The words, "bowling, ball, and wall", aren't ones you hear used in conjunction very often, but nestled in an a well established neighborhood in downtown Kansas City, those words come to life. We love the small injection of personality in a space that is usually bland and forgotten. The opposite side of the wall is made from something different, click through to see what!
Some of the bowling balls in the wall have started to crack over time, but that just increases the charm that it possesses.
After some quick math (High School paid off) we calculated that there's roughly 80 balls making up this side of the wall.
The other side of the wall is made from something different entirely, glass insulators.
Glass insulators are an easy find here in the midwest and it's a creative use for them, although we have to admit, we like the bowling balls better!
Does your neighborhood have a unique home in it? Take a picture on your next walk, tag it with "apartmenttherapychicago" in Flickr and let us see!
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Comments (35)
That looks horrible
Craptacular.
I try to keep it positive and I think the idea has potential but this is one of the ugliest things I have ever seen. I am having the equivalent of an heart attack for my eyes! Yikes!
Is this a joke from Farnsworthy?
Not sure if I can get behind that. It looks like a big pokey wall of giant marbles. However, I do like the colours and texture of the other wall made of glass insulators.
Ten dollars says the neighbors hate this. Ten more says this is where the local harmless wingnut lives. Either he'll talk your ear off or he's never spoken to anyone.
Yuck!
No. Just, no.
Better that than a landfill, I say, but FUGLY for sure.
save it from landfill vs. bring landfill to your neighborhood. this looks disgusting.
O M G
BLEAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
Bromelia, my neighbor has an actual metal bed in her front yard. I think it's supposed to be a flower bed - but there aren't ever any flowers in it.
no thank you
The Mellow Mushroom down the street has a bowling ball wall.
I once saw an interesting use of bowling balls as yard art -- they were only in related pearlized colors and arranged in a zen like manner in beds of crushed stone or pea gravel or something... but this is a non-starter. Glad that's not my street!
I saw something similar to SherryBinNH - bowling bowls as yard art in a garden... it looked really cool.
But that wall is just not right.
This is about 5 blocks from mine. Amazingly, the wall is even uglier in person... but a charming kind of ugly. In the homeowner's defense, this street is kind of sketchy and this is one of the better kept-up houses there - and that's accounting for the (ahem) strangeness of the wall. Picture lots of run-down apartments and houses in need of repair. Up until very recently whoever built this was very possibly the only person on the block willing to do any kind of maintenence... so I can't kill them too much for this.
For a minute there I thought this was an ATAustin post. perhaps the owner of this house is an Austin transplant?
Thanks so much this will go great with my tire planter, just the right touch.
I bet whoever lives there has a great sense of humor, is a lot of fun to know and grasps concepts like independent thought. I love original yard art.
I kind of was expecting this to be in Austin.
oh, forgot to mention: in the first photo, note the flag painted on the house two doors down. like I said above, it's an oddball (ha) neighborhood.
LOVE this wall more than 70% of the yuppie garbage du jour featured in too many AT posts.
That is horrible! I am glad that house isn't on my block.
It may not be aesthetically polished, but it's definitely creative. Working with found materials is a lot of fun, whether it's done for trendy reasons or out of necessity.
Cooky! :)
Let's encourage more of this. Real estate isn't dropping fast enough.
just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Wow.
I could get behind this as a concept if it were even remotely well-executed (e.g. using ONLY balls, even mortar joints, possibly double-sided, with some attention to the color scheme), but I gotta agree with most of the posters above: this is a train wreck.
this had potential... but I agree. horrible execution. if the balls were embedded in the wall a bit more and the rocks between them weren't so harsh and ugly, it could actually be kind of fun.
this reminds me of a yard near the house of a friend when I was young: in a very nice neighborhood, they chose to spell out SUGAR in large white rocks in their front flower bed...
I totally agree with K T G. This could be much more charming if it were rounded stones in between, v.s jagged. I absolutely love the resourcefulness and recycling, if not the specific execution.
Love it! Not everything has to look like a McMansion or homeowner association vanilla nightmare. Even if you don't like it you have to give the people some credit for RECYCLING and trying something new. Also, if you are a neighbor, think of it this way: everyone will be able to find their way to your house if you tell them you live next door to the bowling ball wall.
This might be interesting if the wall were smooth around the bowling balls, but the way it is, it just looks messy, and the cracked bowling balls are a deal breaker.
reminds me of the gum wall at downtown san luis obispo
Not a good look.
It pains me to think that someone took the time, money and effort to construct something so truly hideous. I would be livid if my neighbor pulled a stunt like this...