Sobieski’s product story, its Polish roots, its namesake (King Jan Sobieski III) and facts about the world of vodka are presented in a fun, interactive space alongside content that pokes fun at some of the BS prevalent in the category (diamond filtering, exotic ingredients, sexual innuendo, overblown packaging, the distillation race that can be 3 to 20 times more than the next product, and escalating pricing). It also spreads the Truth in Vodka brand message through interactive features, like Test Your Knowledge (helps people distinguish between vodka fact and fiction) and Ask Bruce (a query to Bruce Willis about life’s questions) and two video series Bruce Has Ideas and Truth Booth.

• The www.truthinvodka.com URL was used in all communications and many print and digital executions to tease people to visit the site.

• The site was in development for five months.

• Bruce Willis liked the brand so much that he became a partner in the parent company.

• Truth Booths were introduced at Sobieski Truth Parties in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York; people step into them alone or in a group and answer a series of questions with all the honesty they can muster.

Yet here I was, with a jade-colored bowling ball cocked at the ready, about to roll it down a blond lane just a few yards from the spot where, 15 years ago, Joseph Lelyveld, the executive editor at the time, offered me a job. Time moves on, I decided. Now if all these ghosts would just get out of the way, maybe I can hit the nine pin…

At the dawn of the last century The Times left Printing House Square, near City Hall, for a new tower in a modest uptown stretch that soon came to be known as Times Square. Then, in 1913, the newspaper secured its dominion over the neighborhood with the addition of an 11-story building at 229 West 43rd Street, its white-brick and terra-cotta facade vaguely suggesting a Gothic chateau.

For generations afterward, that building resounded with the noise of news: the keyboard clattering, the reporter yips, the editor shouts, the groans and hums of the presses. Trashed with journalistic detritus, expanded, renovated, and trashed again, it was a dump. But it was our dump, where bets were quietly placed, liquor secretly drunk, romance delicately attempted — and the days diligently chronicled. Three years ago The Times left its home for a futuristic tower around the corner, on Eighth Avenue. The move was bittersweet but necessary; the old building simply could not keep up with The Times. Few of us had reason to walk down our old West 43rd driveway between Seventh and Eighth.

Recently, though, there came exciting word from Bowlmor Lanes, which specializes in creating the kind of upscale bowling locations where, say, Sarah Jessica Parker can summon her inner Earl Anthony. Bowlmor was opening a new location in the Times Square district! Fifty lanes! With a nightclub and a sports bar! Cuisine by the celebrity chef David Burke!

In the old New York Times newsroom!

The heck with rewrite; get me a drink.

Accompanied by the longtime Times photographer Fred R. Conrad and the Times reporter David W. Dunlap, the newspaper’s indispensable archivist, I went to investigate. The revolving door creaked as we entered the 43rd Street lobby, where a bronze bust of Adolph S. Ochs, the father of the modern Times, once gazed in mild retribution upon all who entered.

Soon we were on the third floor, close to where we’d collect our mail from slots along a wall, and not far from where rows of reporters once sat at metal desks, barking and cajoling into telephones — Peter Kihss and Edith Evans Asbury and Gay Talese and Anna Quindlen, on and on. Now an Edwardian front desk beckoned, the mailbox-like slots behind it reserved for custom-made bowling shoes.

Yesterday the great Meyer Berger, in dark fedora, polishing the perfect sentence; tomorrow, the texting hip, asking for a size 9 ½.

Tom Shannon, 45, the entrepreneurial owner of Bowlmor — whose bowling shirt’s monogram, “Leo,” only added to our disorientation — escorted us past frantic workers preparing for Tuesday’s opening. Noticing the shower of sparks spraying from a welding job, he asked a question whose answer he already knew: “Is that good for the carpet?”

Mr. Shannon explained that the combined 90,000 square feet on the third and fourth floors had been divided into seven bowling lounges, each with its own New York theme. Here, for example, was a lounge evoking the louche, triple-X Times Square of the 1970s without any used-syringe props. A retro sign saying “Pussycat” hung over the six lanes, right about where editors of the foreign desk once discussed war coverage.

