Just before midnight at Petaluma’s AMF Boulevard Lanes, the large parking lot outside the historic ? facility is empty enough to make one believe the place might have shut down along with most of the rest of Petaluma.
But inside, it’s a very different story.
From the loud rock music (Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Going to Take It”), currently turned up to shout-to-be-heard levels, and the flashing, multicolored lights and strobe effects popping across the atmospherically darkened bowling lanes (it’s known as “Cosmic Bowling”), this place is undeniably, categorically “alive.”
For one more hour, anyway.
“We close at 1 a.m. every Friday and Saturday night,” says Sarah Pettenger, Operation Manager of AMF Boulevard Lanes. “It’s the start of summer, so tonight’s a little quieter than usual. With graduation and everything, people have got other plans, but usually we have most of the lanes going.”
From behind the front counter, currently covered in bowling shoes being sorted, Pettenger cranes her neck to count the lanes currently being used. There are six of them. And even from those, the noise of the voices and actual bowling is powerfully, infectiously lively. There’s just something about bowling balls colliding with pines that is, Pettenger allows, a very “happy” sound, even at this relatively quiet interval.
“Ten minutes ago, we had a couple of huge groups leave,” Pettenger says. “But 30 minutes before, about 20 of the lanes were in use. That’s more typical. Of course, not everyone comes to a bowling alley to bowl.”
Pettenger acknowledges the pool room to her left, with its four tables, and entrance to the sit-down bar in the other direction, where a game of pool was just recently taking place under a flat screen showing sports highlights from the day. The bar and the adjacent café are still open, but with last call set to happen in less than 30 minutes, a group of bowlers at the south end of the alley have just migrated over to order another pitcher of beer.
Pettenger says that the bar itself has plenty of fans, people who come in for a beer or a cocktail, and maybe a burger, on their way home from work. And with so little else to do this late – Buffalo Billiards being one of the few other late-night amusement spots in town (it’s open till 2 a.m. most days) – there are a fair number of groups and night owl families who come in late on the weekends, just looking for some alternative to being home watching TV.
“We actually may still get a few more people tonight, coming in to start a game,” she says, “but usually, this late, once we get close to last call, the crowds start to trickle away. If we’re booming, we keep the bar open a little bit later.”
She recalls the time when a whole bachelor party made an unexpected appearance.
“They were supposed to go to the city to do the strip clubs, but their bus broke down and they ended up in here,” she says. “They were a lot of fun, but all they had to spend were stacks of single bills. We went in the back and found a box of old Mardi Gras beads, and started tossing them out to them, just to make things a little crazier. They had a blast.”
According to Pettenger, who started working at Boulevard Bowl a few years ago and worked her way up from part time to operation manager, there are regulars who come to the bowling alley every Friday or Saturday night without fail. A fair number come in for the arcade, which was still coin-operated until a recent upgrade to a cash card system.
Glancing over toward where the Walking Dead crossbow game stands not far from the Plush Bus Crane Game - where adorably nonchalant stuffed cats wait to be captured - and an actual old school Ski Ball game glows invitingly in the corner, Pettenger notes that there are almost as many humans in the arcade as are currently down at the bowling lanes. At the moment, several of them are gathered around the Giant Claw, an absurdly large version of the Plush Bus-sized game, with a claw big enough to pick up a melon-sized plush toy, packed with addictively appealing stuffed animals that have tapped into the plushy-bloodlust of the game’s current victims, er, players.
Asked what the most popular arcade game in the arcade is, Pettenger does not hesitate.
“The big old Giant Claw machine,” she laughs. “We get some pretty cool animals that go through that thing sometimes. We’ve had people spend a couple of hundred bucks trying to get one animal. Then someone will walk up and with their very first try they’ll away with the animal the other person was trying to get. It’s brutal, that claw machine.”
On Wednesdays, for what it’s worth, all of the arcade games are half-off to play. On weekdays, of course, the place closes at 11 a.m.
Down the steps at the lanes, a few yards away, regular customers Sy Scheremeta and Duncan Granero, currently part of a larger group, are squeezing in one last game before closing.
“It’s harder when the lights are off,” notes Granero, nodding to the darkened lane, illuminated by little more than Christmas-colored rope lights. “We come every Tuesday, usually, when the lights are still on down here. But this is fun for a change. It’s a challenge to bowl in the dark. And I still just got a strike.”
“We’ve been coming here for years now,” says Scheremeta. “Our group changes up from time to time, but it’s just part of our regular thing now. And it’s nice to know that if I really just have to go bowling, the place is open late sometimes.”
It’s now 12:32 a.m., and as predicted, a group of four have just entered in hopes of playing some frames before closing.
“You still open?” one of them asks.
“It’s Saturday at 12:30,” laughs Pettenger. “Of course we’re still open.”
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