Lucky strike

It's a recent Sunday evening at All Star Lanes in Eagle Rock. The low, slouching building is tucked into a small lot on Eagle Rock Boulevard, dwarfed by its own parking lot. The words “ALL STAR LANES” hum in red neon and plastic over the aging Space Age façade.

But that's where all connections to anything remotely modern end.

Walk inside the oddly laid-out foyer and suddenly the seemingly small exterior gives way to a cavernous interior abuzz with the sounds of bowlers gracefully sailing balls down alleys, assuming a weird ballet dancer's static pose as their bodies stretch out and the balls leave their fingertips.

Other decidedly less graceful patrons stand around talking with friends, gesturing animatedly over huge beers and the newly installed computer scoring system. All Star Lanes has only recently switched from hand-written scoring to the newfangled screens at each lane's table. But its floors are still wooden, and some of its rental balls are missing chunks of polyester or polyurethane, whichever material they're made from.

In a word, the place is a dive.

But the fact remains that All Star Lanes is beloved by its patrons, as well as by a steadily growing cadre of local music fans who've begun colonizing the bowling alley's dim, somewhat decrepit but still lively bar.

In an unlikely symbiosis, every Sunday the rockers invade the All Star, displacing the usual karaoke — which hasn't upset the regular patrons so much as left them nonplussed — for a night of well-curated musical acts.

A Lite-Brite spells out the names of each act in the dark of the bar. Drinks are strong and cheap. The music nights are pulled together by two women, Janine Reyes and Marie-Reine Velez, who call themselves the Eagle Rock Sunday Night Bowling and Drinking Club.

Reyes and Velez quietly took up residency in the fall of 2005, and the place has recently picked up momentum, earning critics' picks and shout-outs from the local press. Plans are ramping up for a monthly rock ‘n' roll plus bowling blowout, where patrons can drop a moderate cover charge for several bands, booze and a few games in the weathered lanes.

“We were unemployed,” explains Reyes — now 26 and working at the Glendale Public Library — of the early days, “and we were talking about what we would want our retirements to be like. We decided that we would want to go bowling, play board games and have bands play for us. I had just had my birthday there [at the All Star Lanes] and we thought, ‘Wow, this is a really cool space.' Then we asked the owner what his slowest night was and if we could have it.”

Also 26, Velez too is no longer looking for a day job. The Downey native is now operations manager for TeAda, a nonprofit theater company in Los Angeles.

The management for All Star Lanes has been more hands-off than accommodating. Calls for comment were unanswered; requests for information were met with blank stares; a trip to meet with the management ended with the management simply not showing up. It was as if the Sunday music night was a fluke, a mushroom surreptitiously growing off the side of a tree, unbeknownst to the larger organism. Nonetheless, it seems to flourish.

“This place has a lot of potential,” says Reyes, a resident of the MacArthur Park area of Los Angeles.

“The sound in the room is surprisingly good, and people seem to have a really good time,” says Reyes. “Also, it was once a pretty big rockabilly venue, with 200-plus people at many shows. We had a little taste of this on New Year's, when we had 300 people show up for our all-inclusive bowling/music party.”

Other sweet spots
All Star Lanes isn't the only bowling alley in the area.

In nearby Glendale, Jewel City Bowling Center's brightly lit interior and perky remodeling pose a sharp contrast to the Eagle Rock venue's well-used lanes and chunky balls — but the remodeling job, which has made it a great venue for serious bowlers, has also sterilized it. Jewel City, located on Glendale Avenue between Harvard Street and Broadway, is now relatively devoid of the weathered soul that permeates a place like the All Star.

By contrast, Mr. T's Bowl on Figueroa Street, in the heart of Highland Park, is all soul and no bowl. The lanes, long since closed and hidden behind a partition, languish behind a stage peopled largely by local punkers, scrappy Eastside bands and jazz acts. A small kitchenette turns out bar-food staples, and the folks behind the bar are lifers, pouring hard and heavy for a dedicated clientele of regulars, young indie rockers in vintage threads, raging drunks and graying punks.

All Star Lanes seems to be the only bowling alley in the area that's successfully combined music and the lanes, and its success may be in part due to the complete cluelessness of its operators, who have allowed the Eagle Rock Sunday Night Bowling and Drinking Club to grow organically without much interference.

Andrew Saks of local indie-glitch duo the Northern Two, whose lush compositions have anchored Sunday nights for the last month, has great affection for the venue.

“Driving up to the place for the first time and seeing the half-burnt-out neon sign that towers over the building in all its forgotten glory [was] awesome. Who knew rocking a bowling alley could be so much fun!? It's a kitschy, funky, ghettopia that bleeds 1970s Los Angeles. There are people there that are getting their bowling on, total locals that are there to drink and drink alone, even though you can catch them tapping toes or gently nodding to the music at the bar, and then there are all the indie kids that come out to the shows. So it's like this stew of culture. It's just a nonpretentious place to come hang out and hear great music."

"I felt like I went back in time to 1979 and had a feeling of being in another state, like Portland [Ore.], where I lived for years," says Echo Park's Rey Villalobos, vocalist for the Coral Sea. "The place had a super-warm, welcoming feeling."

Get some balls
Joe Fielder of radiofreesilverlake.com and the monthly Let's Independent! event at Boardner's of Hollywood — and an authority on the scene — says "All-Star Lanes feels like it was just opened out of a giant time capsule from early '60s LA. I kind of love it there. The people are nice, the beer is cheap and the folks who put it on always find at least a few bands that I've never heard of before. ...The event has a real community feel and they support a lot of great new local acts."

Great new local acts who've gone on to become next-big-things include Listing Ship, Lion of Panjshir, the Devil's Romantics, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Divisadero, the Henry Clay People, Service Group, Eagle and Talon, Anchors for Architects, the Transmissions, the Happy Hallows and Die Rockers Die.

And the love is spreading: Christian Biel, lead guitarist and vocalist for the Transmissions, will be bringing his own event — until now happening in Little Tokyo — to the All Star Lanes later this month. While in downtown LA, “I thought how much I would rather be hanging out in Eagle Rock. So rather than compete with the night, I decided to change it to another night so I could go hang out at Eagle Rock [shows] more.” Biel says his event will move to one Thursday a month at the bowling alley: "It'll be called 'Tarantula: a night of video projections and live music,' featuring short films, music videos and bands."

Gene Astadan of the local band Tiny Moths sums it all up: "It kind of has a slumber-party feel, if your slumber party featured loud bands and a good selection of beer. … And in case you forget who you are in the dark, they have your name dutifully spelled out in pixilated Lite Brite lettering.”

Are there any downsides?

Fielder thinks there are. "They really need some new bowling balls ... or at least they should decommission the ones that are missing chunks out of them."

But then again, that's all part of the charm.