Zoo Lake Bowls Club Fire: A way to stay relevant

The scene is quiet, nothing unusual for Zoo Lake’s Bowls club. The smell of wood smoke and disaster, however, is something new. Burnt to the ground, the brick frame standing wrapped in black plastic, a postmortem dignity to hide its insides.

Or lack thereof.

Wood makes for good fuel. On the 1st of October the old bar didn’t burn; it went up in a fucking inferno. A woodfired oven that killed itself, pity that it didn’t take the brand-spanking-new padel court a few paces around the back of the property down with it.

A composition of fake-grass, plexiglass and gentrification; it’s a wonder it didn’t melt.

A shame.

No worse than burning down weeks before a grand reopening— good ol’ Bowls club was remodelling; the owner invested just north of a million rand into making the place pretty.

Hope he has insurance.

Either way it’s tough luck.

Heartbreaking really.

So I’m told.

I’ve lived in the area all my life and I think I visited the location twice. I’ll give them props though, on both occasions I was able to hear myself think and the bartenders didn’t sneer at my sobriety as many others have wanted to do. Testimony from friends, colleagues and family yielded similar reports:

“It was nice.”
“The food was edible.”
“It was affordable.”
“I liked going there many many many years ago.”

Online sentiment echoes this: that it was a nice place to go to and it is a shame that the opportunity to revisit the establishment is gone. Of course, the many many many years prior to the place going up in smoke yielded little desire from old patrons to revisit.

The cause?

Unknown.

Maybe it was a kitchen fire.

The doped-out car guard I limp wristedly interviewed at the scene speculated as much.

The countless news-columns reported similarly while shoehorning in their sympathies for the owner who lost everything and some.

It’s all very exciting when something dead dies and people (me), vultures (also me) get to pick at the detritus to Frankenstein a story out of someone’s personal loss.

But there isn’t much apart from baseless conspiracies…

THEY BURNT IT DOWN ON PURPOSE!
INSURANCE FRAUD INSURANCE FRAUD!

Business was down
He had an out

HE TOOK IT!

Drama! Flashes…fire even. How exciting the fanciful machinations of a person you don’t know can be.

Fantasy and anecdotal evidence of the spot’s fading relevance aside, the owner was in an impossible position.

Change with the times or die.

He chose the former, but the kitchen fire spoke otherwise.

Without any malice I think it’s better that way. A Viking funeral over a slow drawn-out death. Be it by fading away or losing your identity in attempts to polish old shit till it shines.

The phrase goes that such a feat is impossible, whoever came up with Padel proved that you need only go about it differently: Construct with shit and put it in every available or unavailable space; leave out in the sun and by some estimation it will shine.

Definitely better for the old bar to go up in flames than have to cater to thirty-something corporates swinging over-priced plastic at a tennis ball in what is effectively a solar oven.

But it shines.
So it’s good.

That’s nothing new for Zoo Lake, the place is filled with shiny stuff. The fact that it’s litter makes no difference, in fact, it makes it all the better. It’s job creation for waste pickers. The content of their life doesn’t matter and statements like ‘indicative of societal rot’ are too much to cover in what is effectively a hate letter to something that never wronged me.

Better than fake sympathies.

A dumping ground we call public space and a shiny padel court to mark the limits of its grave. Another dead amongst a dying breed:

A bar that doesn’t skull-fuck your brain with loud music.

Bowls club was good enough to be remembered, not enough to be frequented.

Something something rest now… something something we have the watch… something something… I’ll see you in Valhalla.

Though I fucking hope not.