Floyd, NY

Not long ago, Brooklyn's Atlantic Ave. teemed with inebriated seamen and abandoned storefronts. The block was meant for men with brass balls and scarred fists. A borough-wide renaissance, however, has filled derelict buildings with French bistros and upscale cupcake purveyors. Sailors are but nautical memories.

On a recent Thursday I trekked to Atlantic Ave., no longer needing brass balls, but eager to embrace ball-based action. Be it inebriated beer pong or acting as a tiny Jewish Tom Brady, my recent daily rhythms have revolved around sports. This is why it was important to visit Floyd.

Floyd, NY is a 1700-square-foot bar inspired by cow-humping country. Floyd is an actual Iowa town not far from where co-owner Pam Carden grew up. There, I guess, bars were big as barns and filled with faded liquor-store effluvia, photos of bushy-bearded dead men, tin ceilings and grandma's furniture. That's Floyd, NY in a nutshell-a comfortable addition to the 718.

The twang-centric juke (with servings of ska, indie rock and mix CDs named Where Should We Go? Iceland or Hawaii) and helpings of $4 Kentucky Beer Cheese (cheddar, Tabasco and suds served with crackers) are textbook Midwestern. But the 40-foot-long, indoor bocce ball court's fly-over roots are not so visible.

Co-owners Carden, husband Jim and Andrew Templar say the bocce inspiration comes from a Florida bar with several outdoor courts. I'm inclined to think otherwise. Several months back, I spoke with Templar. Our conversation somehow twisted back to Ohio. Temblar casually mentioned he spent time in Dayton, my hometown.

"Oh, really," I said. "Did you go to the Southern Belle?"

Before relocating, this was a model dive: $1.50 Busch Light bottles, cigarette-strewn linoleum floors and a ball-based diversion. It was a miniaturized bowling alley, about the length of the bar, and cost a quarter to bowl 10 frames. Up to six players could compete, rolling pockmarked wooden balls across switches to trigger strikes, spares and testosterone-laced fights.

"Yeah!" he said, excited. "In fact, we kind of modeled the bar after the Belle."

I gasped: my drunken teens, recreated in Brooklyn! Sadly, after visiting Floyd, I see my glory days spent vomiting in a toilet black with unnamed filth are not reproduced. The clientele is too cordial, too well-groomed, too khaki to hurl a beer bottle at my forehead.

How Floyd recreates the Belle is in its unwavering belief that, when drunk, it's an inalienable right to throw something heavy and life-threatening. Indoor bocce ball: not just for dying pensioners.

On certain nights, teams with names like "Bocce-U-Lism" and "Dr. Strangeballs" battle on the red-clay pitch. Benton Brown, an acquaintance, helps helm Strangeballs. He and his bocce-ites even emblazoned baseball hats with DR. STRANGEBALLS.

"We kind of take it to the next level," he confessed.

I resolve to find out why. After sucking back three $3 Stroh's cans (pints of beer always hover around $5), my friend José challenged me to a bocce battle.

The rules are simple, yet cutthroat: Throw a small white ball (the pallino) onto the court, where it serves as marker. Opposing players receive four balls, of a blue or red pallor. The goal: aim for the pallino. Whoever is closest steps aside, allowing the opposing player to throw until closest, etc. A la shuffleboard, you knock (or "spock") balls aside. When everything's exhausted, the spheres nearest the pallino receive points.

José, a man of ample intellect but little coordination, launches the marker about midway down the pitch. I bounce a ball off the wall (legal), landing inches away.

"Go, fucker," I say, flush with the mankind's most useless pride: superiority over a ball.

José throws, knocking my ball against the back wall, out of play.

"Your turn," he says, pointing to the court. I glower, filled with mankind's most useless rage: anger over a ball.

My bocce goes airborne, off-target. And again. And again, ire growing with each miss. Luckily, José is equally off-target: I win the first frame, as well as the first game. He takes the second, thanks to World War II?style aerial attacks.

"Uh-huh, that's right," José says, draining his canned beer.

Game three: a wipeout: I score four of the required seven points on one frame, thanks to José mimicking the depth-perception of a deaf bat. A couple frames later, conquest.

"Good game," José begrudges, shaking my hand.

"Yes, yes it was," I say. "I had a ball."

131 Atlantic Ave. (betw. Henry & Clinton Sts.), 718-858-5810.

-Joshua M. Bernstein