Changing lanes Owners hit reset button in hopes of reviving little-known North End bowling institution By: Ben Waldman Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Friday, Oct. 4, 2019

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/10/2019 (2174 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Bowl Below, a six-lane alley on the corner of Mountain Avenue and McGregor Street, keeps a lower profile than any other alley in the city.

For one thing, it doesn’t have a splashy marquee. The only indication it exists is a small, red-and-white neon sign that only the most observant passersby would notice.

But the main reason the business, which began operating in 2007, has stayed underground is because it is entirely underground, a ten-pin alley with an 11-storey seniors’ apartment building sitting on top of it.

“I’m down here,” said Earl Sobotkiewicz, 51, the alley’s co-owner, directing a reporter down the stairs into the subterranean bowl-o-rama. The freshly oiled lanes were shimmering, a few championship banners hung above the pins, and Sobotkiewicz, a former Canadian champion, stood in a black bowling shirt.

Sobotkiewicz and three others bought the lanes in 2007 for about $40,000, but the investment hasn’t been a profitable one yet.

Bowl Below has mostly served as a training centre for junior bowlers, and the number of leagues it houses has dwindled. On Oct. 4, for the first time ever, Bowl Below was to host an open bowl night in hopes of bringing the business back to its former glory.

At one point, in a different life, the alley was among the busiest in the North End. “This place used to be full,” Sobotkiewicz said.

In 1986, the lanes opened under the management of the Canadian German Society, a now-defunct organization that also owned the brand-new apartment building above it. Back then, the lanes hosted at least two leagues per night, and served as a de-facto social centre of the North End German community.

An elevator in the apartment block took members right from their units down to the basement; they could throw a frame without ever going outside.

At the old German Society hall that opened in 1949 at Mountain and McGregor, six lanes were built in the basement, too, and club rules called for no political or religious discussions, leaving plenty of time to discuss how to nail a seven-ten split.

Some of the city’s best young bowlers rolled at CGS Lanes — Allison Odaguchi trained there and at 17 in 1989 became the first Canadian to win the National Junior Bowling Championships in Tampa Bay — and a substantial number of German Society members treated the alley as a home away from home.

“We all bowled there,” said Eleanor Jentsch, 88, whose brother, Ernie, now 89, ran the lanes. “It was the place to be.”

“We all bowled there. It was the place to be.”–Eleanor Jentsch

It was the heyday of bowling in the city, said Ats Odaguchi, who with her husband Ted coached the junior program at Bowl Below until 2014.

“It was really something. Ten-pin was at the peak of popularity in the 1980s, and you’d have to make reservations if you ever wanted to bowl,” she said. “If not, you’d be waiting an hour, maybe longer.”

Jentsch meticulously documented the lane’s accounts, and through the mid-1990s, CGS Lanes was making good money and hosting multiple leagues every day on a shoestring budget.

The logbook for October 1992 showed dozens of leagues using the lanes: the North End Seniors and Juniors, St. John Cantius, the Knights of Columbus, and the Thursday Afternoon Ladies, among others, helped generate more than $4,000 in league fees each week.

With six lanes, it was small enough to feel intimate, but big enough to become a hub in the bowling community.

But soon, fortunes for alleys across the city turned for the worse.

Bigger centres like Empress Lanes, Birchwood Bowl, and Northgate Lanes, which is now the location of that mall’s theatre, shut down, and registration for leagues began a tailspin that resulted in most alleys pivoting to focus on pay-per-hour open bowling, no longer able to rely on the steady revenue of league bowlers.

In 1998, as many as 5,000 bowlers were registered in sanctioned ten-pin leagues in the city, said Ron Molinski, the executive director of the Winnipeg Bowling Association.

Now, there are about 1,100, and Molinski estimates about three out of four are over the age of 50. Youth registration has fallen from 250 to below 100. What was once one of the city’s most popular recreational sports has become a niche interest.

“Today you could shoot a cannon from one end of most lanes to the other and you wouldn’t hit too many people,” said Odaguchi.

The drop in membership and popularity isn’t unique to Winnipeg. The Canadian Tenpin Federation’s membership has dropped almost 200 per cent since 2004, and only 15,000 bowlers are registered across the country.

There’s no one explanation, said Dan Tereck, a director of the Winnipeg Tenpin Bowling Association.

Other activities became more popular, coverage on television and in newspapers all but stopped, and innovations such urethane balls made the game easier with less required training, resulting in the rare 300 perfect score becoming a routine accomplishment, he said.

Bowling became less a sport than an entertainment option, and in an effort to stay alive, alleys across the country started to look more like arcades with lanes as accessories.

Simultaneously, membership in ethnic societies such as the Canadian German Society was aging, and the younger generation didn’t bowl with as much fervour as their predecessors.

The society folded in 2007, and ownership of the apartment building was transferred to the Winnipeg Housing Rehabilitation Corporation. The lanes, too, were up for grabs.

Sobotkiewicz and his group, including former lane employee Blaine Chaban, jumped at the chance to own their old stomping grounds.

They redubbed it Bowl Below, applied a fresh coat of paint, and gave the lane machines some much-needed repairs. A giant, sneering, fiery bowling ball biting the head of a pin glares across the lanes.

But most of the original members of CGS Lanes are now seniors, and the people living above are elderly as well — none really come down anymore, Sobotkiewicz said, adding the elevator access was blocked off for fear of bowlers accidentally ending up in a residential suite.

“We’re all old here,” said one elderly resident. “I couldn’t lift a ball if I tried.”

“We want to keep it going for as long as we can.”–Earl Sobotkiewicz

With no marketing or advertising to speak of, Bowl Below was at risk of meeting the same fate as Empress or Northgate.

So now, the business is changing lanes. Sobotkiewicz hopes a healthy mix of training, league play, and drop-ins on Fridays or Saturdays could help them break even on an investment driven by a sense of responsibility of revitalizing a one-time North End institution.

“Either we make a business out of this, and actually make money, or…,” said Sobotkiewicz, who grew up a few blocks away. “We want to keep it going for as long as we can.”

“The hardest part is getting people down there,” Chaban said.

But once would-be bowlers do climb down, they will find a time capsule from a bygone era when even a bowling alley with a tiny sign, no parking lot and a shoestring budget was booked every night of the week.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca

Ben Waldman
Reporter

Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University’s (now Toronto Metropolitan University’s) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben.

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