Shit & Not Shit Pubs in Reading

Bowl Central – Reading, 65 Caversham Road, Reading, RG1 8AD.

Bowling alleys in Reading are a bit like buses. You wait for one and along come two at once. And then one of them hits a man who then gets straight back up and staggers into the Purple Turtle and orders a pint.

Hollywood Bowl’s recent-ish decision to open a giant 24-lane skittle alley in the old House of Fraser in The Oracle probably wasn’t particularly welcome news at Bowl Central HQ, the home of the small south coast bowling chain. After decades of being sans ten pin bowling, our town saw two proper alleys open up within a matter of days.

There’s another one opening up at some point soon where the old Mothercare used to be on King Street too. Factor in the neon bowling options at Broad Street Mall’s Urban Fun thing and the lanes at Spinners a few doors down and it seems as if Reading’s gone a bit OTT with it all of late.

“NO STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN?! Denied!”

Bowl Central’s 7-laner can be found on the Caversham Road, in between the Pure Gym and the fire station. On the site of the old Dawsons musical instrument shop.

It’s not the first ten pin bowling alley that Caversham has hosted (yes, yes, Cavo types – we know that the Caversham Road isn’t RG4, calm down). Back in 1963, ‘Excel Bowl’ was a giant bowling place that opened to cash in on the new fad which got everyone excited at the time. As if the assassination of JFK, Tottenham winning the European Cup Winner’s Cup and the introduction of the Time Lord and the Daleks to British TV wasn’t enough. It was on the corner of Caversham Road and Vastern Road, specific geographic location fans. It’s Great Brigham’s Mead, sort of opposite TGI Friday.

Anyway, that’s enough of the old days of US presidents getting shot, Spurs winning lesser European trophies and the BBC being obsessed with Doctor bloody Who. Let’s talk about 2025!

[FAO Any Radio 4 comedy producers out there, I am available for work]

Look at that technique. First chuck of a bowling ball in about two decades. Got a strike, obviously.

Seven lanes isn’t a huge amount, so don’t expect some mega bowling extravaganza. Walk in the front and you’ll be greeted with the arcade/amusements side. Walk through that and the bar’s on the right, bowling to the left. Enter via the back/car park and the bar’s in front of you, bowling to your left.

It’s not huge, so why I just felt the need to explain the layout of the place to you, I’ve no idea. Still, it’s written now and if there’s one thing we know about arrogant blogger/reviewer types round these parts – it’s that they don’t edit themselves.

Anyway, bowling. If you don’t leave Reading much, you might not remember the last time you played. Turns out it’s quite fun. At least for a bit, you’re half-decent and you’ve had a few beers.

See? Told you. Strike first go. You didn’t believe me, did you?

Turns out bowling’s actually a piece of piss. If you apply the silly-looking technique and do a bit of fancy follow-through with your hand. And not just self-defeatedly almost purposefully jut the ball directly into the gutter over and over again as if to make some sort of point like Mrs. STiR.

Weirdly enough she didn’t take me up on my simpering/smug suggestion to show her ‘how it’s done’ or listen when I started revving the ol’ mansplainin’ machine up. Funny, you’d have thought she’d have wanted the benefit of my experience of having watched The Big Lebowski several times, wouldn’t you?

Me, after every single shot. ‘Shot’, is that right? ‘Bowl’? I dunno. ‘Go’, maybe?

Don’t like bowling? Well, fine. I mean, Bowl Central’s probably not really for you. But maybe you ended up agreeing to the offer, saying yes because it was either that or somehow spending £39 on Domino’s and sitting in and watching Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel on your own. Which you wouldn’t normally mind but Rob Beckett and Josh Widdecombe are on it this week and, well, fuck that. Obviously.

Luckily for you, Bowl Central has other stuff. Like all this:

If you want to play all of these machines, you might have to take a loan off that fancy-looking fella there. The vig’s 25% a week, mind

It also has a couple of big screens there for the ‘augmented reality darts’. Which is darts, but ‘more immersive’ and ‘improved with state-of-the-art tech’.

