Fans of beer, classic rock, and bowling have a new reason to head to Long Island City: beloved Greenpoint bowling mainstay The Gutter opens tonight (Friday) on 46th Avenue. The cavernous new space sits in a reclaimed taxi garage and features a bar serving a wide variety of drafts and booze options, a full kitchen, dozens of glorious old-school beer signs, and, of course, eight top-notch bowling lanes.
“We have always been fans of our neighbors to the north in Queens,” Gutter co-owner Todd Powers said. “We love the industrial feel of the neighborhood, and lucked out finding building that could house this type of project. The growing population has its appeal too, but we also think we will be drawing a lot of people to the neighborhood.”
The new Long Island City location has been in the works for well over a year, and owners Powers and Drew DeWitt searched for over two years to find a new location. The original Gutter continues to do brisk business on North 14th Street. Not even that pesky Ebola scare could slow its roll.
“We wanted to bring a bit of the Williamsburg location to LIC, but given that the space is so different we knew it needed to have a feel of its own,” Powers said. “It’s a little more industrial ’80s than the ’70s midwest feel of Williamsburg.” The new alley’s food menu will lean heavily on hot dogs and ice cream sandwiches to start, and new offerings will be added throughout the summer. Behind the bar await 18 beer taps, with pints running $6-7 and pitchers $21-24. Each game of bowling on the real wood lanes, which were reclaimed from a bowling alley in Rochester, will cost $7.
And so there you have it: a no-nonsense bowling alley that doubles as a spacious, unpretentious watering hole in a Queens neighborhood that’s recently been hit with an onslaught of fancy food. There’s nothing wrong with ramen burgers, but it can’t hurt to balance them out with a bowling alley that contains zero neon lighting and plays nothing but classic rock. The Gutter is objectively the best bowling alley in New York City, it’s good that there’s now two of them, and if I will fight you if you say otherwise. Am I wrong?
The Gutter Long Island City opens Friday, May 19th, at 5 p.m. // 10-22 46th Avenue, Long Island City // Brooklyn location website
