McCorvey’s Bowling World (the newest entry to the growing list of online pro shops on this blog), unlike a lot of online pro shops, has brick & mortar locations in Alabama, but the fact that they do business online is why their link has been added. Of course, they have a page of deals, and purchases of “Pink Ribbon” items this month will help support breast cancer research.

This was another one that I found on Facebook, if anyone’s wondering.

I learned of the New England Classic tournament at Brattleboro Bowl in Vermont over the summer, and, after finding the bowling center’s page for the tournament, waited until information was available for the next tournament, which starts next month and runs through mid-December, to add it to the “Local/New England” sidebar links list. I also linked it on the Facebook page as New England bowling news, if anyone wants to look there. 🙂

Facebook has yielded yet another online pro shop, BowlersDream.com, the link to which is now in the sidebar in the “Online Pro Shops” category. I saw the site has a page of closeouts, so you might check there often for a possible deal.

I found out via the IBMA’s Facebook group that a new bowling e-zine, Bowling Illustrated, has been launched. It appears it will be a quarterly publication (first issue is dated Fall 2016), and the first issue features articles on women’s bowling legend Paula Vidad and PBA Tour winner Eric Forkel. As with all of the bowling e-publications that I know about, the link is in the “Bowling Media” sidebar list.

I’ve been told on my blog host’s support forums that I’d been using a 10 year old fixed-width theme. With my question on the forums having to do with the appearance of Facebook posts here, I’ve had to change to a more updated theme, and the P2 theme seems to suit my current needs. The header graphic is smaller and now appears at the top of the sidebar, but the sidebar is still visible in all posts and pages. More importantly, full Facebook posts do show. Let me know on Facebook how you like it.

I was informed yesterday that the Junior Bowling Sport Challenge has obtained the jbscallstars.com domain name for its website, and the link in the sidebar has been updated accordingly. The calendar entry for the Westgate tournament in October may need to be updated, as well.

I saw Steve Curless, a Facebook user apparently friends with Jeff Richgels, post an article from his blog, Steve’s Bowling Blog, as a comment to one of Riggs’ articles, and, since I’m always looking for bowling blogs to link to, I added his to the blogroll.

Steve’s blog also led to another discovery: ActionBowling.com, which is a site all about the colorful action bowling scene in New York in the 1950s and 1960s. Being a student of bowling history, I thought the site worth a link, and it’s in my “Bowling Sites” catch-all, even though a web request to just the domain redirects to the blog.

While I was still bowling my summer league, I’d have to do the transition of league-related links in the “Author’s links” sidebar category, including my BowlSK league indexes and spreadsheet logs, twice a year, but, not bowling summer this year, the transition to the winter was made much easier, as I could just paste the new URLs to everything in my links settings rather than delete summer league links. The BowlSK indexes and spreadsheet logs don’t really have anything right now, but I did set them up for the new season, which begins tonight for my Wednesday night league. The bracket results log will still be the old one, and that won’t be done until brackets in my Wednesday night league start back up in Week 4 (assuming I still get in brackets). Finally, I’m assuming the links to the league standings won’t change, so that’s another way being a winter-only bowler is easier.

I’m very proud as a New England bowler to report that the website for the Junior Bowling Sport Challenge, Sharon Evans’ highly successful Junior Gold qualifying program, is now live and linked in the “Local/New England” sidebar list. Sharon’s still working on stuff, but most of it is functional. 🙂

EDIT: Forgot to do it when first posted, but the site is also now linked in this post, for those who might be viewing the post through the Facebook share.

Facebook “sponsorship” has yielded another bowling jersey company, Rift Apparel, the link to which is in the “Other Equipment/Apparel” sidebar list. Like the two linked earlier this week, they can do custom jerseys, and Rift touts that they like the college team business, so I hope a couple of my friends (but really just the one that I know is actually online) see this.

This is going to seem like an afterthought with the recent housekeeping and additions, but I’d seen the BowlerX online pro shop on Facebook, as well, and they’ve now been added to the sidebar in the “Online Pro Shops” category.

I do try to have all of the USBC-approved ball manufacturer sites linked in the sidebar, and a new one added today is Moxy Bowling, which I found in a “sponsored” Facebook post by Bowlerstore.com, whose link has also been added.

I did also use the opportunity to do “housekeeping” on the equipment-related sites, removing links that appeared to be dead as well as changing those that appeared to have been moved. Part of the “housekeeping” was that the online pro shops had outgrown placement in the (newly renamed) “Other Equipment/Apparel” list, and links to online pro shops are now in their own category.

Always trying to improve the site. 🙂

I’ve wanted to do it for a while, but, finally, I got links to two of the most popular bowling shirt makers, High 5 Gear and Logo Infusion, into the sidebar. Both can do custom bowling shirts, and High 5 Gear is also the PBA’s official bowling shirt company, so you can find replica jerseys for most of the PBA’s stars there. The links are in the renamed “Other Equipment/Apparel” listing.

I figured that now that I’m covering other New England bowling news on Facebook, I should get the New England state associations linked in the sidebar (in the “Local/New England” category). I already had the ones for Massachusetts and Rhode Island, so added are Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. As an aside, it appeared that Massachusetts was the only New England state for which the women’s and youth associations aren’t merged with the men, so I will be revisiting the Massachusetts links in 2018, by which time the associations will be merged, as voted on by the USBC Convention in April.

With my commitment to cover more bowling elsewhere in New England on Facebook, I’ll be posting about Bryan Rhodes’ Amateur Experience Series (AXS) in Rhode Island more, and the link to the AXS web page is now in the “Local/New England” sidebar category. 🙂

I’m always looking for interesting new bowling content to link to, and I came across Storm/Roto staffer Keven Williams’ YouTube channel. It’s a ball review channel, but a pretty interesting one, as he’s recently started using footage from a GoPro drone over the lanes in his videos. The different take on reviews made it worth a link in the sidebar, under the “Bowling Streaming/Videos” category.

