Flaherty’s Arden Bowl

I’ve been to Flaherty’s quite a few times going back to a cousin’s grad party almost a decade ago. Despite my incredibly awful bowling skills (some of you Unilocalers even got a first hand view of these at Jingle Bowl), I still love to go and roll the rock.
Open bowling on a Saturday afternoon is a hell of a fun option to have in this state when the weather is somewhere between teeth chattering and nut freezing. The fact they do it by the hour is an even better option to have.
I’d highly recommend calling ahead of time. Each time I’ve been here, they do have a special event going on that takes up 1 – 20 lanes. Still leaves 20 or so, but, they do fill up fast.
Lanes are always well kept, plenty of ball options for everyone with all sorts of finger sizing options, and weight options. Big fan of the hand sanitizer being set out too, so after, or between, you can clean your mitts a bit without seeking the washroom.
Front desk staff is always helpful, and actually responds to the intercom. I know, they build the lanes with them, and the staff actually uses them! Who the hell knew logic like that would work and be appreciated?!
Service from the wait staff is somewhere between great to «they have a lane wait staff?» Which it was this past weekend. They do sometimes have a self serve water station set out, which is great. Other times I haven’t seen it. At least you don’t have to go into the bar to get a beverage though, as the grill window next to the front desk can get water and soda.
All in all, it’s a solid place to kill an hour or two, test your bowling skills or have some fun, have your ass handed to you by a girl (3 games in a row in my case), and do some quality people watching.

This review is mostly about the food. I’m not a big bowler, in fact — I do not bowl. I do, however, eat. And when friends ask me to meet them at the bowling alley, I go along because I know I’ll end up having a good time anyway. Cosmic Bowling is really fun to watch, so I’ll give Flaherty’s an «A Plus» on that score. The bowling alley is clean and they play some happy tunes to boot.
Now the pizza. Yes, it’s very good. In fact, it’s some of the best pizza around! It’s thin crust with lots of sauce and toppings are generous. We got a build your own pizza and added sausage, pep and green olives. Not to mention their prices are extremely reasonable when compared to other pizza places around the area. This might be one of their best kept secrets, and I’m giving it away. When you’re in Arden Hills and the North Metro in general, I’ve noticed things get cheaper and the atmosphere changes dramatically too. People are down to earth, having a good time, enjoying each other’s company, it’s not pretentious at all and I’m loving every minute of it.
They also have some great drink specials on Sunday. Their Bloody Mary’s are $ 3, from 11am — 3pm. I also like that this place is very kid-​friendly, and a great venue for children’s birthday parties. A good time for sure!

I went to Mike’s Pro Shop, which is located in Flaherty Lanes, to purchase shoes and a ball.
After wandering around the shop for awhile, an employee approached me and asked if I needed help. I pointed to a sign that said I could buy a ball, shoes, and a bag for $ 69.95 and said «I’m interested in that.»
The employee looked first at me and then at my wife before saying, «Is it for her?»
«No, it’s for me.»
He replied, pointing to the balls behind me, «As a guy, you’ll want one of these balls. Men want a ball that will hook. Those other balls are plastic and don’t hook. There more for women. Women play a different game.»
Not really believing what I was hearing, I asked, «Why do they play a different game?»
With a chuckle, he said, «Because they are women.»
«Hmmm»
“I’m not trying to hard sell you,” he continued. «But a man wants a ball that will hook. Those other balls get pushed around whereas these balls here have better control.»
At this point I had enough and announced before walking out, «I’ve had enough of your sexist bullshit. I’m leaving.»

This is a family owner institution. A fun place to bowl with friends or with kids. The bar is «bowling alley nice» and one of the few original places in the north burbs. Meat raffles, pull tabs and bar bingo are fun and sometimes draw big fun crowds. And the pizza is some of the best in the suburbs. You can’t go wrong with a pitcher of beer and a pizza at Flahertys.

