Petanque courts at Pit Stop, Brooklyn

Since we're talking about Laurent with the yellow shoes (and the yellow hat) , we should mention that he has 4 petanque courts in the terrace garden behind his restaurant. This may not be the right season, but do keep it in mind for the spring: good food, cold drinks, and a couple of rounds of petanque in between.










Pit Stop recently got a nice write up in New York Press.
The place is loaded with Formula 1 memorabilia, Laurent's other hobby.
Pit Stop
127 Columbia St. (waterfront)
Brooklyn, NY
718-875-4664

Bastille Day petanque tournaments

Going through our picture archives I found this colorful poster of our last Bastille Day Tournament in Brooklyn.
What a day! 135 triplet teams, on a limited amount of courts, in a one-day competition. Things got inevitably delayed to the extent that unfortunately we had to stop the final game halfway under pressure from the police department: normal trafic and bus routes had to be restored, "now"!

Jack from BarTabac was at the Miami Open: actually he came second in the consolante with his friend Laurent Brunacci (the one with the bright yellow shoes..) from Pit Stop Cafe in Brooklyn.
We all agreed that in 2006 we (a) have to start earlier, and (b) need a lot more courts.

Miami New Times

Here's a link to the article the Miami New Times - Miami's prominent and omnipresent free newspaper - wrote to announce our tournament. I don't recall having mentioned Mexico as a participating country; I did mention France...
Oh well, the main thing is that they wrote about it, for which we are very grateful. It attracted several curious (and thirsty) onlookers.

By the way, in the States we are used to people referring to petanque as "French bocce", bocce being the better known of the two. In New Zealand it's the other way round: in this article about the Special Olympics being held in Christchurch this week, the writer describes bocce as "Italian petanque".

La Boule NY teams

Of all the American clubs that flew in for the Open, La Boule New Yorkaise was represented with the highest number of participants: 7 full teams and 4 partial teams.
Here's an almost complete group picture with Xavier & Ray, Patrick & Matthias (from Karlsruhe, Germany), Christophe & Ernesto, Richard & Nicholas, Franck & Eric, Lucien & Guy, Jean-Pierre and Mamary.
Missing a.o. is Alec who came second with Canadian teammate Yacob.