Lynnwood Bowl & Skate still on a roll after 60 years

LYNNWOOD — This place just keeps on rolling.

Lynnwood Bowl & Skate is getting ready to celebrate 60 years in business Saturday.

With the rink’s disco-heavy soundtrack and the alley’s cacophony of crashing pins, it’s easy to slip back in time.

For Julie Murphy, like many patrons, stopping by is like “coming back to an old friend.”

The Lynnwood woman recalled how, as a child in the early 1970s, her mom used to drop her off at an on-site nursery to bowl in a women’s league. A few years later, Murphy grew into an avid skater at the rink next door. To this day, she’s still game for lacing up her skates.

“The feeling of rolling on the floor, the wind through your hair and the music playing — I feel like a teenager again,” she said.

The business plans to celebrate Saturday with 60-cent bowling and skating sessions. In the parking lot, they’ll host a car show, bouncy house, dunk tank and more. You don’t have to be a regular to stop by and revel in ageless pastimes.

The business started in 1956 as Lynnwood Lanes. Lynnwood Roll-A-Way opened next door two years later. For most of the time, they were considered separate businesses. In early 2006, local investors bought both, added a door between them and renamed it all Lynnwood Bowl & Skate. The building underwent a major renovation, but toadstool benches and the vaguely sweaty skate-rink smell survived. The venue’s classic look served as a backdrop earlier this year when Seattle hip-hop duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis shot the video for “Brad Pitt’s Cousin.”

The rink’s play list favors disco-era hits such as Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” Chic’s “Le Freak” and the Bee Gees’ “You Should be Dancing.”

Another mostly intact piece of history is the mural of the Seattle skyline and mountains that Dona Ely painted in the 1970s. Originally blue and white, it’s acquired a few extra hues, but looks mostly the same. In addition to being a commercial artist, Ely has worked as a skating coach at Lynnwood and other rinks since 1969.

“I picked two professions that don’t pay much,” the Edmonds woman said.

At 84, she’s still going.

“I’m rolling around on wheels, is what I’d call it,” she said. “Not skating like I used to.”

Different skating and bowling demographics have probably helped the business, said general manager Jessica White, who started working there last year.

With skating, “We have teens who will spend all weekend here,” White explained.

That often turns the rink into a de-facto community center.

Bowling attracts families as well as groups of single 20-somethings.

The 24-lane alley and 13,000-square-foot rink have managed to hang on, where others have disappeared.

The real estate market has been the main culprit in dooming similar businesses, which take up a lot of space.

That’s what happened to bustling Robin Hood Lanes in Edmonds, which was forced to shut down in 2013 to make room for a Walgreens store.

“Just about every bowling alley that has closed down sat on prime real estate that was worth more as something else than a bowling center,” said Greg Olsen, executive director of the Washington State Bowling Proprietors’ Association.

Most of the state’s bowling alleys belong to his association. Their membership has roughly halved to 65 now from more than 120 at the peak in the 1970s, he said.

Local holdouts from the golden age of bowling alleys include Evergreen Lanes in Everett (1955), Strawberry Lanes in Marysville (1957) and Glacier Lanes in Everett (1959).

Skating rinks are scarcer. Locally, there’s still Marysville Skate Center and Everett Skate Deck.

Roller Skating Association International, founded in Indianapolis in 1937, once had 1,700 member rinks worldwide but now has about 900, executive director Jim McMahon said.

The sport enjoyed its heyday in the early 1980s, McMahon said.

“Where the communities have supported and back the roller rink, those rinks have done very well,” he said. “However, the rinks that are in business today are seeing a higher growth.”

Likewise, the bowling industry is counting on a bright future.

“There are fewer centers, but it’s as popular as ever,” Olsen said.

The culture has changed, though.

“Bowling used to be that social hub, long before the internet, long before social media,” he said. “You’d have your company team. You’d go with your family. People would congregate on Tuesday night, Wednesday night, whatever was their league night. That group of four of five friends would talk sports, politics, current events.”

When league play was in vogue, bowling alleys tried to get players in and out as quickly as possible. Now, Olsen said, they encourage people to stay longer.

And there’s the smoking thing. Until late 2005, when Washington voters banned smoking in public buildings and workplaces, a thick secondhand cigarette cloud filled the inside of almost every bowling alley.

“That was the best thing that happened to bowling, in a lot of people’s opinion, because it took that aspect out of it,” Olsen said. “It had the stigma of beer and smoke.”

It’s easy to get a clear glimpse of the past and future at the Lynnwood skating rink.

Two 15-year-olds, Esha Harwalkar, of Bellevue, and Keaton Mitchell, of Lynnwood, practiced pair skating — artistic competitive roller skating, they clarified, to avoid confusion with ice skating. The junior competitors are training for the national championship in Lincoln, Nebraska this month.

John Walker says he’s been returning to the Lynnwood rink for more than a half-century. As a kid, he used to ride his bike over from Brier. A knee injury kept him away for a few years, but he’s a regular again.

“You know the TV show ‘Cheers’? It’s like that, a place you go where everybody knows your name,” said Walker, now 64 and living in north Seattle. “At Lynnwood, everybody knows each other. At some rinks, that’s not the case.”

Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465; nhaglund@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @NWhaglund.

If you go …

Lynnwood Bowl & Skate is throwing a 60th birthday party on Saturday, July 16 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Patrons can bowl or skate for just 60 cents.

Festivities include a car show, bouncy house, dunk tank and face-painting. Car-show registration fees will benefit YWCA’s Pathways for Women.

Address: 6210 200th St. SW, Lynnwood

More info: www.bowlandskate.com or facebook.com/bowlandskate.