EcoHearth: Come Home to the Earth

An imagined conversation at the fancy and eco-conscious Brooklyn Bowl, a new bowling alley in the Brooklyn borough of New York City: The Dude: How much coal-generated electricity does Brooklyn Bowl use?
Walter Sobchak: “Mark it zero!”
Dude: And how many bottles does Brooklyn Bowl toss out every night?
Sobchak: “Mark it zero!”

If you’re confused, go to Brooklyn Bowl on September 24th for the Lebowski Fest. While you’re there, check out the sustainably harvested wood and reclaimed cork on the floors. Touch the recycled rubber stage. Stare into the energy-efficient LED stage lights. Drink a glass of local beer—no cans or bottles = less waste, and local beer = less transport energy. You’re in the world’s (or at least Brooklyn’s) most eco-conscious bowling alley.

Bowling has been through three revolutions in the past decade. First, chain bowling alleys got a glamorous facelift and professional bowling became a spectacle. Then bowling went really upscale as the Lucky Strike chain and local lanes transformed into martini lounges with bowling alleys. The latest move is eco-consciousness. Each revolution has increased prices, crowds and profits. Count on another profit boost with the greening of bowling alleys.

Brooklyn Bowl opened this year in the Williamsburg neighborhood. You could do worse than Williamsburg for fronting this hip new trend. Yet it was preceded by another eco-friendly alley called The Gutter, opened last year in nearby Greenpoint. It was reportedly the first new bowling alley in Brooklyn in 50 years. They both cater to hipsters and run on 100% wind power, but Brooklyn Bowl takes things a few steps further.

Brooklyn Bowl is covering all its bases by going both eco-friendly and upscale. Plush sofas replace the hard plastic chairs, and a professional sound system and stage replace tinny classic rock. Gourmet food replaces soggy chicken fingers.

On the eco-front, the venue is in a 23,000-square-foot, LEED-certified building with Energy Star fixtures and sustainable materials throughout. My favorite feature promoted on the site is the pin-setting machine that uses 75% less energy than other brands. Check out this pinsetter brochure (pdf) from Brunswick, which touts energy efficiency as a cost-saver rather than a trendy, green-bandwagon jumper. I like.

The Brooklyn Bowl creators are veterans of eco-conscious entertainment. They used to run the Wetlands Preserve club in the Tribeca neighborhood of lower Manhattan. The club was both an enviro-activist gathering place and site of Pearl Jam’s first New York gig. The Wetlands Activism Collective is still going strong, but the club closed in 2001. Brooklyn Bowl is a bit fancier and more focused than the Wetlands, but it keeps the live music and the environmental aesthetic.

The bowling lanes at Manhattan’s playground, the Chelsea Piers, are also going green. Their lanes weren’t designed around sustainability, but the Chelsea Piers management seems to be taking sustainability seriously by boosting recycling, hosting green events and buying only renewable energy.

On a barely related note, here’s another way to make bowling sustainable: the reclaimed bowling alley table. Each table is made entirely of handcrafted, salvaged wood from bowling lanes.

With Brooklyn Bowl and other Earth-friendly lanes, lawn bocce is no longer the only type of green bowling. To quote “The Big Lebowski” again, “Dude, f***in’ A.”

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