Hear the roll, the crash, the mechanical reset. Smell the shoe deodorizer and the odors it can’t beat. Touch the hole-y polyurethane. Taste the cheap beer and pizza. See the rows of glistening wood panel lanes. The bowling alley has long been a staple of American social activity, and is now facing a new era. Look up -- away from the polished, scratched wood -- and see missing parts of ceiling, exposed wires, with the remaining ceiling spotted with water damage. In a North Portland alley with two long walls of lanes, only half of one is being utilized. League players with determined faces spin heavy balls across the room, while those with jovial ones drink 6 dollar pitchers of Pabst Blue Ribbon and fraternize. The entire congregation wears matching shirts.
Compared to the city’s most popular, a traditional alley like this is a crumbling bastion. Step onto the dubiously stained Vegas-colored carpet and words such as “nostalgic,” “old school,” “dive,” begin to formulate in mind. This place and others of its kind, with league-playing regulars who roll at their own pace and keep careful track of which pins fall, are giving way to modernized, dance-radio filled hotspots where play is casual, and scores are forgotten once the tenth frame closes. The financial incentive behind this shift in bowling culture is imaginable, sure. But what does it mean for bowling that its most devoted players are seeing their sanctuaries transition from social clubs into nightclubs, their tools decorated with bright neons and glitter?
Robert Putnam wrote from Harvard that Americans as a whole are engaging less in social communities than they did in past decades, and that this trend has led to decreased participation in all sports, except for one. In 2000 bowling was the most popular sport in America, with two bowlers to every golfer, jogger, or softball player; three bowlers to every soccer player; and four bowlers to every tennis player or skier. Enjoyed by small, large, young and old folks alike, the sport’s wide appeal is partly in due to its leisurely appearance. Even when professional bowlers outearned the brutes working for the National Football League, they never needed padding, or even facemasks. Their eyeglasses were entirely out of danger.
Paired with its low risk of injury, the sport’s simplicity has always made it attractive. Thanks to automation, bowlers do not even need to understand how the sport’s scoring is calculated. They can just wait for the numbers to appear on a television screen hanging above their lane, often accompanying cartoonish graphics. “Spare!” says the animated white pin inexplicably barebacking a rhinosaurus. The wide appeal of the sport becomes problematic though, when alleys are financially pressured to compromise the traditional nature of their business in order to draw in more occasionals. Adapting to a changing market makes perfect sense, but in this case there could be a sect of bowling culture that ends up lost.
How common is it for modern bowlers to have a relationship with a particular alley and its owners? Instead, they flock to depersonalized events like Cosmic Bowl, in which the alley is lit by disco balls and black lights, filled with the sounds of Pitbull, Ke$ha, and the like. Hormone-charged teenagers bowl just lanes away from supposedly disinterested parents, push each other lightly as they flash their braces and compulsively finger-comb their own hair. They’re sharing a soda with two straws. When they pick up a ball, form is non-existent. Their scores: abysmal. But damn are they laughing. Nearby, a large goateed man in a flat brimmed cap and sweatpants bowls a split while his female companion looks at her phone. Neither of them are laughing.
More Americans than ever are bowling, but fewer are participating in league play. During the 1980s and 90s the number of casual players grew by 10 percent while the number of regular players fell by 40 percent. Putnam expected that league bowling would become obsolete in a decade’s time. Well, fifteen years have passed since Putnam published his book, and League bowling still exists, but in alleys that are poorly maintained and often struggling to stay in business.
Bryan Smith first began bowling in leagues as a child, inspired by his father, who was a professional on the senior tour and managed an alley just north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Now the senior Smith is eighty-two, and it has only been a few years since he bowled his last perfect game. Truly, here is a link to the sport’s glory days.
Since 2010 Bryan has bowled every week with his current league, made up primarily of individuals from the LGBTQ community in Portland. There are 30 teams of 5 players involved and the primary function of the group is to gather socially and allow these players to blow off steam after a week’s hard work. While the world outside the alley is fraught with turmoil, inside there are no surprises. Bryan says he has stayed with this league for so long because it allows him to stay involved with this particular community in a way that doesn’t feel “political.”
As a child Bryan could walk into an alley at any time of the day and find it packed with league players. Today he sees more of what he calls “open bowling,” meaning that the players are more often groups of friends and families than athletes. He has watched general interest in league membership decline in Portland, but nonetheless maintains that “back home” in the Northeast the sport is treated with more sincerity.
Bryan doesn’t fear for the future of bowling, but is curiously watching it play out. 20th Century Lanes, which he used to frequent, closed earlier this year. He is eager (though not entirely hopeful) to see what it will look like when it re-opens its doors in February.
