It’s . . . SuperSeats!

Those without the bucks, patience or divorce settlement necessary to snag coveted box seats at the Hollywood Bowl have long been relegated to the benches--until now.

This season, which opens June 24, the Bowl has knocked out the best bench seats to install more comfortable “SuperSeats”: the business class, if you will, of this quintessential outdoor entertainment experience. The Irwin Seating Co. in Grand Rapids, Mich., manufactured the Bowl’s 925 new SuperSeats from its Patriot 3000 line. “The Patriot 3000 was one of the first stadium chairs designed with a lot of ergonomic study,” explains Joe Hoy, Irwin’s western region manager. The company breathlessly touts the seats’ injection-molded plastic as “one-piece, double-wall, high density, impact resistant, linear polyethylene with a smooth surface.” And ultraviolet light inhibitors will help prevent the SuperSeats’ deep green hue, custom-selected to blend with the Bowl’s natural setting, from paling in the summer sun.

The SuperSeats are also wider, at 22 inches, than most other stadium seats (19 inches), including the Patriot 3000s installed in the new Arthur Ashe Stadium at the U.S. Tennis Center in Flushing, N.Y. “The Bowl tried to maximize the width of the chairs,” Hoy notes. The downside? Wider seats mean fewer seats--158 fewer, to be exact.