Strikes Owner Responds to Brouhaha Over Saturday’s Fight

In the wake of last Saturday’s fracas at Strikes bowling alley, owner Keith Burcham said he is putting in place new security measures to better oversee the crowds of young people that pour into the venue each weekend.

Customers will have to check their backpacks and motorcycle helmets at the door, and lift their shirts to prove they don’t have weapons tucked into their waistbands.  Those between the ages of 18 and 21 will get special wristbands allowing them late-night access to the bowling area—but not to alcohol.

The measures come on top of existing rules barring people from bowling if they are drunk or minors there after 10 p.m. without a responsible adult, Burcham said. He said his 10-member security team—three times larger than the crew at his other Strikes location in Rocklin—handles a crowd of hundreds of teens and young adults on weekends.

“In Elk Grove, there really is no family entertainment complex available and we are that,” he said. “We do our very best to have evenings go as calmly and quietly as we can.”

Burcham also gave his version of the events that transpired Saturday.

The fight started, he said, when members of the bowling alley’s security team approached a young bowler and asked him to pull up his sagging pants, which apparently violated Strikes’s dress code.

He refused and was asked to leave the building, Burcham said. He and his friends did—but not before kicking through the glass in the building’s front door and threatening to come back with a gun.

Security reported the threats to police, Burcham said, who showed up in a cruiser and frightened the rabble-rousers into running back into the building, which caused even more panic.

Meanwhile, out on the lanes, a few bowlers—annoyed that the lights had come up and the music stopped—pounced on someone they blamed for the delay, said Burcham, and began pelting him with bowling balls.

“The whole thing started with three individuals,” said Burcham. “It was a very strange turn of events.”

Police found no weapons in the building, but did arrest two Sacramento men in the brawl, which took place around 11:00 p.m. Saturday. Four other patrons were transported to local hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries, Cosumnes Fire Department officials said.

The fight touched off a number of on Elk Grove Patch, including a suggestion that neighbors of the bowling alley attend Thursday’s city planning commission meeting to complain that the violence there is putting them in danger.

Customers enjoying themselves at Strikes Wednesday afternoon said they’d heard about the fight—but that didn’t stop them from coming out to bowl.

“You’ve gotta expect that stuff to happen everywhere,” said Tony Nguyen, 26, who was bowling with his three-year-old son, sister and nieces. “We still come by because we know it’s a safe area.”

Harmony Quinn, 30, said she and her friends used to rent out a room at Strikes for dance parties, but had recently stopped coming at night.

“It’s ghetto,” she said. “One night I was here, I saw three fights.”

Still, Quinn said she wanted the bowling alley to remain open, because “there’s not much else to do in Elk Grove.”

“They just need to have a police presence outside,” she said.

Burcham says he won’t attend Thursday’s planning commission meeting, but has met separately with Mayor Steven Detrick and the Elk Grove Police Department to discuss security at Strikes.

He said the alley, which hosts senior bowling leagues and school fundraisers, hadn’t seen any dip in attendance since the incident.

“My son works here and my daughter works here,” said Burcham. “I certainly wouldn’t have them here if it was unsafe.”