Playdium Bowling Center Ballcaps

Some things deserve to be immortalized. If you don't think that the Playdium is one of those things, we can never be friends.

There are a whole bunch of websites that have already compiled a more thorough history of it than I ever could (like this one, from Friends of Albany History), so I won't bother. Suffice it to say that the Playdium will always hold a special place in my heart, so much so that I felt it was necessary to commemorate. Rather than turn this into a blog post about feelings and memories though, I thought it might be a good idea to share the thought process behind the design of this one. It's nothing earth-shattering, but it might be able to make you say "oh yeah... neat."

  • The letter "P" came from the ginormous sign on the front of the building, as you can see in the photo above. I love that script. Fun fact: There used to be a large bowling pin below the "m." Unfortunately, that part of the sign was low enough that some shitbag college student was able to jump up and rip it right off of the wall many years ago. What a cool dude.

  • I went with gray wool for the crown of the cap because regardless of how much light was coming through that glass block wall, it always just kind of looked... gray. Sometimes dark gray, sometimes light gray, but always gray. 

  • If the gray crown was intended to represent the glass block wall on the front of the building, I thought it would make sense to do the visor black for the parking lot. I know I know, friggin brilliant. 

  • In the final days of the Playdium, before the contents were auctioned off, I was fortunate enough to be able to purchase a handful of gems from inside (and outside). One of them was the sign from The Bear's Den, which in my opinion wins the prize for greatest bar that has ever or will ever exist. Hands down, no contest. Anyways, having the actual sign itself for reference, I recreated the martini glass from it and put it on the side of the cap. Putting it on the left side was a no-brainer, since that's where it was in relation to the actual Playdium sign.

Now that I typed that all out, it feels kind of self-explanatory and not worth sharing... but I already did it so whatever. You should buy one. Great.


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