Photo courtesy of Austin Chronicle

Look up the term midas touch and you might see a picture of Tim League next to it. The owner of the three original Alamo Drafthouse cinemas has struck gold again with The Highball. Six months into the adult playground’s existence, League has had time to iron out some of the kinks and has plenty more tricks up his sleeve. We sat down with the Austin visionary to get the goods on what comes next for The Highball.

One of the questions asked from guests is how The Highball came to a state of fruition. The origin, it turns out, came from necessity.

“The concept grew organically,” said League. “We first started using this space when the Salvation Army moved out. We needed a place to do some parties we had in mind. I think the first one was a casino party for a movie we had opening over at the Alamo Drafthouse. Then we did a vampire prom party. Each time we were outfitting the space and we realized there are a lot of times where we needed a party venue. We would end up renting spaces all over town depending on what ideas we had, if they weren’t movie theater ideas.

We went into the project just wanting an open venue, which constitutes the ballroom portion of The Highball. The next phase of it came from looking into logistics. One of the problems was that it was a gigantic space. So we had to decide whether to subdivide the space and only take a part of it or take the whole space and figure out our parking ratios, as in how many parking spaces we need per the city of Austin to open up the place.  One of the things you can do to lower the number of parking spaces you need is to put a bowling alley in, so that is where the concept really started to come together. We liked the idea of a boutique bowling alley. I’ve been to a few around the country. In the development phase I went to a couple others and started to learn what it meant to operate a functioning bowling alley.

We decided to go vintage with the lanes. I mean you can go brand new with the synthetic lanes but we’ve always had an affinity toward older classic designs. We found a company to deliver us 1959 Brunswick A-1 lanes. Once we got the lanes in and saw how cool the styling was on the table and ball returns, that kind of dictated the design of the space. From there it was a matter of piecing the rest together.”

An added luxury to the venue are privately themed karaoke rooms, an element to The Highball that was spawned from League’s passion to be a karaoke rock star.

“I’m really terrible at karaoke but I like to inflict myself on others,” League joked. “We knew we were going to do karaoke once in a whole on the big stage. The way the space laid out, we found these nooks and crannies we thought would be great for private karaoke rooms. There aren’t a lot of options for private karaoke in Austin that are of the Asian model. There are a few up north but we decided to take our own spin on it.”

From one karaoke lover to another, we had to know what were some songs that League adored and the ones that made him cringe.

“It’s easier to say what you can’t do. People who run karaoke events, KJ’s, have their pet peeve songs,” said League. “The worst are the boring ones that ramble. You never ever want do ‘American Pie.’ It’s like eight minutes long and is an annoying song to begin with. If you’ve ever spent any time in piano bars that it is played like every fourth song. Songs that get overplayed are bad. There are some people who can really thrash out a bad ass ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ but you probably shouldn’t do it.

I have no vocal range so there are certain artists I gravitate towards. Dean Martin didn’t have a range either so I can handle his songs. I personally like to sing songs by pissed off women about their plight in life, so Loretta Lynn and Helen Reddy are my go to ones.

SXSW 2010 has come and gone and the role of the festival next year at The Highball is a topic League is already exploring.

“We haven’t made up our minds yet on that. I plan to talk to the people at SXSW next week about that very matter. My sense is that so much of SXSW is centered downtown, so when the music portion hits it could be that the outlying areas don’t do as well. I think we’re keeping our book open for SXSW. We may be an official venue or have a lot of unofficial shows, and we may just end up being a cool place for people to escape the insanity of the music scene. Thankfully we have eleven months to figure that one out.”

A successful business has to be willing to constantly evolve. League is well aware of it and it is one of the reasons The Highball will transform from season to season. To quote Bob Dylan, “the times, they are a changin’.”

“We’re expanding the food menu. We started out small but that is going to change,” said League. “Our bar menu is growing for the spring starting Tuesday. I’d like to see some competitive skee-ball, with the Brewskee-Ball network. We’re starting to get our footing with booking the ballroom and I think we’re going to start bringing in more live music. It’s been a little bit of catch as catch can because we’re all new to this experience. The first six months has been about figuring out what people want, what works well and what doesn’t. We also might add some little bowling leagues, some that are less serious and more focused on having fun. We have to have the Big Lebowski Night. We’ve teased that we were going to and we now have it scheduled it the next few months. We’re going to do it very regularly.”

The Highball is still in the honeymoon phase of its existence in Austin. Backed by an energetic staff and a fun, quality community supporting the venue, there’s reason to believe League will make sure it continues to be a beautiful marriage for years to come.