if we did that last time we were in Vegas". Since Joey didn't really seem to grasp that I had Dave's phone, I set to fucking with him and immediately texted him from my phone, "Hey buddy, I really hope you guys open with 'Survive' tonight, that would be rad"

Text immediately goes out to all the BAD RELIGION and ME FIRST guys from Joey, "Johnny Puke wants us to open with 'Survive'. By now I am in hysterics. It's like ten in the morning and I know some of the people involved are out golfing, either getting the joke or not that I not only had a specific request that evening, but also the particular order in which it was to be played.

Soon our team-mate and my room-mate Tia arrived with our friend Snoozy, having just come from the airport. As I was telling them the fun I was having with The GIMMES texts, we suddenly saw two painters or window washers repel down the side of our building at The D Hotel. We were on the 20th floor, so it was kind of unusual when Tia screeched to alert us of their presence. Only moments later we experienced what we weren't immediately aware was a 5.4 earthquake. Tia yelled "Why are they shaking the building?!" and Snoozy and I laughed even while the ground shook 20 floors below us. It lasted long enough for me to point out how the rumbling felt different while one was standing vs. sitting on the beds. At one point our window's view seemed to bend over and snap back. It was thrilling, only later when we really knew what it was for sure were we kinda terrified.

Jersey Beaters, Punk Rock Defeaters (well, we'll get 'em next year)


The afternoon was spent waiting in lines for our team souvenir posters, or in Tia's case to enter the PRB poker tourney, which she did not prosper in this year. Snoozy and I took in The Golden Nugget's "Disturbing The Peace" photo exhibit which included some great images of The Germs, Lydia Lunch and Dead Kennedys by photographers like Mad Marc Rude and Ed Colver.

These days the Friday night before the bowling actually starts is filled with "club shows", your choice of 5 or 6 punk shows happening at clubs of various sizes all within walking distance of downtown Vegas. This particular night our friend Snoozy went off to see The AGGROCATS, a mixed ska band featuring members of HEPCAT and THE AGGROLITES. Other shows available to PRB attendees that night included 7 SECONDS, G.B.H., and The HUMPERS. Of course Tia and I opted for ME FIRST AND THE GIMME GIMMES show which as a bonus featured the second show ever by DAVE HAUSE's (THE LOVED ONES) new Califonia band THE ALLBRIGHTS. After their set of Santa Barbara pop punk, it was time for The GIMME GIMMES set. Tia and I made our way on the satg and stood behind the Dave Raun's drums. After singer Spike Slawson introduced the band, they broke into their opening number. You guessed it, "Survive"!

"First I was afraid, I was petrified........"

SATURDAY MAY 23rd-LET'S GET THE BOWLING STARTED
So Saturday morning the bowling gets started in earnest as almost 1,000 bowlers of all stripes gather at The Golden Nugget downtown to catch buses to shuttle them to four different bowling centers scattered across the Las Vegas valley. More often than not The Jersey Beaters are assigned to the lanes at Sam's Town, a local's casino out on the Boulder Highway and this year was no exception. Back in the early days, the entire tourney was held at Sam's Town, where we all bowled, partied, and stayed in one little isolated property, and it is still a fave of everyone on our team. The Sam's Town lanes are state-of-the-art, this year offering a photo option where each team could post a photo as the background for the scoreboard, as well as each bowler having their own profile pics posted alongside their individual score. Their 56 lanes are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; does your town have anything like that?

This was one of those years where no one on our team was hung-over or throwing up, which traditionally is not good for us, the years we came in 3rd and 4th were years where we were definitely bowling wounded which is a tradition in the spirit of the event. But we all had a pretty good round of three games with our best bowler Andy Peters (former sound man at the legendary Maxwell's in Hoboken) leading our motley gang. The classic conundrum of Saturday night at PRB is you never know if you make the playoffs (which requires you get up early Sunday), until you are butt-assed wasted at one of the many late night shows around town and you get a text from a friend telling you that you have to bowl the next day. It's bittersweet.

Saturday also begins the big outdoor festival, a Warped Tour-style outdoor event which has become the centerpiece of the modern Punk Rock Bowling Tournament lasting about 8 hours daily on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. While normally you would have to think twice about a three day outdoor event in the spring for weather considerations, it only rains an average of three days a year in Las Vegas and in 17 years of PRB there has never been an event cancelled for weather. Each day 7,000 attendees roll into the Zappo's employee parking lot for the festival, which becomes it's own mini-city with lots of food trucks, retail tents, bars and Sani-Cans.

