Alex Harris is probably the only Chicago grade schooler who can slip downstairs at her dad’s office, fire up a 1955 Brunswick pinsetter and bowl a few lines on Lane 6 whenever the mood strikes.
Six-year-old Alex’s father is caterer Michael Harris, co-owner of Victory Lanes in Riverside, just about the coolest old-school bowling alley around, with a Wisconsin hunting lodge look, knotty pine paneling circa 1948 and original hardwood lanes. Before you pack your ball and shoes, though, there’s a slight catch.
No open bowling.
No public hours.
Sorry.
But Victory Lanes is indeed available for private parties and corporate events. You get the burgundy checkerboard floor tiles and retro ball returns, the dim lights and old-timey bar–a true Eisenhower-era time capsule experience. Any minute one expects Ed Norton and Ralph Kramden to come strutting through wearing Raccoon Lodge uniforms. Duck upstairs and there are 1950s-style banquet and billiard rooms.
Look again and check for stray toys spilling from office closets, because Alex Harris and 7-year-old Matt Duenas spend serious time here. Matt’s parents, Elizabeth and Jesse Duenas, are Harris’ business partners; in fact, it was Elizabeth who first spotted the classified ad for Victory Lanes. She knew her friend Harris, a recent widower, needed a family-friendly business where he could have Alex close by during the summertime and on holiday breaks from school.
But a bowling alley?
“Oh, this is perfect,” Harris said. “I love bowling. Elizabeth loves bowling too. I bowled as a kid in the Saturday morning league at Scottsdale Bowl at 83rd and Cicero, which isn’t there anymore. . . . Alex is a good bowler and Matt’s in the Bedford Park Park District League we have on Saturday mornings. That’s our only league.”
When Harris’ wife, Teresa, died in 2001, he said, he remembered her stories of growing up above the family restaurant in Chicago, Mi Casa, Su Casa. How the children waited quietly on the stairs for their folks to finish closing at night and come upstairs to tuck them in. He wanted an arrangement like that for Alex.
While the Harrises don’t live on the Victory Lanes property, previous owners Al and Lucy Raskevicz sure did, for 27 years.
“We raised three boys upstairs,” said Lucy Raskevicz, who, along with husband Al, is retired and living in the far western suburbs. “It was a little noisy living right on Ogden Avenue and the pinsetters rumbled under the floor at one end, but you adjust. My boys were in 3rd, 4th and 5th grade when we moved in, so I know exactly what that Mr. Harris means about having his little girl with him. We were that way with our boys. After 6 p.m., Al and I worked downstairs, but the boys knew to come down and get us if they needed anything.”
Victory Lanes has always been a family concern. It opened in 1936 or 1938; nobody recalls the original owners, though a family named York operated the six-lane bowling center from 1948 to 1972, when Al Raskevicz left his staff job with Brunswick to take over ownership. The Raskevicz family ran Victory Lanes until 1999, when, finding no immediate interest, Al arranged for a developer to bulldoze the building and place condominiums on the site.
Enter local real estate agent Karen Skiba, who insisted, “I couldn’t let that happen. I thought to myself, `I love that building!’ ” Over dinner with three other couples and her then-husband, she said, `We ought to buy Victory Lanes and turn it into our own private club.’
“We didn’t do it right then. That sort of got put on the back burner until I heard Al was definitely going to knock the building down. He said he’d give me one week to put together a group to buy Victory Lanes.”
And Skiba did–for $300,000. She went back to her real estate client list and found eight other families willing to join in saving Victory Lanes. The idea was simple enough: run the bowling alley as a party facility to make expenses, but the “Nine Families” would have unlimited access at other times. Can’t sleep at 3 a.m.? Drive over, flick on the lights and bowl 30 or 40 frames. Have out-of-town relatives dropping by? Show ’em Victory Lanes. Each family member had a Victory Lanes bowling shirt done in the same burgundy as the floor tiles, as well as a bowling ball with his or her initials engraved.
“We used Victory Lanes that way quite a bit at the beginning,” confirmed a member of the Nine Families, Everett Conner, publications manager for Medical Journals with the University of Chicago Press. “Victory Lanes was our meeting place. Drive over on a Saturday. You’d see another car in the parking lot. One of the other owners had the same idea. Your kids would bowl and you’d sit at the bar and talk. . . . We’d meet there and go out to breakfast afterward, or have a beer and not keep track until one of us would say, `Put that on Jim’s tab.'”
Recalled Skiba: “We kept limited open bowling for a while and continued a few leagues, and we had our Wednesday `Ed’ nights, where we’d watch the show [set largely in a bowling alley] and bowl.”
The Nine Families voted to sell Victory Lanes after three years; with that many owners, it wasn’t always easy coming to consensus decisions. (Members of the Nine Families are, by the way, still welcome to bowl at Victory Lanes.)
“I give us credit for saving Victory Lanes and doing necessary structural upgrades,” said Skiba. “Elizabeth and Michael are making improvements too. But they’re subtle. They’re doing it the right way by preserving the 1950s feel.”
Harris and Duenas took over in early 2003 and said, no, they haven’t made any serious archeological discoveries or dramatic changes. No stumbling over hidden rooms or secret wall safes holding wads of 1940s greenbacks. “Do bowling trophies count?” asked Harris. “I found a few behind the pinsetters. I also have the old stadium seats we removed from the bar area to make more space. . . . I guess I should store them away for the next owner.”
Next owner?
Harris added that he and Duenas aren’t selling Victory Lanes anytime soon.
“This stretch of Ogden Avenue is zoned residential,” he explained, “but we have a zoning variance good until 2047.”
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Reach Victory Lanes, 7312 W. Ogden Ave. in Riverside, at 708-447-4000 or at www.victorylanes.net.
