Alley offers life in the fast lane

If bowling evokes images of scruffy rental shoes, hard plastic chairs, stale hot dogs and reset buttons that don’t work, you haven’t visited Lucky Strike Lanes in Hollywood, an upscale bowling lounge that is reaching into the future by getting in touch with the past.

The 3-week-old high-tech bowling lounge at Hollywood & Highland combines an age-old sport with modern mingling to create a cozy and artsy environment where you can flirt and hang out or attempt to throw a strike or two.

In addition to a 12-lane bowling alley, Lucky Strike offers a 75-person-capacity restaurant and a 125-person lounge that can be reserved, along with four lanes, for private parties. With its plush couches, blue-lighted lanes, video walls over the pins and vintage mementos from Hollywood Star Lanes, Lucky Strike blends modern and retro design elements that compliment artwork by emerging local artists displayed on the walls.

“We wanted to create a new paradigm in entertainment,” said co-owner Steven Foster. “But we aren’t looking to be trendy. We’re just looking to return bowling to what it used to be like in the 1920s and 1930s. Bowling alleys were considered the martini bars of their time and we are hoping that bowling will become that kind of experience again.”

For Karen Zambos and Joe Lucas, Lucky Strike made for an enjoyable, if competitive, fourth date on a recent Friday night. As the two intermittently bantered and made out on lane two, the bar and lounge turned into a typical Hollywood hipster singles scene.

“It’s so clean, and the artwork rocks,” said Zambos, 33, a fashion designer. “I’d definitely come back. The guys who work here are all hot!”

Lucas, 30, said he appreciates that, unlike at other bowling alleys whose bars are removed from the lanes, he could watch bowlers from his bar stool if he stopped in for a drink on his way to a movie on Hollywood Boulevard.

“It has a great layout,” he said. “It’s very much like Jillian’s at Universal CityWalk, although I don’t think this will be as touristy.”

That’s because Jillian’s, a national billiards chain, also was founded by Foster and his wife, Gillian. The Fosters have been in the interactive entertainment business since 1978 when they opened a roller-skating disco in Boston and became interested in opening a bowling alley to compete with Hollywood Star Lanes. That was before they realized that the famous 40-year-old bowling alley was on the verge of closing.

“We were there at the right moment,” said Steven Foster, listing some of the items he was able to retrieve. The fifth lane from Star Lanes became Lucky Strike’s bar top and the “Hollywood” sign and stars created for “The Big Lebowski,” which was filmed there, were salvaged and hung on Lucky Strike’s northern wall.

“The thing we’re mostly proud of is the artwork,” said Steven Foster, who plans to open a second Lucky Strike at the Block in Orange in September. “When you think of the geometry of a bowling alley, you’re usually looking at a wall or mural when you’re standing in the lane. Here, you see art above the pins.”

The artwork on a recent Friday ranged from the paintings of 1980s New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat to renderings of celebrities including Muhammad Ali. As bowlers waited their turns on comfy couches, a DJ spun hot dance records that inspired Andi Lucas (no relation to Joe Lucas) to boogie toward the pins and back again.

“It’s Michael Jackson!” he yelled while bowling with a group of friends. “I really like it here. I love to bowl and this has a whole new attitude with the music. Normally at a bowling alley, you just hear the balls and pins. This is also a very visual place.”

Those who don’t feel like bowling can play pool or hit the old Captain Fantastic pinball machine, which is free.

“That’s about the only thing that’s a good deal, because this is a pricey place,” Andi Lucas, 30, said. “The burgers are $12 and the games are up there too. I guess you’re paying for the atmosphere. But the shoes are new and I can do the moonwalk easily.”

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Lucky Strike Lanes

Where: 6801 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

When: Daily, 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.

Cost: No cover charge. Bowling: $4.95 to $6.95 per person, per game, depending on the day and time. Shoes: $3.95. Billiards:

$16 per hour

Info: (323) 467-7776