Bowled Over Movement to save Holiday Bowl as Los Angeles architectural landmark The Holiday Bowl has survived two riots, five major earthquakes, and even the advent of automatic scoring. But 42 years after the Crenshaw Boulevard bowling alley was built in the space-age Googie style, the Holiday may be over, thanks to a fed-up property owner and a city councilman who'd gladly swing the wrecking ball himself. When the Holiday closed in May, owner Marshal Siskin claimed there weren't enough bowlers in the area to support the spacious 36-lane alley. Siskin sold the building and its surrounding four acres for a reported $4 million to developers planning to replace the alley with a minimall. A band of regulars, neighbors, and preservationists enlisted the Los Angeles Conservancy to help nominate the Holiday as a historic cultural monument. The official designation, bitterly opposed by the neighborhood's city councilman, Nate Holden, would prevent demolition for at least a year. The fight is the latest in a long list of squabbles over L.A. car washes, coffee shops, and other architectural ephemera. But architects Armet & Davis's Googie design for the Holiday, with its zigzagging roof and startling orange-and-white facade, is an afterthought to many of those lobbying to stop the bulldozers. "The structure isn't important at all," insists Jacqueline Sowell, a former waitress. "It's what's inside that counts." And what happened inside the Holiday was by all accounts remarkable, a rare and wonderful confluence in a city too often divided by racial boundaries. Built in 1958 by a group of Japanese American businessmen who migrated to the area after the war, the Holiday quickly became the de facto town square for one of L.A.'s most diverse neighborhoods. Black bowlers played on Japanese-league teams, Latino teenagers slurped udon, and Japanese grandmothers huddled over bowls of steaming grits. "It was cross-generational, it was cross-racial," says City Councilwoman Rita Walters, who frequented the bowling alley's sushi bar. "It's a reminder that we don't have to live in a segregated city." When riots ripped through the area in 1992, a group of regulars stood guard in the parking lot, and the Holiday was spared. "All around us buildings burned to the ground, and we didn't sustain as much as a broken window," says Sowell. But where some see a landmark of diversity, others see a money pit. Elizabeth Watson, a lawyer representing Siskin, told the city council that the alley hadn't turned a profit in 15 years. Mark Ranftle, an associate broker for NAI Capital real estate, a company hired by the new developers to find tenants, says big bowling center operators were scared away by the estimated $750,000 needed for repairs. "If someone would give it half a chance, it would succeed like crazy," counters John English, an expert in Googie architecture who helped save the original McDonald's in Downey and the Bob's Big Boy in Burbank. Holden, who has fought hard against protecting potential landmarks in his district, including the Ambassador Hotel and the McKinley Building, demurs. "Times have changed," he told the council in September. "When I arrived in L.A., they were hunting rabbits there. We'd like to see bowling start again, but it's just not happening." While the council continues to mull over the historic designation, activists are lobbying likely investors, such as basketball hero turned entrepreneur Magic Johnson, to ride in and save the day. "We're not trying to stop development," says English. "We're just saying new development shouldn't come at the expense of the Holiday. Because once it's gone, something very special and very rare goes with it."