There are two other players at the opposite end of our court and another four players on the courts to our right and left. I can feel the pressure of the other players' eyes on me, watching me as I've been watching all of them effortlessly push discs down toward us that gently come to a stop for a score.
In desperation, I fling my disc hard at Linna's discs -- and, of course, I miss them completely. But worse than that, I end up in the Ten Off -- the dreaded space that shufflers call "the kitchen." Shuffleboard is one of the few sports in which you can actually go backwards in score. They take off 10 points, and now I am in negative numbers. Linna has beaten me 83 to minus-10. This is the third game of the day in which I have put up a negative score.
Pinellas Park shuffleboarder Stan Budin.
(Kyoko Hamada)
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After the game, Linna says: "This is a hard game to play if you're not retired. It's a shame, too, because it would be such a good sport for young people like you." Linna tells me that she's really just learning the game herself, even though she's been living in St. Petersburg for 40 years. "When I told my friends I was playing shuffleboard, they said: 'You can't do that. That sport is for old people!'"
The other players convene to offer solace and advice. "You're gonna make one heck of a player," one man tells me, "but you've got to stop poking and follow through."
"They should teach this sport in grade schools," says Roy Armstrong, who has been playing at the top end of our court, offering me tips on strategies I don't yet fully understand, shots with names such as the Tampa Hide and the St. Pete Pilot. "They say it takes eight to 10 years to master this sport." Armstrong is a pretty intense player, one of the best young players at the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club, and he does not look like your average senior. He has a gray ponytail and a gold hoop in his ear. He's from Ontario and jokingly refers to shuffleboard as "curling in Florida."
"A few years ago," Armstrong says, "there was a gossip that shuffleboard would be part of the Olympics in 2012."
The club's president, Mary Eldridge, is buzzing about, preparing for a pro-am tournament the next day -- the Jules Beaupre No 2 Pros Doubles, an officially sanctioned tournament of the Florida Shuffleboard Association. Eldridge wears thick round glasses and pushes a shopping cart with four 50-pound bags of glass shards.
"This is where it all started," Eldridge tells me. Shuffleboard wasn't invented in St. Petersburg, but it may as well have been. The game has actually been around since about the 14th century, when it was played as a tabletop game in England. In the 19th century, shuffleboard was adapted into a decktop game played on leisure ships. In 1913, shuffleboard came ashore when the first in-ground court was built at a resort in Daytona Beach, Fla. From there, shuffleboard quickly gained popularity with the retirement communities that were popping up in Florida in the 1920s. By 1924, the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club (originally known as the Mirror Lake Shuffleboard Club) was founded.
"St. Petersburg is the focus point of shuffleboard in the world," Eldridge says. If this is true -- and it seems to be -- then the shuffleboard world is terminally ill. There are only about a dozen players out for this afternoon's game. There are now only 110 members of the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club. That many members won't even fill the old grandstand, which still hovers above the main playing area. Weeds push up between the rows of bright green courts while the roofs and walls, with their rust and peeling paint, have seen better days. Only the club's large endowment keeps the membership at a ridiculously low $20 (TK) a year. The city of St. Petersburg has had to step in with a sizable financial commitment in order to spruce the place up.
"A number of our members are in their 80s," Eldridge says. "If we have a bad flu go around, we could lose a handful of members in one season."
Once, during its heyday, the club boasted 5,000 members and was a center of social activity in St. Petersburg. Its clubhouse, now a national historic site that was used as a setting for the 1985 film Cocoon -- once had a full calendar of dances and parties.
"But St. Petersburg has been spent the past 30 years projecting an image that says 'We're not just about shuffleboard anymore!'" Eldridge says. "The older people moved out and the people that moved in were not of the general demographic for shuffleboard."
The city is now home to the Home Shopping Network and a Salvador Dali Museum. The downtown is shiny and redeveloped and includes a baseball stadium for the expansion team, the Devil Rays, an open air shopping mall and restaurant complex called BayWalk, and a enormous waterfront structure called the Pier, which houses the city aquarium and the sort of gift shops and cafes you'd find in any downtown redevelopment scheme. "The city wanted to move toward an A-list city, become more hip. I don't know if that's been a great thing. But we don't blame them. They're trying to make the city better."
Still, Eldridge remains optimistic. For several years, she's been bringing in groups of schoolchildren for lessons. "We feel that shuffleboard is on the precipice of being rediscovered by a younger generation. Every time young people come out they have fun."
As Joyce Linna is packing up to go home, Eldridge stops to tell her some news. "Did you hear about Frank?" Eldridge says. "He had a stroke. He's at the hospital. He's having a pacemaker put in at 3 o'clock.
