Boutique Bowling: A Night in Washington's Fast Lanes

Decades ago, Washington had several commercial bowling centers, including, coincidentally, one called Lucky Strike. They closed one by one as neighborhoods went downhill and bowling lost its luster. Now there are lanes at Bolling Air Force Base, (insert Bolling alley pun here), restricted to military personnel, and in the Marvin Center at George Washington University, open to the public, but no drinking. The famed White House lanes in the Old Executive Office Building closed after 9/11.

The new bowling in the new Washington is an affirmation: You are so hip. This follows you right into the restroom, where the walls are lined with clips from celebrity magazines picturing Geena Davis, Paula Abdul, Matthew McConaughey, Kelly Osbourne and Jessica Simpson bowling at the Lucky Strike on Hollywood Boulevard.

But who in the crowd of hundreds Friday night looks like that? It's mostly wonky Washington -- neckties still in evidence! -- traveling in packs defined by workplace. A law firm occupies four lanes for a private party. A trade organization stops in for drinks. Three Hill spokespeople and one non-Hill friend stop by after watching "Syriana" and bowl for an hour. Two of them live a couple blocks away, a neighborhood where four years ago squatters occupied desolate buildings and today one-bedrooms rent for $2,100.

"It's the perfect place between downtown and the Hill to come on lunch hour," says Kerrie Bentfield, who handles government relations for a law firm, and who recently bowled two lunch-hour games with a colleague. "It's so not D.C., because it's cool," Bentfield says, then quickly adds, "I hope it is D.C.!"

Deborah Robinson sits on a stool and takes it all in. She is 53, a communications manager who lives in Northeast, here tonight to celebrate the birthday of her daughter Andrea Simmons, 22, an assistant day-care teacher, organized by another daughter, Raneka Young, 31, a recruiter for the Justice Department.

"I think it's fabulous," says Robinson. "I grew up in D.C. We used to do things like go bowling, roller-skating," often with a church group; and even with the alcohol and music, "it's nice to know we're going back to that. . . . Even with your teenage children, you feel secure when you know there's a dress code here."

Here is a cluster of Smithsonian art conservators: Nicole Grabow is wearing a vintage bowling shirt and a mock wedding veil made of what conservators call "an inert non-woven polyester." Boutique bowling is her bachelorette bash.

"Here everyone knows bowling can be silly," says her friend Nora Lockshin, who procured the vintage shirts and knows her way around what she calls a "real" or "old-school" alley. The automatic scoreboards are an improvement: "Because you're drinking a lot, it's really good they do the math for you."

The air is not thick with camp and parody. The boutique bowlers' attitude toward the sport is affectionate, not ironic. They just don't intend to form a league or anything. To bowl for $75 an hour is to pay homage to a former self, not to signal a new hobby. And anyway, in addition to beer pitchers, bowling leagues are banned from Lucky Strike as well.

After opening a few presents of exotic undergarments, the bride-to-be bowls her first frame. The scoreboard credits "Naughty Nicole" with a speed of 11.8 mph, for a spare! She raises both arms over her head and whoops in victory. Even with Death Cab for Cutie in the air and $10 martinis floating by on trays, some protocols of bowling culture are eternal and immutable.