restaurantRestaurant: Impossible · Season 9, Episode 3 · Aired August 6, 2014
Paul's Bar & Bowling
Paterson, New Jersey
The rescue did not hold; it later closed in 2020.
On the show
Season 9, Episode 3 · August 6, 2014 · restaurant
episode title: "Bowling: Impossible"
What happened after
91-year-old bar/bowling alley closed permanently, per local news.
Closure date on record: 2020-09
What happened on the show
A bar and bowling alley that had stood since 1929, Paul's Bar & Bowling in Paterson, New Jersey carried 91 years of history when it had its ninth season episode on the series. Irvine gave Paul's the show's usual two day intervention on a refit fund capped in the low five figures, an odd fit for a business that was as much neighborhood bowling institution as restaurant. The episode's specific beats are absent from the Wikipedia record, so this page does not reconstruct them. The ending, by contrast, is well reported: local outlets covered the alley's permanent closure in September 2020, drawing the curtain on more than nine decades. For a place that predated the Depression, the shutdown marked the loss of a genuine Paterson landmark rather than a routine restaurant failure.
After the cameras left
Paul's Bar & Bowling closed in September 2020, after 91 years. NorthJersey.com reported in August 2020 that the bar and bowling alley, open since 1929, would shut that September, with DailyVoice corroborating; both reached us as a search snippet, so we grade it a cautious medium. A nine-decade Paterson fixture that had survived the Depression and everything after finally went dark, one of the older institutions this show ever tried to save.
Sources
Confidence: medium. Last checked 2026-07-19.
What is there now
Street imagery via Google Maps. Location approximate.