Hey everyone, today I want to share a story about a place that a lot of us locals knew – the Great 66 Entertainment Center, which used to be called Lucky 66 Bowl. I started digging into this because, well, it just disappeared one day and I was curious.
So, I started off by gathering any info I could find online. Most of it was scattered around in different places, but I pieced together that the place was run by a guy named Mike Draper. It was a bowling alley and bar, you know, the usual hangout spot. I found out it was featured on that TV show, Bar Rescue, which was pretty cool, but that was a while back.
I kept digging and found some articles and posts that talked about the place closing down. Apparently, it happened around March 2020. This was right around when everything started getting weird with the pandemic, so I figured that might have had something to do with it.
I also stumbled upon a post on some social media site, saying Mike was in a ton of debt – almost a million bucks! And he was losing like $15,000 every month. That’s rough. It makes sense why a business would struggle under that kind of financial pressure.
Then I went a bit deeper, trying to understand what the place was like before it closed. I read through comments from people who used to go there. It sounded like it had a real community vibe, a place where everyone knew each other. That’s always sad to lose.
After putting all these pieces together, I realized it wasn’t just one thing that led to the Great 66 Entertainment Center closing. It was a mix of money troubles, maybe some bad luck with the timing of the pandemic, and who knows what else.
It’s always a bummer when a local spot closes down. It’s not just a business, it’s part of the community. Anyway, that’s the story as far as I could piece it together. Just thought I’d share what I found. It is interesting to look back and see what happened, even if it is a bit sad.
