PINS Mechanical: Dublin, OH

This past weekend, @mrsbozz and I travelled from central Michigan down to Columbus, OH to watch our niece play softball with her travel team. Friday night, that same niece was busy with her friends doing the things that teenagers do on Friday nights in the fall. Highschool football games, late night food, things like that.

That left us adults to fend for ourselves.

After a decent dinner at a place I will cover in a later post, we were looking for a way to "extend" our evening. That led us to Pins Mechanical in the town of Dublin, OH which is a suburb of Columbus.

Pins sits in a section of Dublin along the Scioto river that has recently seen a huge growth boom lately. In the past ten years they have developed all along the river with high end entertainment and living spaces. I believe it is now referred to as the "North Market" area, but I could be wrong.

It's actually a really cool scene and you could easily spend an evening or two here. They shut down the streets in the summer and hold open air concerts. Likewise, just across the street is a large park where you can hang out and relax. If you have the right kind of glass, you can carry alcohol around with you as well. Finally, if you want, there is a pedestrian bridge across the river that takes you to a whole different section of Dublin with even more options for food and entertainment.

Let me get this out of the way first, Pins is absolutely massive. It easily takes up a full city block from front to back and side to side. There are so many different areas of this place, that I don't think we even saw half of them.

There are at least three or four different bars in the establishment as well as an old school pizza parlor and plenty of drinks to be had. During our visit, there were a fair number of kids running around, but after 9:00 PM Pins becomes exclusively 21 and over only.

My brother in law was telling us that they have a mandatory 25% gratuity on your bill and while many of us in the US are feeling tip fatigue, in this case, it makes a lot of sense. Once you open your tab, they can access it at any of the bars in the place, so you could be bouncing back and forth from end to end. The must just pool all the tips at the end of the night and split them. I think that's probably the fairest way to do it.

They also have a large outdoor area with tables and games for you to enjoy.

Back in one of the corners they had the giant Light Brite that you see in the photo above. A ground of young folks made the creation saying "pond". It wasn't long after they moved away that another group started tearing it apart and making their own creation.

Pins also has pinball machines and arcade games. The arcade games are all free to play, but I am not sure about the pinball. I had to spend a little bit of time at the Defender game as well as the Street Fighter II machine. It turns out I am not nearly as good as I used to be at any of these games!

With a name like Pins Mechanical, you had to figure that bowling came into play at some point. In this case, it's a variation on bowling called "Duck Pin Bowling". The name comes from the smaller size of the pins and how they look like ducks flying when you hit them with the ball.

If you look at the photo above, you can see that the pins are suspended by wires and after each ball they pull the pins up and reset the ones that were still standing. Everything in duck pin bowling is about 1/4 the size of what you are used to with regular bowling.

I thought @gooddream might get a kick out of this though given his expat bowling league he has over in Vietnam.

With our names all entered, it was time to get started with the game. I think we paid about $40 total for the four of us to play a single game and as you can see, we were on lane lucky number 7. Unlike regular bowling, there is really no decorum with duck pin bowling. No oil on the lanes, no holes in the balls, no etiquette, it's basically just a free for all.

I started off pretty good, but I'll be danged if my brother in law who isn't a fan of bowling was soon kicking my butt. In fact, back when he was a sports writer, he wrote an article about how bowling isn't a sport, it's an activity. He actually got death threats and racial slurs thrown his way it upset people so much.

I tried to bowl as if it were real bowling and it just wasn't happening. The balls don't move the same or do the same things with duck pin bowling that you would expect. With no oil to slide the ball and pins around, it's more about brute force and just trying to hit some random sweet spot.

The score might look a bit funky to people who are familiar with the game because in duck pin bowling you get three rolls of the ball per frame. It was a bit odd at first, but we soon got used to it. @mrsbozz was the only player lucky enough to pick up her spare in the 10th frame and get an extra ball at the end. Absolutely none of us got a strike. Due to the pins being attached with wires, they don't bounce around the same way they normally would if they were real pins.

My wife insisted that I get a photo of the end of game screen. She thought it was quite funny. I tend to agree with her. As you can see, I ended with a score of 85. I don't think that's too bad for my first time at this style of bowling. @mrsbozz ended up with a respectable 79, and that is my brother in law and sister in law in the 3 and 4 sports.

After bowling, I found my way over to the Skeeball area for a couple of rounds of that game. The fact that all of these games are free is pretty awesome. They probably make more than enough in drinks to cover it I am sure.

I'm really glad we decided to make the stop at Pins Mechanical. It's a really cool place and they have a whole lot of different areas to explore. If you get bored of all the games, they also have couches and various seating areas where you can just hang out and watch sports too.

I should point out, that Pins appears to be a regional chain in the midwest US. If you get a chance to visit one of the 9 locations in the US, I highly recommend you check it out!

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