Bowling Parties Score Big

Strike the traditional Christmas parties with roast goose, plum pudding and carolers.

For many people, the holiday season is being made merrier with a form of revelry you can be sure Bing Crosby never sang about in “Holiday Inn”--Christmas bowling parties.

The Bayshore Bowling Center in Santa Monica has so many Christmas parties booked this season that Sara Binder, who coordinates parties there in conjunction with the adjacent restaurant, Cafe Beignet, says she has had to turn groups away.

“It keeps increasing every year,” concurs Lenora Wong, manager of Little Tokyo Bowl in Yaohan Plaza. “I think people want something more active than being at a restaurant.”

The recent combined staff Christmas party for the Walt Disney Studio creative film services department and Craig Murray Productions (exclusive supplier of Disney’s trailers and TV spots) began with dinner at the Sugar Bowl Cafe next to Little Tokyo Bowl. Disney paid for dinner; Murray footed the bills for bowling and team bowling shirts. The sum total for 20 people was about $300.

That party pitted the Disney “Freeze Frames” against Murray’s “Dead Bowler’s Society,” a take-off on last spring’s Disney release “Dead Poet’s Society.”

Executives of large and small businesses say bowling parties are a wholesome alternative to the proverbial bawdy company parties in fancy restaurants or in company boardrooms dressed up with Christmas decorations.

Banks, entertainment companies and advertising agencies are among the groups reserving lanes or booking entire bowling alleys this season. However at Pickwick Bowl in Burbank, a construction company reserved passed on the lanes and reserved three pool and two snooker tables.

“It’s fun,” says Stuart Bloomberg, executive vice president of prime time programming at ABC-TV, who is treating the series-development staff to a Cajun-style lunch at Cafe Beignet and bowling at Bayshore today. He says bowling is a “nice break” from a very intensive job.

“A number of people on our staff bowl,” says Bloomberg. “Some people golf, we bowl. One year we bowled the writing staff of the ‘Cosby’ show. They brought their balls out from New York.”

“People are coming back to bowling,” says Pickwick’s Bill Adamson. “Scoring is automated now and it’s more fun.” So in addition to Christmas fetes, there are anniversary and birthday parties for children and grown-ups, a Pacific Bell Yellow Pages company sales kickoff, several Hollywood wrap parties, and a premiere for Fox-TV’s new prime-time cartoon series, “The Simpsons” going on at lanes all over town.

One such party was for the combined staffs of Campanile restaurant and La Brea bakery.

If the party had been held at a restaurant, everyone would “just sit around and stare at each other,” manager Manfred Krankl says. “It’s boring.”

So the Campanile/La Brea party was held at Bayshore and catered by Cafe Beignet--hardly your typical bowling alley coffee shop. Owner/chef Judy Binder worked under Wolfgang Puck at Ma Maison.

Not only did the bowling party eliminate the boredom factor, it also took care of something else, Krankl says. At a typical restaurant party, he says, “people get in clusters--all the waiters sit together, all the dishwashers sit together--so you might as well not go.

“When you’re bowling there are no class lines at all. It doesn’t infringe on any culture, and it doesn’t matter from which background you come. You don’t need any education or skill to bowl--it’s an equalizer. You all look equally silly.”

Bowling parties can be simple or elaborate. At Bayshore, the cost of renting the alley and serving dinner for 400 ranges from $3,000 to $30,000, depending on the food and extras like decorations and trophies for “weirdest bowler” or “sexiest bowler.” But at most bowling alleys, including Bayshore, groups can reserve single lanes for the regular price--about $2.50 per person, per game.

The staff--secretaries to executives--of K-QLZ “Pirate” radio hired a disc jockey so they could bowl to Top 40 rock music at Bayshore. At one point, people in the group put down their balls and danced in the alleys. “We work hard and when we play we want to just play,” says general sales manager Nancy Leichter.