Mr. Shannon and Ramón Chicón, the design architect and Harlem native who spent the last several months transforming empty office space into outsized corners of New York, wandered about with an air of propriety once reserved for editors. As they walked nonchalantly around their Central Park lounge — its gray-white stone suggesting the park’s bridges, its tufts of synthetic grass conjuring the lakeshore — all I could think was: the business-news section.

And when they took the fire stairs to the fourth floor, I had a flashback of gathering in this stairwell with other Times employees during the anthrax scare of late 2001. Talk about entertainment.

Their newly enhanced site TruthInVodka.com has fun features like “Ask Bruce” and “Bruce Has Ideas.” Watch the campaigns that launched on June 3: http://www.vodkasobieski.com/ideas.php

A bottle of Sobieski runs $10.99 (€9.18) and is made from Dankowski rye at the Starogard Gdanski distillery. Even though the campaign is about basics and simple well-made vodka, Sobieski also comes flavored (vanilia and cytron).

Other celebrities tied to vodkas include American business personality Donald Trump’s Trump Vodka ($27.99/€23.40), American actor Dan Aykroyd’s Crystal Head Vodka ($49.95/€41.75) and international mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ Ciroc ($34.99 /€29.25).

The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States says that there are 350 vodkas in the American market, which is why Sobieski “decided to differentiate itself by going after the gimmicks; we’re trying to get people to focus on quality,” said Marty Weiss, chief executive and creative director of Meter Industries.

He added: “We wanted everything to feel premium, but simple. So we were looking for someone iconoclastic, the real deal.” That led to Mr. Willis, who became a global spokesman for Sobieski last year; he later received a 3.3 percent stake in Sobieski’s owner, the French company Belvedere — worth about $4 million at the time — as compensation.

Chester Brandes, chief executive of Imperial Brands, the Florida-based distributor of Sobieski, said that the company choose Mr. Willis because he was “authentic, likable and not superficial — plus he likes our vodka.”

In the commercials, Mr. Trylinski is the foil for Mr. Willis’s humor. Clad in a black T-shirt and jeans, Mr. Willis contrasts with the chief executive, who is dressed in a business suit and tie. Sitting at a table with an open bottle of Sobieski and two glasses, the two spar over the inexperienced Mr. Willis’s ideas about how to promote vodka.

“The idea is to show that he’s involved, he has ideas,” Mr. Weiss said.

The ads began running this week on the company’s revamped Web site, truthinvodka.com. There will also be a feature called “Ask Bruce,” where the viewer can type in a question and receive one of about 30 recorded answers from Mr. Willis.

“It will be playful,” explained Mr. Weiss. “You could ask: ‘Should I get married?’ and an answer from Bruce might be, ‘Do it already.’ ”

There will be banners on Web sites like gawker.com to direct visitors to truthinvodka.com, he said.

The print ad campaign will appear in US Weekly, Rolling Stone and Playboy. Also, Mr. Willis will take part in Sobieski-sponsored events around the world.

Mr. Willis is not the first celebrity to endorse and be a partner in a vodka company. Ciroc Vodka, owned by the distilled spirits giant Diageo, three years ago signed the hip-hop mogul Sean Combs as a spokesman. Mr. Combs, who receives a share of the profits, has appeared in advertisements showing Ciroc in luxury settings.

Sobieski’s strategy, said Mr. Brandes, is to focus attention on what is in the bottle rather than how the vodka is presented. As part of the campaign, Mr. Willis also filmed a separate and somewhat longer ad, called “Cruelty in Vodka,” to be shown on television screens in liquor stores to acquaint buyers with Sobieski.

“They filter it through diamonds. They put it in pills. They flavor it with bacon. They enrich it with platinum ions. They color it pink,” Mr. Willis says, needling other brands.

“I’m talking about vodka,” Mr. Willis says in the commercial and then he urges buyers to ignore all the enhancements and “return this fine spirit to its roots.”

“It’s a tremendous honour to be recognised for Sobieski’s continued success,” said Imperial Brands Inc CEO and President Chester Brandes. “There have been over two hundred new vodka introductions in the US during the last five years. To break through the clutter, Sobieski’s marketing strategy has been quite simple – just tell the truth. It’s not about glamour and pretentious nonsense. It’s straightforward and asks consumers to focus on what’s inside the bottle.” Made from Dankowski rye, Sobieski recently added two new vodka flavours, Cytron and Vanilia to its flagship brand.