A Review of Norwin Bowling Center in Irwin, Pennsylvania

Yesterday, my wife and I went to this bowling center located right off of route 30 just a few minutes off of the I-76 turnpike in the city of Irwin, Pennsylvania. A co-worker at my training restaurant told me about this place so we being avid bowlers, decided to give it a chance.

When we first attempted to access the facility we arrived to the lanes at 12:30 in the afternoon on a Thursday. When we arrived, the facility was closed from noon until five that night. The hours posted on the door stated as follows:

Sunday opens from 5 until 10 at night

Monday opens at 9 closes from noon until 5 opens again from 5 until 10 at night

Tuesday opens from 5 until 10 at night

Wednesday opens at 9 closes from noon until 5 opens again from 5 until 10 at night

Thursday opens at 9 closes from noon until 5 opens again from 5 until 10 at night

Friday opens from 5 until 10 at night

Saturday opens from 5 until 10 at night

We returned again around 4:45pm that afternoon and saw one other car parked there. We walked in the heavy glass door into a corridor that leads to two other doors (one to the bar the other to the lanes). A narrow set of steps lead up to another heavy glass door that then leads to the bowling center. The door was unlocked and we all walked into what was a dark and empty bowling center. There was another teenage couple sitting in chairs waiting for the owner to come in and turn the place on. How interesting was it that the owner leaves the place unlocked for quite some time while he was in the other building leave the center in the dark with people waiting around to bowl five minutes after the hours said the place was supposed to be open!

About ten minutes after five, the elderly owner finally appeared from a back door and turns on the lights, revealing the interior of the facility. The building housed a twelve lane bowling center with very old style wooden lanes, concrete floors with worn out carpets in the seating and lobby areas. The lanes are AMF 80-30's which is about a twenty year old bowling system. The lane floors are probably about forty to fifty year old wood lanes that are severely cracked and split all along the path to the pin area. The automatic scoring system was something out of the Atari era, with a joystick and one red button to try to navigate the bowler setup process. The shoes were about five years old (probably the newest thing in the store) and we paid $2.00 for each of us for shoe rentals. The ball selection was rather limited (I am guessing I saw maybe one hundred balls) most of which were in horrible condition. There were a few six pound balls that my wife normally would use behind the counter. However, when we politely asked the owner for one of those balls, he refused showing me some other ball that was all messed up blaming it on kids purposely destroying them by over powering them. Even after we explain my wife's medical condition, he still refused. She then had to try to granny an eight pound ball because she couldn't handle the weight of that ball for the game we played.

The lanes are so outdated, that when the owner lifted the bumpers in the lane gutters, it blocked the cameras from being able to accurately score the pins on the deck area. The balls couldn't go straight down the lane, as the cracks would push the balls off our intended path all game long. The game was basically a disaster due to the horrible conditions. With everything wrong with this place, we quit after the first game and went to pay for the two games played between us. The cost for each game in this ruined center, $3.00 each game for each player! We noticed other prices posted throughout the desk area. They have a cosmic night party which is two hours long, I could see the lighting effects in the center but don't know how they look turned on. The cost for the two hour event is $40.00 per lane for a maximum of five people on a lane.

The owner spoke with me for a few minutes and he gave me an idea as to the history of this center. Bob as he wanted to be known has been running this place for the last twenty five years. The facility was built by partners who had invested in multiple other businesses and decided to open this place more or less for fun. They decided to lease the center out to an operator that wound up falling far behind on the rent so they evicted him. Bob had at that point already talked to the partners earlier about buying the place but was not willing to pay the outrageous price they were asking for it back then. Instead he agreed to lease the facility for a period of five years for an undisclosed amount. At the end of the lease term the three sat down and agreed upon a price for Bob to purchase the place for himself. For the next twenty years, he ran the place basically by himself. Apparently he never gave much thought to updating the lane surfaces while he was supposedly putting $80,000 into the junk scoring system four years ago. He has told me that this summer he will be retiring from this business and handing control over to his kids. Hopefully, they will decide to put some money into upgrading this place to present day furnishings on the playing area before they wind up selling the place at an auction like so many others I have seen on EBAY lately!

Bottom line, until serious upgrades are done here, I will not be spending my money there again!