Renaissance Bowling Center

$ 10 for unlimited bowling and shoes on a Saturday night? I’m in! Typically they do cosmic bowling on the weekends but when I asked them about it, they said it was too busy. This place was packed! I don’t go bowling very often, so maybe I have no idea of pricing, but my partner and I ended up playing like four or five games, which I think for $ 20 isn’t bad. I guess I am used to Garden Bowl prices.
This is a black-​woman owned business which makes it that much more rad. She was there sitting to the side of the cashier. There are some news-​clippings taped around the cashier station with some history of the spot. There was even a photo of the owner and Oprah.
Pitchers of beer were around $ 10. A dude bought me a beer even though I was there with my husband and he «didn’t care if that’s disrespectful». That would typically piss me off big time because who thinks it’s cool to be disrespectful, but I was having such a good time, I didn’t care. Thanks! You were right, the bottled beer DID taste better than the draft. But maybe because it was free.
I hope next time we go they will have the cosmic deal going.

I visited this bowling alley for the first time tonight with a few friends. I arrived around 10pm on a Sunday night and was immediately stopped as I entered the building by a «security guard.» He told us we had to wait by the door until the line near the register cleared. I thought this was odd but I complied. Once the party in front of us completed their transaction we were allowed to approach the counter. I attempted to read the signage surrounding the counter to look at pricing and general information yet I was told to hurry by the cashier. This rubbed me the wrong way seeing as this was my first time here and I knew nothing about the alley, the prices, etc. I told the cashier that we had two friends already here and we would like to join their lane so we only needed to rent shoes. He told me no you can’t do that. This confused me since I’ve been to many alleys before where this was allowed me. I re-​explained myself and asked what was the cost of just shoe rental. With an attitude he told me it’s $ 10 for everything, you can’t just rent shoes and you have to get your own lane. At this point I became frustrated and said fine I don’t want to bowl, I’ll just join my friends. The cashier then said well that’s $ 5. WHAT?! $ 5 to sit and watch someone bowl. At this point, I stepped aside and let my other friends pay for their lanes and shoes. The cashier legit would not complete their transaction until I paid. I gave the man the $ 5 so that my friends could bowl and so that I could see my other two friends I hadn’t seen since moving out of state.
As the night progressed, there were constant issues with my friends’ lane so they had to continuously go to the counter and request for the lane to be fixed, the pins to be corrected, or the power to the lane be cut on. It tuned out that the cashier was also acting as the mechanic so they had to wait until he was free to fix the lane (not to mention he was the bartender as well). After at least 4 issues with the lane, one would think he would offer to move them to another lane. Too much like right I suppose.
Turns out that the cashier/​mechanic/​bartender was also the owner. I grew very upset when I found that this place was minority-​owned since I like to support local and Black-​owned businesses but unfortunately this was my first and last time here.
Words of advice for the alley: Be patient and respectful to your customers especially if you’re going to make outlandish rules (i.e. no sharing lanes and $ 5 entry fee). Train your employees so that they can handle the cashier, bar, and the lanes so that you can actually manage the place and customers don’t have to wait 10min for a 30sec fix. Read a book about customer service, your business needs it.

Came here with a large group from work, we had made reservations for 16 people to come bowl on a Wednesday at 5:00. When we arrived, there was a big commotion because apparently they had no record of our reservation. Over half of the lanes were free, but because there were league games starting THREE HOURS later, they said they could not put us on any of those lanes, even when we promised to be done in 2 hours. So the 16 of us were squished into 3 lanes on the end. The man running the lanes and getting the shoes was also apparently the bartender (hope he washed his hands), so we were unable to get drinks anytime there was an issue with a lane, or a new few people dropping in.
But, once he heard we were from a school and were celebrating our Christmas get-​together, he basically was free with the pours for the rest of the time there (literally, free… as in, we no longer had to pay). It probably helped that the majority of our staff are lovely ladies. :)
Not in the best of neighborhoods… but what are ya’ gonna do.

Note: I bowl a lot… hence, my many reviews of bowling alleys.
Renaissance Bowl is pretty cool. It’s not ritzy or glamourous, just decently modern. I mainly frequent Renaissance Bowl because it is minority-​owned and I like to see good Detroit businesses thrive. That being said, the prices are pretty cool. You can get a game going for roughly $ 3, which is so cheap you can play numerous games without breaking your pocket. Roughly 50 lanes, so you could get a small group gathering going… but call ahead first. I think the hours of operation are only afternoons and nights.