Bowling, bocce, beer: The rise of the Bay Area activity bar

Tom Michaelson watches as Anney Han plays air hockey at Plank. Food and drink provide 80 percent of the Oakland spot’s revenue, but the games keep the customers around longer. Tom Michaelson watches as Anney Han plays air hockey at Plank. Food and drink provide 80 percent of the Oakland spot’s revenue, but the games keep the customers around longer. Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 18 Caption Close Bowling, bocce, beer: The rise of the Bay Area activity bar 1 / 18 Back to Gallery

The clatter and smash of bowling balls at Plank, a new bar and restaurant in Oakland’s Jack London Square, merely provides the base coat for the sonic roar.

Layered over the top in thick, globby smears of noise are the manic jingling of video games, the clack of billiard balls and hundreds of alcohol-amplified conversations.

Plank isn’t a bar per se. It’s a block party. It is also the largest in a crop of activity bars that have opened in the Bay Area over the past 18 months.

These bars (and in some cases, bar-restaurants) aren’t content with a few pinball machines. They are places designed for playing as much as drinking — Chuck E. Cheeses for adults.

As the holiday season rolls toward New Year’s Eve, they’re packed with players who, bar owners hope, are staying longer and spending more money.

Steve Fox, the founder of Urban Putt, a Rube Goldberg-like indoor mini-golf course in San Francisco’s Mission District, says he had always wanted to open a miniature-golf spot, but financial concerns drove him to add a restaurant and a bar.

“Having a mini-golf course is not a commercially viable thing you can do in the middle of a city,” he said. But “if you think of the golf course, bar and restaurant as a three-legged beast, all three legs are hopping along rather well.”

Seven months after its opening, Fox said, “People are drinking before they play golf. They might drink afterward. And they’re eating on the course.”

Shawn and Tiffny Vergara, who opened Brewcade on Dec. 10 a few blocks away from Blackbird, their first Castro District bar, say they simply wanted to offer the neighborhood something different. Yet they echoed Fox: Brewcade’s 25 craft beers on tap and 24 vintage video games represent two sources of income.

The dark, sparsely decorated bar has a destination-worthy beer list, curated by an alumnus of craft beer mecca Monk’s Kettle, but the “Joust” and “Street Fighter 2” consoles are bringing in aficionados from all over the city (“a discriminating bunch,” Shawn said with a certain weariness). The bar’s sole change machine has already proved too feeble for the task.

Why the trend

One wonders cynically, when rushing to claim an open shuffleboard table before it is colonized by troupes of office workers, whether these bars satisfy a longing for childhood pleasures or a collective discomfort, in the age of texting, with face-to-face communication.

Shawn Vergara has a more benign explanation.

“It’s a great way to go out on a date,” he said. “It’s fun, and you don’t have the pressure of sitting across the table talking for three hours. You can interact in a different way.”

Locally, the precursor to this bar boom was the March 2012 opening of San Francisco’s Mission Bowling Club and the China Basin branch of Lucky Strike, a national bowling-bar chain.

The trend may also have been inspired by the success of Dave & Buster’s, which has opened 77 family-friendly restaurant and gaming centers across the country and went public in October.

The Millennial generation might prefer activity outings to plain old watering holes. According to an Eventbrite study published in January, American consumers are spending 70 percent more on live performances and sporting events than they did in 1987, and more than three-quarters of Millennials say they’d rather purchase experiences than goods.

In the Bay Area, the tech industry, especially, has embraced the activity bar.

Urban Putt’s Fox says that many companies send groups of workers to play mini-golf or book the entire space for corporate events. In SoMa, Hotel Zetta’s Playroom, located above its lobby bar, S&R Lounge, has become an after-work hangout for nearby tech workers who gather there for its pool table, board games, giant basketball Plinko game and oversize Jenga set.

Plank was designed for a broader demographic: everyone in Oakland. This grand ambition required a grand space. The Los Angeles-based Trifecta Management Group opened Plank in a 35,000-square-foot building, and created a 15,000-square-foot beer garden and bocce-ball court outdoors.

Yet Trifecta managing partner Mike Augur says the activities are secondary.

Lingering to play

“The restaurant and bar is, to me, the central experience,” he said, adding that 80 percent of Plank’s revenue comes from food and drink. Nevertheless, given the option of 18 bowling lanes, 40 high-definition TV screens and 60 gaming machines, the average customer stays at Plank for two hours, Augur said.

“Whether they’re dining or drinking, they say, 'Let’s go ahead and bowl while we’re here.’”

Jonathan Kauffman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jkauffman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jonkauffman

Bay Area’s new activity bars

Brewcade: 2200 Market St. (at Sanchez Street), San Francisco. www.brewcadesf.com. Free admission to New Year’s Eve festivities, 8 p.m.-2 a.m.

Golden Gate Tap Room: 525 Sutter St., No. 2 (near Powell Street), San Francisco; (415) 677-9999. http://ggtaproom.com.

Plank: 98 Broadway (at Water Street), Oakland; (510) 817-0980. www.plankoakland.com. Reservations required for New Year’s Eve: $60 per person/$110 per couple, which includes two drinks.

The Playroom: Hotel Zetta, 55 Fifth St. (near Mission Street), San Francisco; (415) 543-8555. www.viceroyhotelgroup.com/zetta. Open New Year’s Eve.

Urban Putt: 1096 South Van Ness Ave. (at 21st Street), San Francisco; (415) 341-1080. www.urbanputt.com. Closed New Year’s Eve.