Lack of parts, players
Milford bowling alley’s closure mirrors declining fortunes of duckpin lanes
MILFORD — Retired former professional duckpin bowler Sandi Johnson doesn’t know exactly why Devon Duckpin Bowling Lanes is going out of business, but if she had to guess, she’d blame cellular telephones.
“As soon as the games went onto phones, it was just a total, ‘I can stay home. I don’t have to do this,’ “she said. “Now kids can get on there and bowl a perfect game all the time, which is why I never play on those things.”
Developers Arnaldo and Maria Gomes have submitted plans to build Devon Duckpin Apartments, a building featuring six two-bedroom, three-story units each with a garage, on the Devon Duckpin parcel, 551 Naugatuck Ave. The Planning and Zoning Board will start reviewing the proposal by early April, City Planner David Sulkis said.
The Milford bowling alley has not been full service in years. According to its website, it has been opening only for twohour private parties at $200 each, and messages left with Devon Duckpin over several days were not returned.
Once as common as its larger 10-pin brethren bowling alleys, duckpin bowling has contracted in Connecticut over the past few decades due to rising costs, declining marketing of the game and a lack of spare parts for the alleys’ pin-setters, Johnson said.
Ten duckpin alleys remain listed at ctduckpins.com, the website for the Bowlers Association of Connecticut — in Cheshire, Danbury, Hamden, Hartford, Mansfield, Torrington, Vernon, West Haven and Winsted — and of those, perhaps four open only for private parties, said Bob Nugent, owner of Woodlawn Duckpin of West Haven.
“You lose the old guard and the new guard coming up isn’t as dedicated as us old folks,” said Johnson, owner of Johnson Duckpin Lanes of Hamden, which has been at 2100 Dixwell Ave. for 70 years.
Johnson’s theory: Once video-game bowling or other such games became popular on mobiles, that strangled what was left of duckpin alleys like Devon, which was also not helped by being a eightlane business instead of the usual 10 or 20. Every bowling alley had 25- or 50-cent video games and pinball machines that helped keep businesses like hers attractive to kids, Johnson said.
Off-track betting also did a number on duckpin popularity.
“When that came out, I had people who bowled here three or four times a week stop to go down there and make their millions,” Johnson said.
The lack of pin-setting equipment is probably the biggest reason duckpin alleys are fading, Nugent said. A 2007 documentary film, “Duckpin,” states that inventor Ken Sherman refused to sell the patent to his duckpinsetting machine to giant bowling-equipment manufacturer Brunswick Corporation, who held the patent for the automatic
ten-pin pin-setter.
Sherman sold his equipment and expanded the sport into Maryland, the District of Columbia, Rhode Island, Connecticut and started selling in Massachusetts but efforts in that state ended when he died in the early 1970s. Nobody makes the Sherman apparatus and no one has replaced it, leaving alley owners such as himself scrounging for parts that they can’t get manufactured themselves, Nugent said.
“The game is great. The reason it is going away is they haven’t made any parts for it and the locations are worth more (as real estate) than the businesses,” Nugent said.
The lack of replacement parts to keep the lanes working is likely among what dooms Devon, Nugent said. Johnson faces the same problem
but knows a welder who replaces the setter’s castiron parts when they break, she said.
Nugent disputes the idea that the sport is fading, saying that his success shows that it can succeed. His 12-lane business is open to general bowling and leagues on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays and he takes private parties on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. The place is busy and he renovates it regularly, he said.
“When I started to get into this business, every one of them (other alley owners) said, ‘leagues are dying,’ ‘people don’t make the commitment,’ but I have 300 bowlers in my leagues,” Nugent said. “That answers the question. You just have to go get them. You know where I get them? I get them from the golf courses
and the softball fields. I got them to bowl.”
Nugent entices softball teams and golfers to bowl in their off-seasons, he said. Multigenerational tradition — many players brought their kids to Woodland, whose children now are regulars — and inexpensive lane pricing keeps him going, he said. The nature of the game also helps. Unlike Brunswick’s largerpinned 10-pin bowling game, duckpin pins are smaller and duckpin balls are lighter.
People of most any age can bowl duckpins, and the game is far more challenging than its larger brethren.
“There has never been a perfect game in duckpin. Every year in sanctioned bowling leagues, they have 50,000 perfect games, but that never happens here,” Nugent said.
Johnson, meanwhile, said she keeps her business going through the loyalty of older customers, her sale of group coupons and the fact that it, like Nugent’s bowling alley, is on the lower level of a larger building. That means that their landlords are content to leave the businesses where they are.
“I have 14,000 square feet. If I was leasing aboveground, I could not afford the space,” Johnson said. “With the leasing of aboveground sites, (landlords) can make so much more money. Being a basement facility that I am, I am good.”
But she said she wonders how long her business will last.
“I have maybe 100, 125 people in leagues now. At one point, I had five nights, double leagues and all of that,” Johnson said. “It has gone down that way but it is picking up in parties, with open play, fund-raisers — we get all kinds of walk-ins just being in the plaza.”
Yet the greatest reason duckpin bowling lanes survive would be this: Johnson and Nugent said they simply love the game and the players it attracts.
“I have a blast doing this. I make a living here. I am not going to get rich here, but I am also almost 60 years old and I have been doing this for 20 years,” Nugent said. “People walk through the door and they have fun here. What’s better than that?”
Johnson loves the game too much to ever quit being around it, she said.
“When I go,” she said, “they are going to bury me under lane No. 9.”