Furry Bowling record: 297 attend ‘When Furballs Strike 25’ – interview with Kijani of FurLifeNW.
by Patch O'Furr
Achievement Unlocked! New WORLD record 297 attendees, 131 fursuiters at #WFS25 an amazing day for @FurlifeNW community. Photo by ChaosReign pic.twitter.com/3TH8zX2WNc
— MFF n00b Lion (@kijani_lion) November 13, 2016
If you only saw furries in the media, you might think they only meet at cons. But after the con, there’s local events you won’t know about unless you’re tuned in to their channels. Some of them are established with their own names, venues and dedicated dates. You can go and say tonight, this place is ours. That’s a sign of a full-fledged subculture.
Independent furry dance parties are well covered at Dogpatch Press. That’s adult night life. But for all ages, there’s furry bowling. Big bowling meets can be bigger than small cons. They happen all over the place, but how many does the furry world have? I doubt anyone knows!
I’d love to know more, considering how fabulous some of them seem.
Here’s a special look at the thriving community of the Pacific Northwest furries. (Member pics: Whenfurballsstrike.net)
November 12, 2016 – When Furballs Strike 25 – Fursuit bowling in Kenmore, Washington.
- ‘When Furballs Strike’ appears to be the biggest bowling meet for any furry community. If it was a con, it would just enter the Top 40 by attendance.
- Their nearest rival for size is a bowling meet in Brazil! How many outsiders are in touch with that corner of fandom? It shows how widespread this is.
- The Pacific Northwest furry community has remarkable activity. Does any other have an event calendar like Furlife on Meetup with over 2,000 members? (Disney’s marketers went to Furlife to reach furries for Zootopia.)
- Furry dance parties have tried to get established in the Pacific Northwest without the success you might expect, making this their biggest meet. (And their popular local con Rainfurrest shut down, but an unprecedented four are now proposed there.)
I talked to Kijani Lion, meet organizer:
Tell me more about the broken record?
“The record that was broken was actually our own record for “largest attendance at a furry/anthropomorphics fan bowling meet”. We had 297 attendees at When Furballs Strike 25, which broke our old record of 271 at When Furballs Strike 22. Before that, the Brazilian furbowl Furboliche had the record with 248 attendees at Furboliche 4 which took place Halloween 2015.”
“Ghost Ship” was the name of the warehouse in the inner city of Oakland, California. I’ve often visited the neighborhood under the booming overhead trestle of the BART train. The warehouse was zoned for business, but harbored a live/work space that was built under the radar of building inspectors. It was funded by parties and rent from people living in RV’s parked there. It was home for a collective of artists and musicians from the cultural underground of the San Francisco Bay area. Many were pushed out of previous homes by pressure of rising rents. These most expensive costs in the country are making a crisis for culture.
(Patch O’Furr:) Furries love plush like a fat kid loves cake. My friends do, anyways. That’s how I met Amy Brown, a non-furry crafter who specializes in plush objects on Etsy. I heard that she enjoyed commissions for fursuit props. It makes me happy when furries make friends like that! Amy mentioned weirder commissions, and that made me invite her to tell some juicy stories. (Mmm… carrot juice for everybunny).
Anthropomorphic: Mixing animals with human characteristics. Think of cartoons, Aesop’s Fables, werewolves, and much more. 
Conventional Wisdom, by Arthur Drooker. Foreword by James Wollcott.
Mascots and costuming have been around forever. But furries are doing something new. They don’t just play with generic icons from myths and media. They add original fursonas and custom craft for everyone. It makes a subculture with personal expression beyond anything else.
Shock. From beginning to end. If you ever want a book to slap you in the face as hard as possible, this…this is for you.