BOCCE BOOM, Backlash. Game played by Italian-American men taken over by yuppies, the wealthy

Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, June 28, 2001

Take it as a sign that bocce has gone uptown and become a plaything of the well-to-do: People are pining for the way bocce used to be.

Now that the gentle game is showing up everywhere from Silicon Valley companies to Napa Valley spas, players such as 27-year-old Cante Swearingen are romanticizing its old-school Italian-American roots. Before their Sunday evening league games in St. Helena, Swearingen and his teammates don sleeveless underwear as an homage to the Italian-American men who popularized the game in America decades ago.

That uniform wouldn't fly, however, at the $2 million Campo di Bocce courts in Los Gatos. There, at one of the country's premier bocce meccas, it is requested that "gentlemen, no tank tops or sleeveless shirts, please!" One manager said that since the 4-year-old public club also offers private memberships, it tries to maintain "almost a country club-type atmosphere."

"I think that's pretty ridiculous," Swearingen said with more than a hint of irony. "You're not being true to the roots of the game."

Indeed, bocce is getting cleaned up a little as it is being embraced by a new crowd in the Bay Area, many of whom didn't grow up seeing the game played almost exclusively by Italian-American men -- women were often unofficially banned -- for much of the past century. Bickering men, at that, renowned from North Beach to Martinez for playing with a glass of red wine in one hand and a plate of roasted peppers close to the other, bickering about who rolled his 4- inch ball closer to a single 1 1/2-inch white one.

The new bocce crowd doesn't bicker, however. It bonds.

Hundreds of Silicon Valley companies hold events annually at Campo di Bocce as team-building exercises, hoping to bond new employees, said Campo di Bocce manager Jennifer Albanese. Internet giant Yahoo! built two new courts next at its brand-new Sunnyvale campus because employees requested it. San Francisco Internet service provider Yipes wants to put a court on top of the Financial District building it leases.

The bocce-high tech connection isn't as unlikely as it seems. Techies see bocce as an earthy escape from their chip-centric lives.

"It's so totally different than the electronic interface that most of us live with all the time," said Yipes co-founder and longtime player Ron Young. "It's such a low-tech, goofy game. Yet it's competitive."

That's one reason bocce has spread to a new set, one that upscale Italian designer Prada is pitches its $832 leather-bound bocce set to. The new fans raised $140,000 at a recent charity fund-raiser Campo di Bocce and stay in rooms that begin at $233 a night at Villagio Inn and Spa in Yountville, where guests can borrow the bocce set from the front desk.

"It's similar to drink fads," said Villagio general manager David Shipman. "Like when martinis and cigars came back. It's hip now."

No, this is not your grandfather's bocce.

Some say the revolution started 27 years ago in Martinez, when a small band of men and women, "who were, shall we say, not Italian, pulled bocce out of the closet and started a league," said Ken Dothee, a board member and past president of the U.S. Bocce Federation. "Before then, it was almost exclusively played by Italian men, in Italian clubs. We brought it into the daylight."

With an estimated 1 million bocce players in the country, Dothee crowed that "bocce will be bigger than golf in the new millennium."

Still, to some, the game seemed simpler before. Yesterday's players could draw up a court anywhere. An alley. A bumpy backyard. The more bumps, the more bickering.

That's changed. Even though public courts have been built or are being considered everywhere from San Rafael to Danville, many of bocce's newest fans are constructing home courts, priced anywhere from $5,000 to $40,000.

San Rafael-based bocce court designer David Brewer, who has crafted several dozen courts nationwide over the past three years -- including the ones at Villagio and Yahoo!, said many of his clients are Baby Boomers who don't have the knees left to navigate a backyard tennis court. "But," Brewer said, "they still want to play a game that's competitive -- and easy enough for everybody in the family to play."

Or sometimes, they just need to fill an odd space.

"We didn't know what to do with this patch of land in the back of our yard, " said Mill Valley resident Susie Roy, as she overlooked her terraced yard near the Tennessee Valley. Last fall, Roy's family spent $20,000 on a court made from crushed oyster shells, the surface of choice for serious rollers.

However, Roy said that even though the court provides a low-maintenance yard space that happens to be a perfect ice breaker for dinner party guests, there are downsides to having a 60-foot-long homecourt.

"Hey, honey," Roy called to her 4-year-old as he dug into the court with his plastic shovel, "be careful about doing that here."

Yet despite its good-timey, family-oriented reputation, bocce remains misunderstood to some. Dangerous, even.

The developer of the seven-story Gaia Building, the largest structure to go up in Berkeley in 30 years, wanted to crown the apartment building's roof with a bocce court. No way, said Berkeley's Design Review Committee. Too dangerous.

"Some people were concerned that the balls might bounce over the wall and hurt people on the ground below," said Joann Pavlinek, an associate planner for the city. She paused, then added, "there seemed to be some confusion as to how the game is played."

That sort of bocce ignorance may fade as the game spreads among the elite. Swearingen, the sleeveless-underwear-wearing bocce romantic, envisions it someday becoming an Olympic sport. "Why not?" he said. "They let curling be one."

And curling is not nearly as upscale. Ask Prada.

Napa Valley Life article

July 2001