I remember back in the day when bowling was like… really cool.
Back when I was 12 and the idea of being out past 9pm to go to «cosmic bowling» was the most exciting thing I could do with an entire evening.
But, now that I have a nightlife, the idea of going bowling here… is not so exciting anymore.
As if to prove that fact I went to Flaherty’s to try and enjoy a night of bowling! It was okay really. there was nothing oddly bad about it. I especially like all of the rennovations that had been done since when I was in school. It looked a lot better, especially not having to walk through the huge plume of smoke that seemed to hang in the air at all times.
It was just WAY too expensive for what it was… We had one round of bowling, plus shoe rental, and it came out to the tune of $ 22… and that was before drinks and snacks. What a disappointment!
There are cheaper places to bowl, and I don’t really care how «nice» your bowling alley looks, or how new your balls are… I don’t want to pay more for bowling that I would for a movie.
The food is pretty bland (although i won’t lie to you, the pizza’s are amazing), and the drinks are pretty over priced and watered down (stick with bottled beer).

I love bowling here! The graphics and console are better than other places without a doubt. The lanes tend to be a bit more slippery though. Staff is awesome. Haven’t really had their food so can’t really comment on that.

Flaherty’s Arden Bowl is, by far, my favorite bowling alley. It’s clean and doesn’t have that bowling alley stank. Its a little more expensive that some of the other bowling alleys but I am more than happy to pay for the convienience. Best of all they have have pinball. We have been known to go there *just* to play pinball.

I was going through some old pictures, and sure enough this is where we held my son’s 12^th birthday party. A really nice private room with all the bowling noise in the background. Since the closing of Lava Links this is a good alternative for tweens and teens. Good for office parties too. I love cosmic bowling. Now it would be boring without it.

This is the first of two post-​birthday reviews. We were trying to think of something fun to do on my birthday and my wife suggested we go bowling with the kids. We used to bowl a lot when we were younger (that is, we bowled often, but not necessarily well), but neither of us had touched a bowling ball in probably 10 years. My how things have changed.
I’m going to list a bunch of cool features of Flahertys, but I’m guessing these features exist in most modern bowling alleys. But in case, you haven’t been bowling in a while, it’s worth going back.
Scoring is all electronic now, so you don’t have to worry about adding wrong or writing a score down wrong. That also means you can’t fudge. :-P Before you start, you enter all the bowler’s names into the system and whether or not they will use bumpers to prevent balls from going into the gutter. The gutter bumpers only come up for those that you specify them for. That’s a really cool feature when you want to bowl with kids. When I was young, they had inflatable bumpers that filled the gutters, so it was hard to remove them between bowlers. (And we had to bowl uphill both turns.)
They also have electronic sensors to detect whether or not you crossed over the line and marked the scoresheet as F (oul) if you did. Given that we were just fooling around, I found that a bit annoying when my wife did that on her second frame and there was no way to turn that off. I was skipping balls a lot the rest of the game just because I was afraid to foul. I didn’t see a way to turn that off, but I also didn’t ask.
After each turn, they showed a little cartoon with animated pins that the kids always ran back to try to see. Sometimes the kids didn’t even bother to see what happened to their ball. They just ran to the screen. The cartoons are cute with a lot of adaptations of The Matrix incorporated into them.
Every weekday Flahertys has a happy hour from 3−6pm where you can get pizzas for ½ price and $ 2 off any appetizer $ 5 or more. They also have alcohol specials, but I didn’t pay much attention to those since we don’t drink.
Sunday through Thursday nights from 9:30pm to close you buy two games and get one free with a single college ID for a group. And they have cosmic bowling Saturday nights which is basically black lights with neon balls. I’ve never been, but it looks like it would be really cool.
Flahertys has a huge party room for birthday parties or other gatherings. There are usually multiple parties going on each weekend. They also have an attached pub with darts, pool tables, and TVs as well as a small area with video games.
I’ve been to Flahertys a few times when I was in high school (it’s been a fixture in the neighborhood for many, many years) and it was always dark, dingy, and filled with cigarette smoke. Now with the smoking ban, it’s a much more pleasant environment and great to have a night out with the kids.