Rocking and Rolling

As multicolored lights cut through banks of fake fog and speakers pulse with the sounds of Prodigy and Squirrel Nut Zippers, the cherubic yet suitably pierced 17-year-old Kyle Swanson is in his element.

The clock long ago struck midnight on a summer Friday in the San Fernando Valley as he and a cluster of friends sip sodas and swap jokes to the beat.

Then, abruptly, Swanson shatters the familiar teenage tableau. He picks up a 10-pound ball, swings it back and forward in expert pendulum form, and rolls a resounding strike.

This is unmistakably a bowling alley--without a single pair of plaid pants or squirt of Dippity-Do to be found. This is Cosmic Bowling night at Matador Bowl.

“It’s not about score,” explains Swanson, who is unwilling to ditch his sunglasses despite Matador’s dim lighting, and unable to suppress the urge to air-guitar. “It’s about the music and everything else . . . Once we tried this, we decided we’d never bowl normal again. At normal bowling, they get mad if you go crazy.”

Brunswick Recreation Centers, which runs Matador, invented Cosmic nearly two years ago to jump-start a sport stalled by chronic stodginess. But Cosmic has only recently found its way to the Valley. Competing chains and independents have followed with their own versions with names like Xtreme or Nitro as the entire industry attempts to update its sagging lite-beer image.

“Bowling is down, we all know it,” said Joan McRae, tournament clerk for the Northridge-based Western Women Professional Bowlers and a Matador regular. “It has been known as a place with cigar smoke where the men hung out.”

Even many purists believe the Cosmic concept--adaptable to country, Disney or big-band music--can revive the most staid of sports, drawing in young participants while daring to lend an air of chic to the pro circuit.

“The impact has been positive,” said Don MacBrayne, training manager for Brunswick’s western region. “It’s got people into bowling centers who would not be caught dead in bowling centers.”

The elements of Cosmic--not to be confused with its hipper cousin Ultra Cosmic, which adds video screens to the mix--have been around for decades: loud music, disco lights, fluorescent decor. But they didn’t merge with the centuries-old sport until September 1995 in Chicago.

*

The trend has emerged almost entirely in the suburbs, due to their relative wealth and higher number of teenagers, but many urban centers are about to join in. Of the nearly two dozen bowling centers in greater Los Angeles, only a couple of the Valley’s nine bowling alleys have experimented with it. Active West Inc., the largest Southern California chain, has introduced Nitro Bowling only at its Pasadena location.

Industry officials don’t try to hide the fact that this new spin on the game is a blatant marketing ploy. About 54 million Americans bowled at least once last year, according to a recent poll, which is more participants than ever before. But membership in leagues--the sport’s mainstay--has steadily declined. In 1970, about 85% of bowlers belonged to leagues--meaning they bowled at least 32 times a year. Now that number is at 55%.

More problematic is the fact that the sport’s core faithful has increasing amounts of gray in their sideburns. A younger base is essential to bowling’s commercial success, especially in a city like Los Angeles that is rich with weekend options.

Enter Steve Ryan, who recently was wooed from a lofty merchandising post with the National Hockey League to head Strike Ten Inc., bowling’s first full-fledged promotional arm. He embodies the Cosmic spirit, filling the telephone receiver with loud proclamations of the sport’s limitless potential.

“People are looking for entertainment,” he said from his Connecticut office. “They love the product of bowling, but they want to embellish it.”

Ryan rattles off results from a survey that to his way of thinking suggest that bowling is hotter among American teenagers than basketball or baseball. He discloses a variety of plans he has laid, including a line of beer bottles by a popular brewery to be made in the shape of bowling pins and an “urban bowling entertainment center” that would surround the lanes with retail shops, restaurants and a video arcade.

Much like golf, which has experienced some growing pains since the emergence of Tiger Woods, bowling attracts two disparate audiences. The traditionalists, who cherish the sport as a bedrock of postwar values and a community lifeline, and the new wave, which takes kitschy delight in the sport as a bedrock of postwar values--especially when set to music.

Brunswick’s MacBrayne concedes Cosmic may not have crossover appeal.

“League bowlers are really the core of our business,” he said. “League bowlers like to socialize, have a scheduled outing every Tuesday. Cosmic is not a scheduled thing. People are usually sitting around saying, ‘What do you want to do?’ and two hours later they’re bowling Cosmic.”

Wisely, most center managers overseeing bowling’s new era are careful to schedule the Cosmics and the Leaguers at completely opposite times, lest a scoring-pencil rumble ensue.

“If we did Nitro at 6 o’clock on a Thursday, then yes, we’d have some problems,” said David Spiegel, chief operating officer of Active West.

Late weekend nights, with the occasional midday time for children or seniors, are likely to remain Cosmic’s domain.

McRae, 64, said the two camps tend to eye each other with some suspicion.

“It has attracted kids and it could help the industry,” she said of the new look. “But we don’t want to lower the image. It’s taken a long time for people to say ‘channel’ instead of ‘gutter’ and ‘center’ instead of ‘lanes’ or ‘alley.’ ”

Revelers in the wee hours Saturday at Matador could not have cared less about terminology. Turns were skipped. Technique went out the window. Balls nearly disappeared into the dense artificial mist.

“You can do such amazing stuff!” exclaimed Swanson before bounding down a small staircase, past plastic chairs, ashtrays and hand air vents and hurling the ball toward Day-Glo orange, blue and green pins.

“I know some people who come every week,” said Van Nuys resident Monica Cervantes, 19, one of four non-bowlers watching two friends play. “It’s not bad. We’d either be doing this or hanging out somewhere.”

A few lanes away, Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” rumbled through the alley--er, center--as bowling’s future toed the hardwood. Six-year-old Heather Reed of Van Nuys struggled toward the line and heaved a ball nearly half her size. But alas, it found the gutter--er, channel.

“I like going Cosmic bowling because when I’m here I have fun,” Heather said later, her measured words nearly swallowed up by Metallica.

“We take a nap for a few hours before we come out,” said her father, Mike Reed of Van Nuys. Swigging from a Budweiser, he glanced around at the scene. “You can’t beat it.”

At a neighboring lane, a golden retriever lying at the foot of the scorer’s table turned colors in the swirling light, panting in time to a Joan Jett & the Blackhearts tune.

*

Nearby, two avid keglers--as die-hard bowlers sometimes call themselves, invoking the wooden kegs used before pins--were taking their maiden plunge into the cosmos.

“I haven’t been bowling for a long time, but when I heard about this, I had to check it out,” said Ray Groves, 19. The Northridge resident claims a lifetime high score of 265, far higher than the Cosmic average.

Groves’ friend, Scott McLaughlin of Granada Hills, said the pair had another motivation for visiting Matador Bowl: During two-hour-plus Cosmic sessions, games are included in the $12 admission price. Regular bowling is $3 to $3.75 a game, plus shoe rental, often making for a more expensive evening.

“Aside from that, though, I think this stuff adds a lot,” he said, referring to the lights and music and raising his voice above the Chemical Brothers’ “Block Rockin’ Beats.”

“Of course, it’s a lot easier to score without the music . . . but who cares when you’re having a good time?”