ESPN goes feather bowling at the cadieux cafe.

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/stor...featherbowling

Thanks very much for posting this. Feather bowling at the Cadieux is one of the things I miss most about leaving the area.

I keep mentioning to the local micro brewery owner that he should do Featherbowling at his establishment. Now I can link in this article.

through the link in the ESPN article, I get the audio of but not the video. ?

Steve Gosskie
http://youtu.be/JXd5fXDqbu0

Though I would love to get the locals' view on the article, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Feather bowling at the Cadieux Cafe is one of the top things I would love to do in Detroit but have been unable to do on prior visits.

Posting this for someone who can't...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Toolbox

To me this story is more about the friend I lost, Steve Gosskie. He is a part of Detroit that can never be replaced. If you lived in EEV or IV he probably did work in your house, if you went to M&M Hardware he probably sold you plumbing parts and explained how to fix what was broken. As music blasted out of his bedroom on the second floor of the Cadieux Farmhouse the yard was full of many different people. It did not matter where you came from, you were part of something there. You might find the local drunk, the VietNam vet that had a Harley with a sidecar mounted ice cream vending freezer [[he offered my girlfriend/now wife a ride, she declined after he listed the inventory of metal parts holding him together), the gay crackhead, the black guy who looked like he was off a 2 Tone album cover riding up on his scooter or a local woman just walking by and joining the other that were sharing pizza and cheap beer. He will be missed.

The priest who officiated his funeral who Steve happened to meet and become friends with when he made a service call to the rectory to repair the toilets described Steve accurately during the service with the simple statement of "He was real". He was so right!

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Steve Gosskie is one of those guys that should wind up in the "Detroit Characters" thread started here around January. He has been referenced before here on DYes prior as the cool-cat at the Cadiuex Farmhouse who has tons of interesting old stuff, the antique plumber who could fix most fixtures, sinks or toilets over 100 yrs old, the M&M hardware references, etc. I had the fortune of eulogizing him, and have been reluctant to post much because of the legend building on its own accord. I will post it if someone asks.

His full-moon parties became legendary, not only for the weirdos, scooters, drunks, lawyers, musicians, neighborhood folk, new-detroit people, etc, but because of the thousands of records blasting away on the stereo. One of his "junk-men" was an older guy who basically retired most of the jukeboxes [[as they became too old to repair anymore) from the older bars in the neighborhoods. The collection of Chitlin' Circuit blues, James Brown, and jazz standards, all on 45, is fantastic, and would get played the loudest. It usually required half an hour or so to sift thru the other thousands of 45s before you could find a 15 minute set, and required a minor familiarity of obcsure artists. The featherbowlers added another dimension of craziness to the full-moon parties.

It's fascinating to me watch his legend grow, yet again. A consummate story teller, it's as if he managed to spin the ESPN story from the cosmos. It's evident the author spent time with him as he told the story, meandering thru various sub-plots, as if Steve told it himself.

And if I may add to Toolbox's post above, he described the toilets in the rectory as "The Jaguar of toilets", which pretty much sums of the oddity that Steve was.

This one was featured on the NPR the night before thanksgiving 2014.

http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-11-2...pt-detroit-caf