This is the night that sold out the fastest, due in no small part to RANCID announcing they would perform their classic album "And Out Come The Wolves" in it's entirety. My crew rolled in at the end of ANTI-FLAG's energetic but patronizing set and scored drinks and scouted out our spots to catch So Cal punk vets T.S.O.L. While I grew up on classics like "Sounds Of Laughter" and "Peace Thru Power", our team-mate Tia was way too young for all of that but LOVED front-man Jack Grisham's stage presence and really enjoyed the set despite being wholly unfamiliar, which is perhaps the greatest compliment one could give to a 30 year old band.

Ran into a couple well connected friends on a bathroom run and suddenly found myself whisked backstage where I joined pals Zach from RISE AGAINST and Mike from the RIVERBOAT GAMBLERS onstage to watch a fierce set of old school NYHC from SICK OF IT ALL. Next up were THE MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONES followed by RANCID, but my crew had been drinking and bowling all day and we repaired to our hotel to get ready for our late night show, THE WEIRDOS and THE DICKIES!

One of Tia and my favorite memories was seeing THE DICKIES for our second time each one year at PRB where she, Fat Mike and his girlfriend, and I remained in a 4 person arm-lock singing our faces off for the entire 40 minute set. So needless to say we were pumped, but the Weirdos are a real live experience as vocalist John Denney is a truly unique frontman and frankly, a piece of living history. The band played an imperfect, yet enthralling set of classics like "We Got The Neutron Bomb" and "Helium Bar" and our tired, drunken asses were done. We begrudgingly stumbled back to our hotel, The D, knowing were were missing not only The DICKIES but then THE REZILLOS after them. The best laid Punk Rock Bowling plans are always easily waylaid by weariness, drunkenness, or random encounters.

At about 1:30 AM we arrived at the hotel and all began to settle down for sleep. As a sort of goodnight, I suggested from my bed that Tia may want to check the PRB website just to make sure we didn't have to get up in the morning to bowl. Most years we don't make the finals and it's sometimes a sweet blessing; in this case we would all be catching a cool reunion of 88 FINGERS LOUIE poolside at The Plaza, where our pal Lisa from NEW NOISE MAGAZINE had the hotel room that looked straight out on the party from behind the drummer's head. What could be more fun?

Tia checks something on her phone.

In her slurry South Carolina patois she murmers, "We are number 40 out of 250 teams, we have to wake up in the morning.........."

I text Andy and Jim the news, knowing they had had a big dinner, saw PENN & TELLER, and were fast asleep.

SUNDAY MAY 24th- SUNDAY MORNING COMING DOWN
It must have been a shock to Jim and Andy to see the texts this morning when they awoke, telling them they had to get it together early and queue up for the big bus to Sam's Town!

My gang were up early as we had not overextended anything the night before, and completely contrary to a decade and a half tradition with The Jersey Beaters on Playoff Morning, there was no barfing,over-sleeping, or grumping. We opted for an early, and expensive cab ride out to Sam's Town, to ensure we would all get the best of the alley balls, and have some breakfast at Sam's Town's surprisingly remarkable Firelight Buffet. I stole a banana, just to piss Tia off.

The air is always electric on Sunday Playoff morning, people like us who are shocked and confused as to why we are there, people who may have stayed up all night partying, and the few folks who seem to have a competitive edge. One year, when we all bowled at a now demolished property called Castaways's (the largest bowling alley in North America), a nobody Colorado punk band called THE EIGHT BUCKS EXPERIMENT actually had a "ringer" come along with them and bowl a perfect game. Testa and I can both recall the moment where the bowling desk called out the lane, the bowler's name, and his accomplishment and everyone in the huge alley duly applauded. It was only at the Bowler's-Only Awards Party (a sadly missed PRB tradition) that organizer Shawn Stern announced that the PRB folks had investigated (in the nascent internet days) the 8 BUCKS people and had disqualified them for bringing a ringer. He couldn't have laid back a little bit? Who wouldn't suspect someone bowling a PERFECT GAME??.

Now that it's been some days since the event has ended, many may be aware that the final result included a winning team that had cheated their way into the tournament. You can read more about that here. Only once as a team in our many years did we come across a team that only seemed to be there for the money/attention, and that was the last time we made the finals a few years back. I wish I could remember that team's name because they had actually been attending for years and I saw the biggest douche on their team running around this year too.

The ultimate insult of the Playoff morning is the way the brackets are set up. The year we bowled against the pricks (maybe 3 years ago?) we were fourth from the bottom, woke up early, slogged it out to Sam's Town, only to face the aforementioned jocks who were fourth from the top. It was the equivalent of having to walk 2 miles to get beat up by the bully who outweighs you by 30 pounds. This year was better, the team we were against had one "ringer" (just a cool guy who was a league bowler in his hometown) but they were all of varying skill, like us, and at times it seems like we could have beat them. That would have put us "in the money" as the top 32 teams share a pot varying form $100 to $3200, but alas we lost, and high-tailed it back to our hotel to prepare for the afternoon's big festival line up which included on of our faves, THE MUFFS taking the stage at 5 p.m. THE MUFFS delivered a great set of their progressive pop to an appreciative crowd. Tia met one sharply dressed mosh-pitter who turned out to be the son of the actress who played Cindy Brady on "The Brady Bunch", a sort of PRB celebutante calling himself "Mike The Pipe".

