The combination of the by-gone décor set within the trendiness of a Martini lounge — all of it backed by a bowling aspect — creates a totally unique atmosphere that is impossible to find pretty much anywhere else on Earth. 

The city of St. Louis owes a lot to a man named Joe Edwards.
    If the bar owners and operators across America agreed that their goal in life was to entertain the masses, Edwards has taken this job with a creative seriousness rarely seen. Establishing venues that have earned him international recognition from patrons and press alike, he has followed — and often led — the growing trend that bars are not just about drinking and not solely for the drinkers.
    Long before St. Louis’ citizens saw the first ball slide down the lanes of Edwards’ Martini lounge/bowling alley, The Pin-Up Bowl, they witnessed music history in the art-covered walls and on the live stages at his other venues, Blueberry Hill and The Pageant concert hall.
    Edwards began working to redevelop The Loop in the once dilapidated Delmar area of St. Louis many years ago, and today it boasts more than 120 specialty shops, from art galleries to retail shops to some of the country’s most unique bar and lounge scenes. With the doors barely opened on the second location in Kansas City, Kan., too, The Pin-Up Bowl in St. Louis has paved the way to prove how much more — and how much more profitable — a dual concept bar can actually be.

Joe’s Vision
    Early in the year 2000, Edwards began daydreaming of turning a bowling establishment on its head and turning the gaze of every passerby its direction.
    “I wanted to build a really good Martini lounge,” he says, “that happened to have eight lanes of bowling. And, for people to think of it that way, rather than having a bowling alley that served drinks. That way, they are more apt to frequent it all year ‘round.”
    It is the theme, done down to the smallest detail, however, that would give The Pin-Up Bowl not only its name, but also more importantly, its signature flair and repeat business.
    “My two other factors,” Edwards says, “were to combine an Art-Deco design with a pin-up theme — just to add a little innocent sexiness to it.”
    What evolved was a flirtatious lounge that made a night of bowling seem charming once more.

A Whole Lotta Kiku Obata
    Edwards turned to the St. Louis design firm of Kiku Obata & Co. to meld the aspects of Martinis and bowling equipment from the outside to the inside. The firm began by blatantly stating the theme in towering neon on the outside of the building.
    “There was this spectacular sign that I asked them to design and fine tune,” Edwards says. “I wanted a guy and a girl on the sign and on the logos. It was important for me to let everybody know that everybody was welcome. It has six Martini glasses that come on in sequence. I also asked them to  put different color garnishes in each Martini glass. It is all those details that make it fun for me and make it as successful as it is.”
    Kiku Obata’s work fluidly continues throughout the inside. Walls are adorned with pin-ups, both original and recreated for the space, and Edwards’ own collectables from over the years.
    “Long before Playboy started in the 1950s,” he says, “Esquire magazine used to have these beautiful airbrushed pin-ups in the centerfold. All those are original and framed. So, it is really a piece of artistic history.”
    The combination of the by-gone décor set within the trendiness of a Martini lounge — all of it backed by a bowling aspect — creates a totally unique atmosphere that is impossible to find pretty much anywhere else on Earth. In fact, Condé Nast selected the space as one of the 30 hottest new nightlife spots in the world for 2004.
    From the three shades of wood and art deco carving that make up the 20-seat bar to the projection television screens over the lanes broadcasting a mix of MTV and Cartoon Network, Pin-Up Bowl is 7,500 square feet of pure, whimsical fun.

Beauty in the Breakdown
    This is an age in the club industry where the design aspect often can seem forced into submission. In popular places, redesigns occur at such a regular frequency they seem as fleeting and recurring as the one-hit-wonders the crowd demands nightly from the DJ. The Pin-Up Bowl is having none of it.
    “I think the design is so solid that it really doesn’t need change,” says Edwards of his place, which is now more than three years old. “Every once in a while, I will add something to the display case, but so much thought and planning went into the design. It is all the little, subtle touches that keep it that way.”
    The little, subtle touches can indeed be seen everywhere, such as in the bathrooms.
    “I think too many places, whether they are bowling places or Martini places, don’t pay enough attention to creating really nice bathrooms,” Edwards says. “The signage for the bathrooms was custom-done based on the silhouettes from the guy and the girl on the exterior neon sign. It costs a lot to do all this custom signage, but it is really worth it for how much class it adds to the design.”
    The corner jukebox might seem like an obvious element, given the retro feel of the design, but Edwards again gave the public of Missouri something special. All of the music is stored on four hard-drives; customers can search by artist, title, subject or album. Outfitted with more than 145,000 selections, The Pin-Up Bowl’s music machine has earned a steady following all its own.
    “We have people who come in and go straight for the jukebox. They don’t even stop to get a drink first,” General Manager Doug Bragg says. “People come in (for) songs they can’t hear anywhere else.”

Flashback Food
    While the menu selection was no small detail, it carries the same quirky personality as the rest of the establishment.
    “We wanted to keep it really simple,” Bragg says. “But, we wanted to keep it eclectic at the same time.”
    Alongside the offerings of pizza, nachos and hummus comes the brilliance — and cost effectiveness — of classic, iconic American fare like Pop Tarts and Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.
    The drink menu was also a creative meeting of the minds.
    “I kind of turned them loose in Blueberry Hill over about four consecutive weeks with $800 worth of liquor to just experiment with to come up with the signature drink list of Pin-Up Bowl,” Edwards says of his managers Bragg and David Mueth. The team designed a menu of 30 Martinis, separated into three categories of Classic, Modern and Signature.
    “The public in general doesn’t realize how tricky it is,” Edwards says of the alchemy involved in the drink list.  “The biggest thing is to have fresh fruit. Most places use bottled or canned. On opening night, we went through 40 pounds of limes.”

Hard Road to Travel
    Edwards has worked towards a series of well-rounded environments in which a patron may join friends or come alone, may drink or abstain, may be physical or still, may listen or laugh. There are, of course, challenges.
    “When I talked to the banks about building The Pin-Up Bowl, and they saw how much it was going to cost, they were questioning it,” Edwards says. “I told them, ‘I think if every aspect of it is done in a first-class way, I think there will be a big demand for it.’” In the end, however, he was forced to rely on some of his other success stories to convince the bank. On the upside, Edwards says, the difficulty of duplication makes his competition slim to non-existent.
    “First off,” he says, “bowling lanes are really expensive to put in. Then, when you think about it, half of the floor space you can’t walk on. I own the building here, so it’s not a factor. But, if you are leasing the space, you are kind of at a disadvantage to other places.”
    Despite difficulties, Edwards looks towards the recently opened Kansas City, Kan., location with the security of knowledge and the same passion for fun. NCB