CONVENTION CRASHING: INTERNATIONAL BOWL EXPO

Saturday, June 30, 2007 | 7:29 a.m.

John Patten's art career started in October 2004 when he bowled a perfect game, a 300.

His local alley in Lincoln, Neb., let him keep the lane he bowled it on, which it was ripping out anyway.

At the time, he didn't know bowling lanes were 2 1/2 inches thick. It took six guys to get it back to Patten's house.

"My wife about killed me. She said, 'What are you going to do with it?' I said, 'I dunno, bowl with it.' "

But it had a higher calling: art.

Patten's muse spoke to him while, as you would imagine, he was bowling.

"I threw a strike," he says, "and it literally froze in my mind."

So he took the 3-foot pin deck from his lane, refinished it, bolted on some scattered-looking pins, bolted on a ball smashing into them and hung it on his wall.

Soon people were asking for their own strikes. Now he also makes coffee tables, end tables, poker tables and oddities out of old lanes. As far as he know, he says, he's the only one making this kind of art.

We can at least say he was the only such artist at the International Bowl Expo at Mandalay Bay on Thursday, which drew more than 5,400 people. Many of them were alley owners, there to look at the latest in black-light neon carpets, strobe lights, projection screens, animated score keepers, music video selectors and more, more, more.

(What happened to dive bowling, anyway, bowling with busted juke boxes not playing music, bottles of Miller High Life, and a must of low expectations?)

Also, prepared food. Let's get this out of the way. I've been to conventions for bars, movie theaters and now, bowling alleys. And I'll tell you this: You should not eat the food at bars, movie theaters and bowling alleys.

It's all sugared, salt-injected, artificial cheese - filled, frozen, no-oil fried and heat lamped. It's convenience store food. It's greasy enough to go through two napkins and still turn a notebook page translucent. It sits in your stomach like a wad of tar and carpet tacks. Don't. Do. It.

At least at a bowling convention, though, there are clear plastic bowling balls with what I'm pretty sure are fake human skulls inside .

The Ferrari of bowling Zambonis

Meet Kegel's Kustodian Walker, a cordless, Bluetooth-enabled robotic lane duster, cleaner and oilier that salesman and technician Don Agent calls both the "Zamboni of the bowling center" and "the Ferrari of the industry."

Basically it's a rolling black metal box about 3 1/2 feet wide, the width of a lane. It looks mean. It looks like it eats Roombas for a light snack between breakfast and brunch, though Agent assures me that it has a very sensitive safety sensor and would not do so.

He says it's so popular that Kegel has 200 Kustodians back-ordered and that even eight-lane alley owners are buying them, even though the $33,000 machine is really more than they need. It's just that everyone's worried about keeping his lanes in tip-top, strike-producing shape.

"These days," Agent says, "if people aren't throwing strikes, they aren't having fun and they aren't drinking beer."

Product 1: Fashion to spare

Bowling shoe-inspired high heels, come in both red, white and blue , and red , white and black. From Striking Products, $89.95, www.strikingproducts.com.

Product 2: Death ball

Skull in ebonite, available in 14- and 15-pound sizes. Available through H.J. Malone Associates, $75.95, www.hjmalone.com.

Overheard:

First alley owner: "If you got nice bathrooms, you gotta keep the punks out."

Second alley owner: "Oh we do. They're like the Taj Mahal."