Formally logging some sidebar tweaks I’ve done, with two items:

1. The widget with the Facebook logo now indicates that more (New England bowling) coverage will be found on the Facebook page in the widget title.
2. I removed the full event calendar link from the “Local/New England” links list, and have given the link its own widget, which is located above the “Upcoming Events” widget, which now also indicates that links in events are clickable in the full event calendar. Hopefully, this widget combination makes the calendar more accessible to those interested. 🙂

A visitor who has The Bowling Universe online pro shop alerted me to a couple of dead links, and one is actually not dead, but changed: TalkTenpin.net has been partnering with Dutch Bowling TV for their streaming. Dutch Bowling TV is sometimes Dutch language, which was why I’ve been hesitant to add them, but TalkTenpin.net’s webmaster told me that Dutch Bowling TV is always English-language when TalkTenpin.net partners with them. The changed link in the sidebar (under the “Bowling Streaming/Videos” sidebar category) reflects the partnership in the listing. Also, while I was talking to TalkTenpin.net’s webmaster, he told me they’re going to have next week’s Weber Cup on Facebook Live, so you might want to “Like” their Facebook page for notifications.

As for The Bowling Universe, they do have some helpful guides on the site, so I did add their link in the “Other Equipment Sites” pro shop catch-all.

I’ve actually been involved with the page for a few months, but I’ve been meaning to add the new Southeastern New England Bowling Tournaments page on Facebook to the sidebar. Basically, it’s a “catch-all” page for posting any bowling tournament in the region. I’ve been trying to get Facebook events for tournaments at Westgate on the page, and a lot of the Rhode Island tournaments get posted, if you’re considering bowling down there. It’s definitely worth a link in the “Local/New England” category. 🙂

I recently found the websites of three tournaments that New England bowlers compete in every year, the Champlain International Championship Tournament in Shelburne, VT, the Green Mountain Open in Rutland, VT, and the Lilac City Tournament in Rochester, NY. The first two, being in a New England state, are now in the “Local/New England” sidebar list, while the Lilac City is in the “Tournaments” list where I put tournaments that are outside the New England region. Note: I’ve mentioned the Lilac before in connection to an honor score bowled by Coke league bowler Shawn Hagan.

I saw a Facebook page for Lane Analytics, a company providing an interesting service: Among other things to do with bowling lanes, they can generate a topographical map of every lane in a bowling center. I think I’ve seen on their Facebook page that they were at the National Bowling Stadium ahead of the USBC Open Championships, so they may have “worked their magic” there. They do have a website, of course, and it’s in the sidebar in the “catch-all” Bowling Sites category.

Another IBMA board member I’ve been in recent contact with is Brian Hirsch, based out of the Phoenix, AZ area, and I saw that he has a blog, The Striking Spotlight, that I’ve added a link for to the blogroll. Brian tends to only post to the blog once a month, but his March post is currently available.

It appears that the Senior E. Mass. Bowlers Association is finally getting their Internet presence together, and Eric Lam, the SEMBA tournament director, gave me the link to their new website, which is now in the “Local/New England” sidebar list. Hopefully, the new presence allows them to gain a few more members.

Photographer Kevin Hong, an IBMA member who posts occasionally to their Facebook group, started out photographing vintage and historic bowling centers throughout North America, and has a website, named Vintage Alleys with his photo collection (which also includes candlepin and duckpin centers in New England). He has also begun a bowling history project with his writing, The Bowling History Book. Both links are now in the sidebar, the former in the “Bowling Sites” category and the latter in the blogroll (as the site is structured like a blog), but are also linked here because I wanted to feature the links in my post. Anyone with an interest in bowling’s history should find the sites fascinating views.

It was announced in the IBMA’s Facebook group that the old MichiganBowler.TV site has become BowlStreamTV, and a check on their new site revealed a facelift to accompany it. Hence, an update to the sidebar link was needed; it’s still in the “Bowling Streaming/Videos” links category.

This was a difficult fit, but the reason the link for Rolltech is in the “Tournaments” sidebar list is this: If you cross bowling with daily fantasy sports, you’d likely get Rolltech’s Action Bowling, in which you can use your league scores to compete with bowlers all over the country for real money. In that sense, it’s like Virtual Tournaments, which is also linked, but Rolltech has a dedicated mobile app for Action Bowling, as well as apps to track your other bowling stats. They’re a major PBA Tour sponsor this year, so a sidebar listing was needed.

When I entered my BowlSK data for Dec. 6, I forgot to set my ball to the Marvel Pearl, and this has been corrected on the sheet. My apologies for any misinformation.

I had a few items of administrivia this morning, and I shall list each of them below:

• A link of a seasonal nature, that to my Brunswick Mixed bracket results worksheet, has been added with the new season’s worksheet having been started. As always with my spreadsheet content, it is viewable in-browser on Google Sheets.
• Unfortunately, a link I’ve had almost since the beginning of this blog, that to the People’s Tournament, has been removed with the People’s Tournament no longer active in the area and the status of the website in question. I’m sure Sherm Cowan will tell me if he starts running tournaments again.
• Finally, with Jeff Richgels’ The 11th Frame having been converted to a subscription blog, I’ve had to modify the RSS widget for that feed to note that the full text of articles is available by subscription. You have to “#BuytheBlog” now, but Jeff is hoping he can do more with the blog once income is coming in from it. I’m hoping to subscribe myself soon.