FORGIVE the relatively poor angle on this shot of Whitestone Lanes, at Whitestone Expressway and Linden Place, technically in Flushing. (It actually looks better by night than by day.) I got the shot in a cab waiting at a stoplight. The bowling facility is forced to serve all of northern Queens since it’s now the only game in town, with NYC’s lanes having been whittled down over the years from hundreds to handfuls. Whitestone Lanes’ demise has been mentioned throughout 2024, as it is has supposedly been sold to a developer set to raze it for no doubt nondescript apartment houses. Yet, as the saying goes, it persisted. The 48-lane facility opened in the 1960s (I cannot pinpoint the year) and it has what must be its original sign, which gets the job done. It was formerly open around the clock: when I lived in Flushing, if I so chose, I could have strolled in at 2 AM and bowled several games. Post pandemic, it closes at 1 AM.
I have never bowled at Whitestone Lanes, having given up the game in the Easy 80s. You can only bang your head against the wall for so long. I began bowling in 1967 at age ten at Leemark Lanes on 88th Street in Bay Ridge, when I joined a Friday afternoon school league. I was horrible. My first game, I bowled a 6. My second, a 7. My parents and I would go on Sunday afternoons for years to help sharpen my technique, but it didn’t work. I could never master the hook you need to consistently score, and I never had real coaching. So, I heaved it down the middle and hoped for the best. Since my spare shooting wasn’t great either I could never get my average over 150 in my high school league and my one year with the St. Francis College team. I did belong to a second league in my college years, but it required me to take 3 buses or two buses and a train from Bay Ridge to Sheepshead Bay and I was staggering home on Thursday night at 1 or 2 am and often had to get to a 9 am class. Nevertheless, I’m a two time lettered athlete, bowling teams in high school and college.
I remember my bowling days fondly though; I lived for those Friday afternoons and the Sunday outings with the old man. We religiously watched the weekly pro bowling tournament finals Saturday afternoons with Chris Schenkel and Billy Welu and later, Nelson Burton Junior (unless Burton was in the finals himself; that’s like Keith Hernandez calling Mets games unless they needed him for first base). I bowled at Leemark, Bay Ridge Lanes on 8th Avenue, the Port Authority and even in Elmsford, NY. But Jason Belmonte or Pete Weber Jr., I wasn’t. I wish I had been, though.
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3/4/25
9 comments
We could just picture you sauntering in there wearing your
King Louie bowling shirt
Whitestone Lanes opened on January 5th, 1960, per a Daily News article I just referenced.
“It was formerly open around the clock: when I lived in Flushing, if I so chose, I could have strolled in at 2 AM and bowled several games. ”
And if you had wandered into the cocktail lounge in the late evening or wee morning hours you would have had the opportunity to say hello to a multinational group of working women.
The place was a den of iniquity.
Duckpin bowling was still popular when I was growing up in Connecticut. Even though you get three rolls per frame scores are much lower than in conventional bowling: 150 is quite impressive and 200 is fantastic. No one has ever scored a 300 game.
I used to live few blocks from the bowling alley, but never went in. I ended up living (many years later) in Fredericksburg, VA and bowled in my wife’s company
league (I sucked), but it was a good excuse to have a few beers. Fredericksburg is a good place to become a Mason in the same lodge that G. Washington
became a Mason.
Isn’t Jib Lanes still open?
There used to be a large video arcade a block away from Whitestone Lanes. I spent many an unemployed day in 1990 and 1991 bowling a few games at Whitestone and then spending a lot of quarters at the arcade. The
arcade is long gone.
The modern equivalent of Whitestone Lanes is the Fat Cats chain (there’s a Fat Cats in nearby Queen Creek, AZ, a few miles from where I live):
https://www.fatcatsfun.com/locations/queen-creek/
However, Philipe, although Fat Cats features many attractions, I doubt that you’d encounter “ladies of the evening” there. However, “quien sabe?”
Redstaterefugee:
“Yo sabia”.
About a decade ago or so ago I was in there with friends after a Met rainout. We finished bowling when
one of the flesh purveyors offered their services to us. We declined and a burly big guy approached us inquiring why we weren’t interested.
One of our guys took out his NYPD badge. No further explanation was needed.