Boutique Bowling: A Night in Washington's Fast Lanes

In the corporate neon daylight of Seventh Street NW at night -- amid the welter of pubbers, clubbers, field-tripping suburbers and howling sports fans -- there is this strange new (and retro) evidence of renaissance in Washington: You can go bowling again.

Bowling?

Cue scraps of tactile memory -- stirrings from high school, or Wednesday nights after work, back home in a colder state, before you migrated to the capital to be somebody, maybe.

The shoes -- too tight, thin-soled, three-toned (trendoids brought them back a few years ago, minus the bowling). The balls -- three-holed, finger-stretching, too-heavy. The beer -- cheap and watery, by the pitcher. The smells: varnish and cigarette smoke.

Best of all, the sounds: The all-fall-down clatter of exploding formations of pins. The tumble of tenpins always seemed like an aural exaggeration -- a cartoon disaster or radio sound effect.

That sonic flashback hits you before you're even inside Lucky Strike Lanes, the city's first commercial bowling alley in forever, which just opened downtown at Gallery Place.

You hear it when you step off the escalator Friday night onto the mezzanine of the entertainment complex's vast Greek-columned atrium -- that slapstick soundtrack of things falling apart emanating from Lucky Strike, while all around are signs that things are coming together. Below you see long lines for "Syriana" and "Chronicles of Narnia." Clyde's is packed with holiday office partiers. You've just escaped the outside sidewalk river of Capitals fans heading next door to MCI Center, shoppers going to be seen in the blazing two-story fishbowl of Urban Outfitters, diners angling across the street toward chain-restaurant row.

There was a tone of amazement in the conversations floating around the complex -- a sense of Where are we, Toto? What little China was left in Chinatown has all but vanished, along with the last of the empty lots and abandoned buildings. The once gaudy-by-comparison Chinatown arch looks unexpectedly plain. Someone in the passing rush blurted out a depressing verdict, meant to be chipper: "It's almost like you're in Arlington!"

Ah yes, surprising D.C. -- finally catching up to its burbs.

But they don't have bowling like this in Arlington.

In fact, Lucky Strike is nothing like what you remember. It's what some in the industry call "boutique bowling" -- bowling gone uptown, bowling that moved away from home, got an expensive education, shed its accent, learned how to dress and order fancy food, and now is just a little bit ashamed of its roots.

The dress code posted outside the door has 13 noes, including "no sports jerseys" (sorry, Caps fans) and "no exposed intimate apparel" (drat). If you show up with your baseball cap turned backward, the fashion-forward hosts and hostesses posted up front will ask you to turn it around.