The Cadieux Café on Detroit's east side is one of only four places outside of Belgium where the sport of feather bowling is played. The sport's objectives are similar to those of bocce or horseshoes or curling or shuffleboard, but its instruments are unique. Feather bowlers hurl heavy wooden balls shaped like cheese wheels down dirt trenches toward a single pigeon feather sticking out of the ground. Whoever's ball lands closest to the feather scores.
In a beautifully written longform piece for ESPN, writer Chris Koentges digs into the idiosyncratic traditions kept alive on the east side of Detroit through the sport of feather bowling, documenting the specialness of the Cadieux Café and its community of feather bowlers and celebrating Steve Gosskie, the unlikely feather bowling champion who passed away last year from cancer.
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ESPN