I used to score for the league bowlers there, back in the 70’s! Not as a real job, just a way to pick up a few bucks for pocket money.
They’re still there, btw.
Bowling was a demonstration sport at the 1988 Olympics in S. Korea. It was announced that it would return in 2020 but that got “backtracked”, as they say.
I did have a bowling segment in PE in grade school (easy walk) and high school (a bus ride that ate up too much of the hour).
The White House had a bowling alley built in 1948 for Truman, moved to another building in 1955. A single lane built for Nixon in 1969. And still there. Bush II was photographed using it. But apparently not really used by a PotUS in a while.
I’m surprised it wasn’t ripped out and a video arcade or some such put in years ago.
You just reminded me why we never went back. The music was so stupidly loud then I felt I needed ear plugs. I actually spoke to the manager there, and he said he wasn’t able to turn the music down it was programmed and he had no control over it. Sounded like nonsense, but we left and never returned. I don’t see the point of loud music like that or any music playing at all in a bowling alley.
The other thing that kept us away is that bowling alleys weren’t in very nice areas that we wanted to visit. I also never got the drinking alcohol appeal for people bowling when what they claim to be doing is a sport.
I think it’s a number of things, all that have been noted already.
It’s viewed as blue collar which is a negative for some.
It’s seen a nerdy by most kids that I’ve run into when bowling has come up.
It’s time may have just passed. Things come and go, and perhaps bowling has just run it’s course.
Booze has lost to family. I spent 30 years in the Navy. When I first joined in the mid-1980s, the Officer’s and Enlisted clubs were packed on Thursday night and the through other days of the week. You’d work hard, drink hard from 5 to 6:30, and weave your way home to the wife and kids. That changed in the late 80s, when ‘the family’ collectively said, “no,” don’t come home half in the bag at 7. Come home at 5 sober.
I think it’s mainly the cultural shift away from drinking.
Or, at least, a cultural shift away from “spending a chunk of the evening drinking with the guys.”
Plus, up to the 1970’s DUI was a national sport too. It used to be a slap on the wrist, and safety campaigners used to say to incredulous audiences “…in Sweden they actually put people in jail for drunk driving!”
Meanwhile, according to articles I’m seeing, lawn bowling seems to be as popular as ever. They just spent around $100K to re-do the bowling green at the park in my neighborhood.