After Midnight
Walk into Canoga Park Bowl after midnight, and it’s almost as if the Cal State Northridge student union had relocated to Winnetka Avenue and Vanowen Street.
Packs of college-age bowlers cluster around ball returns, cheering the rare strikes and hooting the frequent gutter balls.
There are no 300 games or resin bags, all the shoes are rented and the balls belong to the house.
It’s all in fun at this hour.
“When the movies are over and the dinners are done, people want to go out. So they come here,” said bartender Billie Mendola, who has worked at the 24-hour bowling center for 16 years.
Established in 1958, Canoga Park Bowl has the only all-night lanes in the San Fernando Valley. Add in the video arcade and the billiard room, both open 24 hours, and it has a monopoly on entertainment for insomniacs--mostly college students and people who work nights.
“The day doesn’t end just because it’s 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning,” said Gene Giegoldt, the center’s vice president and general manager.
He should know, having worked in the aerospace industry until the downsizing of the late 1980s. After work, “You don’t want to just go home and watch TV all night,” said Giegoldt, 44, who became a partner in the business and took over daily operations in 1987.
“Bowling is one of the cheapest hobbies and sports you can get involved in,” Giegoldt said, adding that, while league membership is experiencing a decline, casual bowling is on the rise, especially among young adults.
“It’s a social release for a lot of kids, especially the ones that come here, meet their friends,” Giegoldt said. “It’s a meeting place.”
The center, which Giegoldt said has seen a slight increase in revenue over the last two years, is independently owned by Canoga Park Bowl Inc., a partnership that includes Giegoldt and other investors.
The corporation also operates the Best Western motel adjacent to the bowling center. Giegoldt said the motel accounts for about 40% of the corporation’s revenue, with the bowling center supplying the rest.
“If the hotel is up, the bowling center is down. When the bowling center is up, the hotel is down,” Giegoldt said. “Unfortunately, except for the year we had the earthquake [1994], I’ve never been able to get the two even. If I did, we’d have a phenomenal year.”
No one at Canoga Bowl can remember a time that the bowling alley wasn’t open all night. Bar manager Diana Cornette has been at the center for 23 years, and “it’s always been 24 hours since I’ve been here,” she said.
From time to time, a partner suggests the company could save money on payroll and maintenance by shutting the place down overnight.
Giegoldt said such proposals have never been taken seriously. The 24-hour bowling operation is a good complement to the motel business, he noted, and the lanes have enough late-night action to make the venture profitable.
Giegoldt doesn’t go in for the “rock ‘n’ bowl” trend that is sweeping other bowling centers. While he acknowledges that, in the short run, it seems to bring in a lot of business, in the long run, it’s likely to be a fad that doesn’t last long enough to make the investment worthwhile, he said.
“If I saw a decline in business because the other centers were doing it and I wasn’t, I’d probably follow suit,” he said. But, so far, that hasn’t happened. In fact, business is picking up.
“We’re here for fun,” Giegoldt said, “and you can have fun without blowing out your eardrums.”
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Rock ‘n’ roll plays over loudspeakers after midnight, but it’s kept at a tolerable level as groups of twentysomethings line up at the desk to rent shoes and claim lanes at the weeknight graveyard rate of $10 per hour.
That usually adds up to less than it would if they paid the off-peak rate of $2.75 a game. With shoe rental at $2.25, a group of four can bowl three games in two hours for less than $8 each--about the same as a movie.
Plus, bowling provides some social interaction and physical activity.
“It’s good for kids not to be out doing something else, to be in a safe, controlled environment like a bowling alley,” said Aki Kim, who started coming to Canoga Park Bowl 10 years ago when he was a Cal State Northridge freshman, majoring in communications.
Kim, 27, now lives in San Gabriel and works for Disney’s Web site, but he still drives out here to bowl.
On a recent Thursday night--make that Friday morning--a dozen of the center’s 32 lanes are lit.
One group of male bowlers has trouble keeping their eyes on the pins while a perky young woman who strongly resembles “Dawson’s Creek” star Katie Holmes bounces around a few lanes away.
A young man approaches the desk and politely asks bowling manager Mike Willis to turn up the music. Willis, 44, who has worked at Canoga Park Bowl for 21 years, obliges.
“At this hour, it’s more about socializing than about bowling,” Willis said, noting that, as the hour grows later, the crowd gets younger.
“In the afternoon, there are the seniors; in the evening, the leagues with folks my age; then around midnight, the kids show up,” Willis said.
On weekends, when, even though rates go up to $15 an hour or $3.75 a game, every lane is spoken for well until dawn.
George Chaidez, 26, brings his wife and children on Saturday nights after he gets off work at a local Chinese restaurant.
“It’s calm here; there are no problems,” Chaidez said. “You can come with your family and kick back, relax. You don’t have to worry about anything and you can have a good time.”
Security guards are on duty from 7 p.m. until 6 a.m., and there is a 24-hour camera surveillance system inside and out. But everyone at the center agrees, there is rarely any problem more serious than people trying to bring beer in from the mini-mart across the street.
Giegoldt attributes the feeling of security to either the psychological effect of an 8-foot wrought-iron fence that surrounds the property--except where there are driveways into the parking lot--or the sense of community among the staff and patrons.
“This is our world. You’re welcome into our world, but you have to abide by our rules,” he said.
Several celebrity bowlers take advantage of less-crowded weeknights to get in a few games without being gawked at and accosted by paparazzi.
Giegoldt said Tom Hanks and Will Smith come in from time to time, and Eddie Murphy has his own card key for the employee parking lot. Aretha Franklin has been known to sing in the bar’s karaoke pit, which would make the quarter-a-drink surcharge for libations served in the bar well worth the price.
“It’s like an entertainment tax” for the karaoke, bartender Mendola said, “if you can believe that.”
There were no Motown superstars in the pit this night, but the amateur warblers who did get behind the microphone were in general better than the usual karaoke crowd.
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One woman’s rendition of “I’m Just a Girl” was a dead ringer for that of No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani.
The bar, of course, is not open all night. It closes around 1 a.m. on weeknights and at 2 on weekends. The coffee shop also operates more traditional hours, opening at 7 a.m. and closing around midnight. But there are vending machines for the die-hards who are determined to bowl until dawn.
“It never slows down,” said overnight desk attendant Michael Jokell, 20. “I’ll have people in here until I leave at 7.”
“It’s great,” he said.