Boom Battle Bar has loads of it. And there could be an entire bar all about this sort of gamified arrows coming soon (‘Flight Club’). So there.

Most of these photos are from pre-launch/launch events. It’s not always this quiet, we presume

Basically, it’s trying to cash in on the recent uptick in interest around the ‘sport’ of darts. But darts is darts, at the end of the day. It’s like the old saying goes, ‘you can put lipstick on a pig, but just don’t. It’s weird and the farmers don’t like it.’

Bullseye bullshit

It’s not for me. It’s all a bit uncanny valley, really. Augmented darts is a bit like augmented breasts. The closer your hand gets to that big round target, the more you realise it’s all just a bit fake and doesn’t really feel right.

Please see below for another poor taste 1970’s-style seaside/Dick Emeryesque darts/tits gag…

Fred’s friend was right, he got double top, alright. Fred ended up serving a 20-year custodial sentence for this ABH. Sounds harsh, given the mitigating circumstances here, such as the nearby dartboard and Fred’s obvious vision issues. But before you feel too sorry for him, it’s worth noting that not only was Fred on licence at the time of the assault, he was also a convicted sex offender. And the blind cunt dresses like Rupert the Bear.

Let’s move on from this, shall we?

Apparently, none of the staff are on fixed term contracts. That’s right, everyone – they’re just tenpin’!

Just back to the bowling, quickly. None of that lot is ‘augmented’ in any way. Although there are some repetitive and rather tedious piss-taking graphics that pop up on your screen when you play a bad shot. Ask my old lady, she’ll tell you.

Booze, you ask? Why, yes! There’s a bar. Here’s how the offerings were looking a little after opening in Summer 2025:

The friendly assistant manager recommended that IPA with the silly name and it was nice enough. Whatever.

I didn’t see too much food flying about, but the prices look fine for a quick bite of a Friday night or if you’re taking the kids because it’s your weekend and thank Christ this place opened up you’ve finally got somewhere new to take them apparently the food’s okay you can get them a pizza and some onion rings to share and then subtly ask them if that tall friend of Mummy’s with the big red car has stayed over again since the last time fuck sake a grand a month child support payments how’s anyone supposed to afford that the way things are now and besides she got the bloody house she should be paying you for fuck sa-

Who else remembers the old days, eh? When people could be bothered to peel potatoes?

Anyway. Where was I? The bowling? Decent. The bar? Yeah, not bad. The darts and pool tables? Plenty of room, bit of a laugh. Traditional British pursuits with a drink, great. Less great? The amusements side of things.

Some of games are quite fun, others are cash-grab bullshit. It’s hit ‘n’ miss. A bit like one of the slightly better options there, Whack-a-Mole. Actually, it’s a Whack-a-Clown game for some reason instead. Is it because ‘Whack-a-Mole’ could be said to promote animal abuse? Perhaps. But then clowns are just people doing a job. I mean, it’s a fucking weird job and you’ve got to imagine that almost all of them deserve at least a few smashes over the bonce with a mallet, but still.

G’WAN! FUCKIN’ WHACK ‘IM!

It’s a tough one, this. Clowns are, by their very essence dual characters. Human dichotomies. Personifications of the eternal struggle of good vs. evil. Equal parts Mr. Tumble and John Wayne Gacy. So whack ’em. Just whack ’em knowing they only deserve around half of the whacks they take.

The ceilings say Shoreditch chop house. The carpets say 1992 coach seat cover.

Sure, at £1.50 for most goes on things, it’s not cheap. But what is now? Even your mother’s charging fifteen quid for monthly access to her OnlyFans now and she only updates it with video content once a week.

You don’t mind paying to have a go if it’s going to be a laugh, even if you feel a bit rushed (the games, that is – not your mother). But the frustrating ones are those you get one go at, you don’t achieve the thing you were never really going to achieve anyway and then it’s all over, the money spent having just bought disappointment (the games, that is – not your mother).

