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| OHCC LIVING | NOVEMBER 2020 | 37 Bocce Club September Bocces: 20 Bocces: John Abdelaziz; 13 Bocces: Dea Abdelaziz; 8 Bocces: Michael Simons; 7 Bocces: Skip Dunham; 5 Bocces: Tom Silva; 4 Bocces: Mary Yotter, Isaak A, Joe Dudkowski, Lloyd Doyle; 3 Bocces: Lee Cooper, Larry Bean; 2 Bocces: Mike Caligiuri, Klaus Waiblinger, Sandy Levin, Barbara Michelsen, Jean Meeks, Carol Jones, David Key, Rita Harper, Joanne Bush, Bob Goldstein, Bonnie Krichband; 1 Bocce: Vickie Wolf, Steve Norton, Scott Taylor, Bob Whissel, Jerry Huges, Ellen Friedman, Marilyn Birkes, Jerry Birkes, John Sileno, Carol St. James, Joan Costello, Bunny Quint, Jackie Crosby, Brad Sargent, Joan Lohrey, Jim Bellerive, Linda Wheeler, Anita Simons, Mary Sullivan, Barbara Dudeck, Ric Dudeck and Debby Macri. Interesting Bocce Story: Bocce Ball: From Old-World Sport To New-School Phenomenon On the corner of H and 12 streets, across from the auto parts store sits a decently sized Italian restaurant and bar called Vendetta. Inside, there's a wooden bar and brick walls salvaged from churches in upstate New York and Maryland, and authentic Italian advertisements line the walls. Upstairs, old restored Italian Vespas hang from the ceiling. But something about Vendetta is unique. Vendetta is one of six bars in the Washington, D.C. area with a bocce ball court right in the bar. Actually, it has two courts — one upstairs and one downstairs. The bar joins a growing trend across the nation of integrating a sport characterized by older Italian men with a young crowd of socializing bar-hoppers. Vendetta recently hosted the DC Bocce League, a group of young men and women, usually in their mid-20s to late 30s. They, along with the rest of the restaurant's patrons, drank, talked, ate… and played bocce. In the early 1900s, Italians from the northern end of the peninsula, around Liguria, immigrated to America. They brought many things with them, among them the game of bocce. Since then, the stereotype was that this game was purely for old Italian men. No children or women were allowed to play, says Benji Tosi, who's played bocce since 2002 and has won eight U.S. bocce championships. "For them, it was a way to get away from the wife and the kids. Where they could drink and smoke and cuss and gamble, maybe," says Tosi, who is based in San Francisco. "They kept to themselves when they played bocce ball and it was a hard community for outsiders to crack." So why, after years of the stereotype of bocce being a game for old men, are younger people taking up the sport? Bocce-goers at Vendetta say it's because the game is social, fun and anyone can play. "It's all inclusive," says DC Bocce League co-founder Sarah DeLucas. "Men and women are good at it. Even things like darts and pool, traditional bar games, a lot of women don't feel comfortable playing those games against men because they think they're not going to be good at it. And with bocce, that's never an issue."

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