Brooklyn is everywhere and we are all Brooklynites now, so learn to love living the brand. The latest municipality to welcome an artisanal infusion of unmitigated Brooklyn is Las Vegas, where an 80,000 square foot iteration of Brooklyn Bowl opens this week. This sucker's almost four times the size of the original Brooklyn Bowl in Williamsburg, but despite the change in scale, it looks eerily similar to its predecessor.
"It's like Brooklyn Bowl on steroids," co-founder Peter Shapiro tells us. Located just off the strip on a pedestrian-only street called The Linq, the new venue is located underneath what will be the tallest Ferris wheel in the world when it opens this month. The Las Vegas location opens just two months after a second Brooklyn Bowl opened in London. A fourth Brooklyn Bowl is expected to open in your kitchen in April.
Unlike the Williamsburg original, the new Vegas location is not LEED-certified. But Shapiro was quick to point out that the club doesn't sell any bottled beer or canned beer, so there's presumably less waste. All the draught beer, which includes Brooklyn Lager, Brooklyn Pilsner, Brooklyn Brown Ale, Rogue Dead Guy Ale, and Magic Hat #9, costs between $6 and $8. The food menu is by Blue Ribbon and is identical to Williamsburg.
The stage was christened last weekend during a soft opening featuring Brooklyn Bowl regulars Soulive. The concert area can accommodate up to 2,000 audience members, and, like Williamsburg, the show can also be viewed from the lanes. Bowling, like the original location, is priced at a group rate in half hour increments: $30 for a half hour at peak times, $25 for off-peak. That's five dollars more than Brooklyn, but it does cost a lot to import all that Brooklyn cachet fresh daily.
This weekend the Roots will fly out to perform three shows, with Elvis Costello joining them for two of the performances. Galactic, Cake, Jane's Addiction and Spoon are also on the calendar in the coming months. And Shapiro adds that the venue will be putting a special emphasis on late night live music, because "Vegas is all DJs and EDM now" once the clock passes midnight.
