Mid-winter Skee Ball

Every once in a while I start craving summery type things in the middle of winter. Nothing says summer to me more than boardwalk arcades, and nothing says boardwalk arcades like skee-ball and mini-golf. I couldn't find any mid-winter mini-golf, but I did find skee-ball and rare books. Yes, only in Roslindale, MA! The place is called Pazzo Books and aparently pazzo means "crazy" in Italian. This place lived up to the name! They had a great selection of used and rare books, some new graphic novels, coffee and hot cocoa and SKEE-BALL! It was wonderful. The Skee-Ball was a little smaller than the standard boardwalk arcade variety and fit into the basement of the bookstore, wedged into the bargain book section:


Unfortunately for Cole, Max and Tim, Sylvie and I had some pretty good games. I set the bar a little higher with 250 as my high score, and Sylvie tied the younger competition with a high of 210. Just to make it clear, Sylvie and I were the only people playing today, Cole, Max and Tim just left their scores on the chalk board:


After a few good games of Skee-Ball and some good book browsing we headed out of Roslindale in search of fried pickles. We headed to a neighborhood near school where we used to get fried pickles at a bar that has since closed, but we were hoping for the best. We struck out at multiple places, and finally decided to settle for fried zucchini. After realizing that the batter that was used to fry the zucchini was very similar to the batter used to fry pickles, we went out on a limb and decided to ask our server if they might be able to fry some pickles. He looked at us like we were crazy, but his fellow server said they should try it out (they weren't very crowded). So a few minutes later and plate with 3 fried pickle spears showed up and we were so excited. They were really good and I think we convinced the waiters to try it out themselves on their next break.


If you, dear reader, have not had the pleasure of having fried pickles, I'll say it's worth it at least once. You can decide for yourself. As for the Skee-Ball in a rare book store, I'll say it's worth it more than once. I think I'll find myself back there sometime soon, possibly to challenge my friend Mark who lives in Roslindale... Mark, are you ready for a Skee-Ball throwdown?