This one was a particularly bad offender. Robdog shit that it is.

That said, for every John Wayne Gacy machine, there’s a Mr. Tumble. This Mission: Impossible game’s a laugh, for instance. It involves shooting quite a few thousand robots, which isn’t particularly loyal to the film franchise, but if it were loyal to the film franchise that’d mean Simon Pegg would make an appearance. So we’re not complaining.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get past level four without developing a debilitating RSI

You best bet – cash-wise – is to just bite the bank balance bullet and buy some credit. Twelve quid might seem steep for an hour of pratting about on some arcades, but it’s cheaper than the thirty quid you might fork out on individual games.

And also, what’s £12 nowadays? Barely two pints. Or three weeks’ access to your mother’s ‘Exclusive XXX VIP 🍑 content’.

Doesn’t include the cranes, but those things are a gip, anyway. If whoever invented those crane-grab ‘games’ lost a hand in the innards of one of those machines, do you think they’d be happy to wake up after the transplant operation and find out that their new ‘hand’ was actually one of their lazy, gripless grabbers? No, they wouldn’t. Taking 25 attempts to pick up their fucking toothbrush every morning. Serves them right, really

I’ve just realised something. It’s all just aiming things at other things, isn’t it? That’s what all the arcade games are. And the air hockey. And the darts. And the pool. Even the bowling. And the bar, really. When you think about it.

And sex.

Hang on, is that all life is? Just aiming things at different things? Over and over and over again? Your overall success in life being dictated by your ability to accurately aim somethings at something else…???

I’m beginning to wonder if taking mushrooms before writing these things is really that good an idea.

“I’m ready to go in, Coach! Just give me a chance. I know there’s a lot riding on it, but it’s all psychological. Got to stay in a positive frame of mind. Memorize the playbook. Study the films.”

Here’s a funny one. The last time I had a go at VR was when I was about ten.* A virtual reality boxing thing up in Scarborough. Was quite fun, though the graphics were a bit shit. Three full decades on, I was expecting great things from a techlandscape which is now about three ChatGPT updates away from Terminator 2: Judgement Day. I didn’t get it here, though.

Is AI hoarding all the good VR? Only the incredibly sweaty headset I picked up at Bowl Central was wet, incredibly heavy and clumsy and just rattled through some woeful semi-3-D graphics that looked less like you’re immersed into some space age rollercoaster experience and more like you were just staring too close to the TV while your older brother plays Wipeout on the Playstation 1 after school.


* That’s not strictly true – Wren Kitchen have a VR set-up showing you what your new kitchen’s going to look like. This remains my genuinely most exciting virtual reality experience to date. Those timber countertops looked so real, it was mad!

“Always. Seem to. Be governed by this love we have for useless. Twisting. All the new technology. Oh, now there is no sound, for we all live underground.” *big hat dance*

At the end of your probably-quite-expensive raid of the playable amusements and your righteous swerving of the bullshit rip-off games, you’ll have a bunch of paper tickets. Now you head to the counter near the front door…

Well, you know the rest. You’ve spent weekends at the seaside. Every other weekend for a few summers heading to the coast for the day for hours and hours of chips and cans of Coke and arcade games and bowling and pizza and onion rings and your dad asking you about how often her new boyfriend comes round and you pretending not to know so he doesn’t get all sullen and want to leave before you’ve managed to get enough tokens to get hold of that big stuffed Feather McGraw toy for fuck sa-

I was going to suggest that this image quite beautifully represents the concept of late or end stage capitalism. But then I saw they have Mr. Splat squishies and they’re cool

Anyway. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Bowl Central – Reading. Yeah, it’s alright. I mean, it triggered quite a lot of childhood trauma obviously, but other than that… It’s a fun enough night out. So long as you’re half decent at bowling. And can afford the amusements. And the potential therapy sessions.