The first hole of the miniature golf course at The Dusty Planet in Olneyville is emerald, like any other putting green. The second hole is golden, like a cornfield on the farm. There’s even a thigh-high model of a barn to drive the point home.
But at the third hole, a flying saucer that’s landed straight out of a sci-fi flick of the 1950s transports the golfer to outer space, which is shown by the grays and blacks of its textured surface. And an alien surfer points the way to the six other-worldly holes of the course.
The beeps and boops of pinball machines lining a wall give an atmospheric soundtrack to this quirky combo of mini golf and arcade on the first floor of the Harrison Steam Workspace at 50 Agnes Street, just a block from Fete and the other bars at The Bend. There’s also a bar, with beer and wine for the adults, and soda and fruit drinks for the children.
It’s out of this world, one might say.
Which is exactly what siblings Hannah and Doug Abelow of Providence had set out to do a few years ago, they relate.
“We were always looking for a collaborative project we could do,” says Hannah. “And during the pandemic in 2020, we got serious about designing a mini golf course.”
“This being New England, it had to be indoors,” Doug adds.
They worked with the Rhode Island Small Business Development Center, and after a two-year search, found their space, so to speak. It had last been used by the Victory Pearl Factory.
“We got creative with the design of the course,” Hannah says. “We wanted to put into it everything we enjoyed about mini golf.”
Not to mention growing up playing arcade games and be-bopping to the Dance Dance Revolution Super Nova machine, which has a spot about midway through the course. Born in Massachusetts, the siblings went to high school in Boston.
Hannah earned a BA in Painting and Textiles from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2010. Doug studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, then joined a furniture company where he learned about the modular system of designing industrial pieces. He also did a stint in UPenn’s fabrication shop.
After becoming involved in prop construction for film and television, along with crafting specialty costume pieces, Hannah worked on the 2016 movie Ghostbusters. She’s a card-carrying member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), Local 481, N.E. Studio Mechanics.
She and Doug formed Dusty Planet Studios to work on custom fabrication, as well as their mini golf and arcade. As Hannah puts it: “Arts and crafts and furniture. We’re seriously multi-tasking for this.”
The arcade features Dusty Planet’s own line of merch, alongside prizes by local artists and collaborators such as Joe Segal, an artist and textile designer who runs Pretty Snake on Brook Street in PVD.
General Manager Evan McKay and Brandon Amorin, anointed a laser-cutting master by the siblings, both helped design and build portals for the mini golf course. In their basement studio, Doug is concrete-casting space rocks.
The siblings traveled to Virginia to work with Mark Cline, a fiberglass sculptor, at his Enchanted Castle Studios. “We learned a lot from him,” Doug says. The big golf ball adorning the course was made there.
Speaking of big, the American Mini Golf Alliance of New Jersey and New England plans to host tournament rounds at The Dusty Planet. The siblings say it’s been a kick meeting mini golf pros.
Aside from regular — spaced out as it is — mini golf, the siblings have instituted Dungeons and Putters, a riff on D&D. One of the putters is wavy instead of straight, which should make for some challenging shots. Another is the Dragon Paw, which looks like a three-toed dino foot. These putters must be used when a player gets poisoned, or runs afoul of a wizard, during the course of D&P play.
This should appeal to the huge gaming community in the Ocean State and beyond, according to the sibling Earthlings.
A nostalgic love of B sci-fi movies, and their father’s work on the space shuttles for NASA, inspired the outer-space motif of the course.
“It was a question of how do we simulate that down here on Earth,” Doug says.
Hannah calls mini golf a celebration of gravity. After all, the point is to make the ball go down the hole. A black hole, come to think of it.
The weightlessness of space factors into The Dusty Planet’s logo. The letters are far from rigidly linear, and give the appearance of floating in outer space. The ∀ in planet is upside down, too, because it can be capricious out there.
Why the name Dusty Planet?
“Something that’s good stays around for a long time, and gets dusty,” Hannah explains.
And by every indication, it certainly looks like The Dusty Planet, which is open Wednesdays through Sundays, will live up to its name.
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