Rollerbowl Lanes bowling alley is a staple of Ohio University and Athens culture. Now, after months of waiting, students and Athens residents are going to get the chance to bowl again at the new Rollerbowl –– same place with a different face.
When the pandemic shut down restaurants, bars and even bowling alleys, a lot of businesses found themselves lacking purpose. Rollerbowl took its time of closing in stride, and decided to make a lot of renovations –– namely, to make it perfectly clear what’s inside 28 Palmer St.
“It looks completely new, something like we’ve never done before,” Tyler Lutz, assistant manager of Rollerbowl, said. “We had a local artist, Keith Wilde, who gave us a brand new look. So for example, there’s new students that walk by and they may have used to wonder what this building was. There won’t be any guessing –– we made it pretty clear that it’s a bowling alley.”
Lutz and the Rollerbowl staff reached out to Wilde to create a mural for the bowling alley. Wilde took the direction and vision they wanted and turned it into something that represented the spirit of the business.
After utilizing sketches, building measurements, digital drawings and then going through the actual painting process, Wilde created Rollerbowl’s mural.
“You can take any subject matter and portray them in different ways,” Wilde said. “They wanted something just bright and energetic, and something that just said ‘this is a fun place to be.’ So they left that up to me; to take those traditional bowling alley subject matter and turn it into something that looked like a lot of fun.”
As it was pretty hard to tell beforehand, Wilde recognized the need for the Rollerbowl staff to have a mural that accurately showcased what the building is.
“You could see in the before image of this building that it would be easy to overlook,” Wilde said. “I think what we managed to put on there for them just declares that this is a place that’s a little bit different, a little bit more exciting. It catches people’s attention and declares what you’re up to.”
Students are thrilled to check out the new and improved Rollerbowl.
“Rollerbowl is always a great place to hang out with friends and I love seeing community members come together to have fun,” Vivian Moussa, a senior studying strategic communication, said. “I’m excited for it to reopen because it will be something fun to do as a break from online classes. Rollerbowl is a place that brings everyone together for good times and I’m happy it’s going to reopen for all to enjoy.”
As of now, Rollerbowl will partially reopen to start; leagues on Tuesdays and Thursdays and guests on Saturday nights, starting Sept. 5. However, with coronavirus cases still at large, Rollerbowl’s schedule is subject to change. Lutz suggested following Rollerbowl’s Facebook page, as the staff posts frequent updates regarding their hours.
In terms of safety measures, the staff marked off every other lane for bowling, with the lanes closed in between for social distancing measures. The staff also secured sanitation spray guns to deep clean and sanitize the bowling balls, and will spend ample amounts of time in between groups cleaning the lanes for the next group.
“Obviously just making sure that safety’s number one,” Lutz said. “We do want to open back up slowly, but we’re going to slowly work into that. It will come, but for now, with some students coming back… we just want to be safe and give it a couple of weeks.”
The thing that Lutz wants people to understand is that the staff is still learning about the virus every day and adapting their plans to safely reopen. They’ve been working closely with the health department to come up with the proper regulations. The Rollerbowl staff wants their guests to know that they will be taking health precautions seriously and are strictly enforcing safety measures.
However, even with all the changes and extra precautions, the staff is more than ready for Rollerbowl to reopen.
“We can’t remember the last time we’ve been closed this long,” Lutz said. “But if we rush back into it and open back up every day and get slammed and we put our staff at risk, we just aren’t looking to do that. But we are excited to get back, that’s why we’re taking it slow.”