Currently there are four places to bowl in Portland and two nearby in Milwaukee. Not surprisingly, the closer an alley is to downtown, the fewer opportunities for league play it provides. The two furthest, Milwaukee Bowl and Kellogg Bowl, both offer league play seven days a week. The family-owned Interstate Lanes in North Portland offers league play six days of the week. AMF Pro 300 Lanes in Southeast Portland, where Bryan plays, hosts leagues four days a week. These establishments have similarly un-modern decor, and are low in price.
The two most popular alleys in Portland offer no league play. Grand Central Restaurant & Bowling Lounge and Punch Bowl Social Portland are both located near the city center, and it's not happenstance that their names both allude to food and drink. League bowling can provide sizable revenue for alleys because the players purchase large quantities of beer and food. Modernized alleys have taken note of this and adapted in order to generate that kind of exchange without needing the leagues.
Now families and groups of friends can show up to an alley for a fine meal, making the sport tangential to the whole experience of going out to bowl. In this way, alleys like these purport to be devoted to creating social atmospheres. Bowling is just another thing to do with friends, after the chicken Caesar salad and before the Skee ball. So perhaps bowling is not necessarily becoming less social as league play declines in popularity. But the nature of the sport’s society is not what it used to be.
Every year since 2002 people have gathered dressed in bathrobes, jelly sandals, and sunglasses to go bowling. In addition to those few fashion elements, shaggy brown hair, a goatee, and a white russian in hand complete the look of the Dude. The movie that these fans commemorate pays tribute to a sect of Americana that struggles to persist through the aforementioned shifts in bowling culture. Although a box office flop upon its initial theater run, the film has since garnered a large cult following, resulting in the organization of an annual Lebowski Fest, which visits a different city each year.
Ethan and Joel Coen’s 1998 film The Big Lebowski portrays a disillusioned American society by following a group of ne’er-do-well characters whose lives revolve around bowling. They had their heydays in the sixties, when Walter heroically served in the war and the Dude heroically conscientiously objected. It was also during this time that ten-pin popularity was peaking -- the golden era of bowling was fully realized. But as the world around them changed, Walter and the Dude struggled to maintain structure outside of their sport where, unlike in “Nam,” there are rules. Today, successful bowling alleys are unlike the one shown in the Coen brothers’ film. Walter and the Dude would not be found draining oat sodas in a place like Punch Bowl Social, but would be holed up in one of the faded remnants of traditional bowling culture that can still be found outside of the city center. But if those remnants continue to give way to modernized alleys, where then will players like these play?
The most revered athletes in American society play in front of enormous crowds who cheer, chant, and jeer along, constantly stimulated, if not by the game then by jumbotron visuals and meme-like sound bites. Typical fans, who may be able to recite team statistics from past decades, or discuss play strategies at length, are not necessarily interested in playing games themselves. Now with the advent of fantasy sports leagues, fans can play vicariously through their favorite athletes, feeling like participants without ever getting up from their computer desk. The fact seems to be that Modern Americans are generally more interested in watching sports than participating in them. This is a trend that Putnam first associated with increased television viewing, and because bowling is not often thought of as a spectator sport, it has come to be treated by some groups as a trifle.
The very idea of bowling as a spectator sport in the age of ESPN has inspired satire, for example by the filmmaking Farrelly Brothers. But it nevertheless is being considered as a possible event for the 2020 Olympic games in Tokyo. Is this just what the sport needs in order to be taken seriously once again as an athletic competition? The decision, which would be made in 2016, could reframe the general public’s perception of bowling into something not retro, kitschy, or commercialized. Or it could facilitate the learning of how scores are calculated, at the very least. Regardless, this is an opportunity for competitive bowling to enjoy a surge in popularity, and perhaps to preserve the traditions of those similarly clothed teams of pin crashers. No longer would it be necessary to maintain a tone of ironic detachment when calling to a neighbor: “Fuck it, Dude. Let’s go bowling.”
Works Cited
Mullen, J. (2015, June 23). Bowling and Surfing Among Contenders for Tokyo Olympics.
Retrieved November 14, 2015, from
http://edition.cnn.com...
Putnam RD. Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York:
Simon & Schuster; 2000.
Tangney, S. (2012). The dream abides: The Big Lebowski... and the American dream.
Rocky Mountain Review, 66(3), 176+. Retrieved from
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA314443677&v=2.1&u=s8492775&it=r
&p=AONE&asid=61c7119bca674d7c9298b1ee2f9ee260