MODERN LIVING: The Family Boom

The world’s largest bowling alley—112 lanes covering a space as long as two football fields—was completed last week in Edison, N.J., by two brothers, Thomas Jr. and James Swales. Said Tom Swales: “You practically need binoculars to see from one side to the other.” What the bowlers also saw was the latest sample of how the bowling boom has changed the once smoky, dusty, somewhat disreputable hangout for men into a family and community recreation center. Edison Lanes not only offers special promotions for women bowlers and cut rates for children, it also opens its meeting rooms free for Boy Scouts and teenagers, plans to add a nursery.

Hardly a week goes by without the addition of similar establishments built to boost the ever-affluent style in which Americans bowl, provide a broad range of services to make more friends—and win new bowlers—in the community. Examples:

¶ Omaha’s Ranch Bowl lends its meeting room to a Roman Catholic parish for Sunday Mass, provides pancakes for parishioners afterward. On Monday nights, the Ranch Bowl turns the room over to the 60-piece Omaha Symphony Orchestra for rehearsals.

¶ Orchard Twin Bowl of Skokie, Ill. employs a full-time sociologist to plan community activities around the bowling alley, helps to produce a weekly, teen-age sports radio program originating from the alley.

¶ Dallas’ Cotton Bowling Palace provides a barbershop and a beauty parlor open 24 hours a day for bowlers. Owner J. Curtis Sanford is planning a new $3,000,000, 100-lane center with a miniature golf course in the middle of it.

¶ North Kansas City Bowl has an aviary (with a fulltime, $5,000-a-year bird keeper) and an art gallery, hopes to contribute proceeds from the sale of paintings to local charities.

Attracted to the new recreation palaces, an estimated 26.5 million Americans this year will pay $440 million to bowl. The entire bowling business, i.e., investments in alleys, bowling equipment and fees, will gross more than a billion dollars in 1959 for the first time. New bowlers are increasing at the rate of 12%-14% a year. The rules-making American Bowling Congress’ paid membership has jumped to 3,250,000 this year from 1,500,000 five years ago, and the number of A.B.C. certified lanes in the U.S. has increased to 87,475 from 59,982 in 1955.

The boom was started by automatic pin-spotting equipment, introduced successfully for the first time by American Machine & Foundry Co. in 1952. Brunswick-Balke-Collender Co. followed with its automatic machines in 1956. Not only did the automated equipment eliminate the vagaries of pin boys, but they also made 24-hour-a-day bowling possible, caused alley owners to start big promotions, notably on TV shows, to keep the alleys busy.

Milk for Beer. They also made a big play for the housewife, taught so many to bowl that membership in the Woman’s International Bowling Congress last year passed the 1,000,000 mark, is expected to increase another 250,000 this year. In many an alley the beer cooler has given way to the bottle warmer. When Cleveland’s suburban Northfield Lanes opened last year, it offered housewives three weeks of free bowling, also tossed in lessons, coffee and baby sitting on the house. By following this pattern (often adding closed-circuit TV for mothers to watch their children in the nursery from the lanes), alleys have made it possible to fill once-idle morning hours with women bowlers. Explains General Manager George Paul Smith of Scioto Lanes outside Columbus, Ohio: “If we don’t get the women we’re through.”

With housewives in the morning and noon hours, teen-agers in the afternoons, and leagues ranging from religious groups to industrial teams, bowling has become a 24-hour-a-day sport in many parts of the country. (Texas Instruments’ workers start bowling at Dallas Cotton Bowling Palace at 4 a.m. after the night shift ends.) New England, the heart of smaller-sized duck-and candlepins. is giving way to the tenpin boom. Between them A.M.F. and Brunswick claim this year they will add some 25,000 new automatic pin-setting machines in bowling alleys across the nation.

Culling Competition. The expansion has some alley operators worried. With fat profits (often 13% return on investment after taxes and a ten-year amortization of invested capital) have come new alley operators to share in bowling’s bonanza. In some metropolitan centers such as Chicago, Detroit and New York City, bowling alleys have been overbuilt. Los Angeles, with eight bowling centers in a 3½-mile radius, has been faced with bowling price wars. But the national average is still one lane for every 1,900 people, and bowling proprietors feel that one lane per 1,500 population is a safe ratio from the standpoint of profits.

Nevertheless, both A.M.F. and Brunswick are going abroad, where automated tenpin bowling is almost unknown. Brunswick has built commercial installations in Lebanon and Italy and signed a contract to convert J. Arthur Rank-owned movie houses into bowling alleys in England. A.M.F. this month automated the second bowling alley in Stockholm, will soon build similar facilities in Denmark, Belgium and Australia. With the expensive promotions and plush environments, A.M.F. and Brunswick hope to build bowling overseas up to the scale of the U.S.