Kudos to the City of Manhattan Beach, CA for organizing weekly petanque meets, as part of their Older Adults Program.
$200.00 for 6 crappy boules in a box! (click on the image).
On Sept 20, the Ferry County Fairgrounds in Republic, WA will be the setting again for the annual Marius Ciais Memorial tournament.
At one stage a player remarks that Castel will suffer a "nervooze brêkdown", and that there's 400,000 at stake. Even in "anciens francs" not a negligible amount!
Here's a slideshow of the weekend.
Summer is the time for Renaissance festivals all across the country. In most of these, the public watches costumed actors performing.
But in events organized by the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), public and actors are one and the same: from bakers to barbers, from keg makers to Kings. And warriors that fight it out at the annual Pennsic wars at Coopers Lake near Pittsburgh, early August.
Now, what's the link with pétanque?
Obut's new "Sunfolies" and "Tatou" boules, that were presented to the public at La Marseillaise in July, have arrived at our warehouse.
But it's not that simple: the traditional circles that all manufacturers use, are done on a lathe, by cutting circular grooves and removing minute quantities of steel.
Jacques Pépin is not only a world renowned chef but also a passionate petanque player.
The winners, surrounded by representatives of La Marseillaise (the newspaper and the tournament), the Provence Tourist Board, and Ricard. On the far right Roger Roy, the tireless petanque fanatic/organizer, for whom this event was a dream come true. Though numerous sleepless nights prevented him from dreaming much the weeks before...
Last Saturday the walkways in front of Harvard Medical School were once again the scene of the annual petanque tournament organized by Nico & Jeff.
La Boule NY and Bryant Park in the news... again. This time in Manhattan's largest circulation daily. As the caption says: Petanque draws players of all ages daily in Bryant Park.
Every Thursday evening during summer, one can hear boules clanging, high fives and cheers at the Bee and Thistle Inn, in Old Lyme, on route 1 just off I95.
Here you see team captain Jim in action, and below a group photo of the team and a "still life" of boules. Although I think, from the position of the boules, and the finger, that there's the usual conversation going on.
When I saw these nice pictures on Flick'r of a group of young folks playing on the street, I was desperate to find out where it was.
It's just a public parking lot, next to the El train, empty on weeknights and weekends, only a block from where he lives. Although the rocks are kind of outsized, Brandon says it makes for a great shooting practice area, and you can't beat the true Chicago atmosphere nor the short walk.
After the medals we now also got a bunch of trophies in from France.
Dave Barry, America's funniest columnist (and a staunch supporter of petanque), is in Beijing covering the Olympics.
This week a couple of callers asked me what I know/think about the chances for pétanque in the Olympics.
If that was the best approach is subject to debate: although the 4 sports look very similar, was the intention to create a new hybrid sport? With steel balls or wooden balls, round or flat, grass, dirt or articial court, etc..? Or to convince the IOC to accept all 4 different disciplines? Which means 4 distinct setups. I don't know, but either way a complicated task. By the way, the CMSB website is quite incomplete and updated only sporadically.
That said, a good future opportunity may be the newly created Youth Olympic Games, first edition in Singapore 2010. IOC President Jacques Rogge announced these in 2007: watch the video (WMV file). By sheer coincidence - I guess - there's a statue of a lady ready to throw a (big) boule in the background!
Thanks to Kevin, our Brooklynite friend in Kaohsiung, Taiwan for alerting us, with the speed of light, that petanque will be part of the World Games there in July 2009.
August 15-16-17
The "ink" is hardly dry on my post about Seattle, and the virtues of neighborhood petanque (as in how lovely it is that folks can walk to their playground), and here comes the Northwest Examiner (Portland, OR) with an article about La Boule Rose in Jamison Square. The same basic ingredients.
People walk by, get intrigued, one of the players explains the game and bingo. Shaughn and his friends will probably put a boule in your hand even before you had the time to ask a question!
The CDU party of Angela Merkel produced a television ad depicting a boule rolling across a (long!) table and crashing into everything in its path. Meanwhile the voice in the background dramatically sums up all the economic problems Germany is facing, until Frau Merkel stops the boule.
SPD, the party of incumbent Gerhard Schröder, made a parody ad showing a woman tossing a boule back & forth from one hand to the other, until... she drops it. While the commentator reels off a list of Mrs Merkel's alleged flip-flops on issues.
Shortly after the NY Times, now the Financial Times reports about petanque in Bryant Park.
The other day I got a call from a charming young lady in NY asking if I had Pierrot's phone number. She was wondering if she had forgotten her camera at the park after taking a lesson from him.
Here are some pictures I took of some locals tossing boules just an hour ago. The Bouledrome is in the quiet Eastlake neighborhood of Seattle which is adjacent to downtown (as you can see from the Space Needle in the background in one of the pictures). At the same time, the lake is actually designated as an ‘airport’ as there is a seaplane terminal at the south end and the planes come and go, dodging boats along the way, taking people up north to the San Juan Islands and beyond. The Bouledrome is on a street with houseboats on the water side and is directly across the lake from the houseboat that appeared in Sleepless in Seattle. And as you can see, if you’re sober enough you can go for a swim after a hot game of Petanque. Lastly, the Bouledrome sits just one block from the historic first flight of a Boeing plane (it was a seaplane) 92 years ago.
This is exactly the type of public play area I like: right smack in the middle of a neighborhood, almost on a street, so players can walk over there, any time it suits them, and meet other neighbors. And make new friends.