[Editor's Note: Johnny is being very kind here. I bowled a miserable 87 in the playoffs and our best player Andy was a little off his game too. But next year!!!!]

As the MUFFS played their set a young couple came onstage and got engaged and while that may seem trite to the jaded among you readers, it was a sweet moment that was felt by hundreds and the happy couple were met with cheers and applause. Next up was JELLO BIAFRA AND THE GUANTANAMO SCHOOL OF MEDICINE and the band was surprisingly tight and JELLO was un-surprisingly preachy and full of himself. It was a good set however and the big surprise of the day was the band closing the set with DEAD KENNEDYS' "Holiday In Cambodia". Out in the merch world part of the festival, JELLO's label Alternative Tentacles hawked gear from JELLO and the many other bands on the label, as well as having a rack where you could buy JELLO's used trousers and dress shirts for $5 a piece.

TURBONEGRO are the new generation's answer to THE VILLAGE PEOPLE. Mixing the cliches of 70's rock and heavy metal, with the style of a 1979 West Village queer bar, the band is amazingly popular with people who don't seem to be confused by any of it. The fans are so loyal that the band changed singers a few years back and no one seemed to bat an eye. This was the band's second PRB appearance, and the crowd noticeably got thinner when they were done. After that The MURDER CITY DEVILS and the much anticipated appearance of THE REFUSED closed out the outdoor show while punks scrambled around downtown Vegas to all the various late night shows.

Most of my friends that night were attending the TIM BARRY/DAVE HAUSE/KEVIN SECONDS show at the Beauty Bar that evening but long ago my room-mates and I had scored tickets to the "SURPRISE GUEST" show that night at The Bunkhouse. I had figured out long before we even arrived in Las Vegas that the surprise was to be THE MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONES,, and my room mates pooped out on me so I set off alone. I arrived in plenty of time to The Bunkhouse as a litte rain earlier in the evening had pushed things back a bit. After a tiresome sound-check openers THE ENGLISH BEAT finally began their set, coming right out of the gates with some of their biggest hits including "Tears Of A Clown", "Ranking Full Stop" and "Twist And Crawl" back-to-back.
Seeing shows by yourself is often a drag, so I did not stay for the BOSSTONES and headed back to the room for some much needed shut-eye.

MONDAY MAY 25th HEAVEN CAN'T LAST FOREVER
The final Monday of PRB is always the slowest, not just in attendance but overall pace. All attendees have sore feet, hangovers, and varying degrees of sleep deprivation. Half of The Jersey Beaters were already home this Monday, but me and my crew were determined to squeeze out the last little bit of fun out of our annual vacation and it began that day with a sing-a-long set by UK skinhead faves THE BUSINESS. A good crowd had formed already for THE BUSINESS set as singer Mickey Fitz led the crowd in singing along with classics like "Smash The Discos" and "Harry May". Next up were SWINGIN' UTTERS follwed by AGNOSTIC FRONT who were a late addition to the PRB line-up.
The closing set of the outdoor festival came in the form of a special set by Boston's THE DROPKICK MURPHYS. Taking a cue from RANCID's set two days earlier, THE MURPHYS set consisted of them playing their classic "Do or Die" album in it's entirety. It seemed to be an inspired set, but the PRB fatigue had really set in on me and my companions, and as it ended at 10:30 p.m. we were already fading. As more ardent punkers set off to the final late-night shows to catch NEGATIVE APPROACH or PUNK ROCK KARAOKE, my friends and I caught a few night-caps at a Sigma Derby machine and reflected on our many experiences over the weekend as we melted into our beds.

As with any real fun event that lots of people enjoy, PRB has it's share of detractors, complainers and grumps and never are they more present than in the age of Facebook. But to the many armchair critics PRB organizer Shawn Stern often gives a quintessentially punk response, "Go start your own festival". Of course few do, and The Sterns are among the best in the business, and Punk Rock Bowling is consistently the best PUNK festival of the year, every year. My team and I never even say things like "If we come back next year" to each other as it is just a given. Now comes the long eleven months where we await our return, seeing old friends, seeing great bands, getting a little crazy and...oh yeah...bowling. Who knows maybe our fifteenth year will be our lucky one.

See you on the lanes in Vegas in 2016!