#24 All Star Lanes
By Bronwyn Spencer
If you’re looking for a night out that is a bit different from the local pub but don’t want to hit the clubs in town you can look no further than All Star Lanes. Scattered around London at Bloomsbury, Bayswater, Brick Lane and Westfield Stratford All Star Lanes are retro bowling alleys that are a great place to go for a few drinks, good food and some old fashioned fun.
Now I’m not usually into bowling as most of my past experiences mean gutterball after gutterball and I was a bit dubious about the karaoke but I was assured that there was a bar and that’s all the convincing I needed. My housemate had organised a group of 12 of us so we had a bit of a crew and when we got there on a Friday night we were ready and raring to go.
We grabbed a round of drinks and donned our sexy bowling shoes and started our hour of bowling while we grabbed some food. All Star has a pretty good menu of diner-ish type foods of burgers and nachos. They also have table sized pizzas for those who have worked up an appetite with all their bowling. Over an hour we managed to squeeze in one game with six players and I surprised myself by managing to get a few pins down. It was a bit like pool — you can only play when you’ve been drinking!
The hour was up so we moved onto the karaoke room and I was happy to find that these rooms were private little sound proof booths with couches, tables and of course microphones. Some of the crew had been to karaoke before so they hit the machine and started off with some favourites. It wasn’t too long before we were all trying to pick and choose a song, singing into the mics and wailing to our hearts content. A few of the boys even attempted a bit of a rap song and us girls relived our youth and sang Spice Girls — ‘Stop’ (actions included). To be honest all the singing became a bit of a blur. I guess lots of drink to give you Dutch courage is good to get you singing but may not be the best idea if you need to remember the tune as you sing along.
It was a great night out and I would definitely go again. It is perfect for a birthday night our or drinks with work mates (if you are brave enough to sing in front of co-workers) and overall a pretty cheap one too. Strike!