Step Into A Dark Alley

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By Newsweek Editors

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IT'S 9 P.M. AT THE BRUNSWICK CEDAR Creek Lanes in Marietta, Ga. The regular Thursday league games are wrapping up, and knots of working-class men mill about, polishing off their draft beers and sharing a final joke for the road. As they file out, groups of young newcomers head for the vacant lanes. Soon, the main lights go down; the sound system breaks into 2 Unlimited's thumping "Get Ready 4 This," while pins and bowling balls fluoresce under ultraviolet lights. A mirrored orb on the ceiling shoots flecks of light around the room as laser beams dance through a fog that creeps across the lanes. The crowd boogies and bowls. "It's a show," says alley manager Jim Mandella. "It's still bowling, but it's a show."

The show is called Cosmic Bowling, and it's the industry's latest effort to score with people for whom merely rolling balls isn't excitement enough. League bowling dropped off by 40 percent between 1980 and 1993, forcing alley owners to focus on the rest of us--people who might bowl every once in a while but don't consider a trip to the bowling alley a vacation in Thrillsville. Besides the music, lights and fog, a full-fledged Cosmic Bowling setup includes luminescent pins and balls, as well as the crowning glory--polymer-film lane surfaces that glow an eerie shade of blue under black lights. Bowling manufacturer Brunswick plans to offer Cosmic Bowling at about 80 of its centers by late spring, and is marketing packages--at about $3,000 a lane--to others. "There's really been nothing that's too new with bowling. This gives us a way to attract a fresh crowd," says Scott Lennertz, general manager of Brunswick Northwest Bowl outside Chicago. "On Saturday nights, we're on a three-hour waiting list to get a lane."

Of course, a night of Cosmic Bowling isn't the pro bowler's tour. "Everything's glowing, they're having fun, they really don't care what their score is," says Lennertz. "They're not so embarrassed to bowl [badly], because all the lights are down." In Marietta, first-timer Jennifer Carman, 17, is an instant convert: "It's cool. I'll be back." Now if only they could do something about those shoes.

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