Most of the new businesses and restaurants opening in the Mission District nowadays are hardly worth the effort it takes to shrug and mutter “Well, that’s gentrification for you” under your breath. Mission Bowling Club‘s impending opening is an occasion worthy of some genuine enthusiasm though.
The Bowling Club will only have a six-lane bowling alley, which, yes, is sure to be crowded and over-priced, but on top of this they’ll also offer a full bar, and, most importantly, a dining room boasting the talents of local celebrity-chef Anthony Myint (of Mission Street Food and Mission Chinese Food fame). Myint will be bringing his legendary Mission Burger to the bowling club – the quality of which I can absolutely vouch for – so there’ll be at least one very good reason for showing up even when the lanes are full. Once sold from a counter in the back of a local Vietnamese supermarket, the Mission Burger has been missing from the SF food-scape for far too long.
I suspect the Bowling Club will be too crowded to be much fun for the first few months, but the fact that lanes will be rented by the hour (to keep people from dawdling over long games), and that only half the lanes will be reservable in advance, with the other three saved for walk-ins, is a good sign that the owners are already doing what they can for those of us who might actually be interested in bowling. Again though, it’s mostly about the burger.