Well, it is against the rules. As it leaves residue on the approaches (if you use a lot), sometimes it doesn't leave hardly anything at all.
It is considered a foreign substance and you cannot apply it to the approach. There is a USBC rule for that.
Now... What people here and at other centers I have been to, people who use the Easy Slide powder will find a spot on the tile in the Settee Area, and then dump a tiny little bit out. They then hit their slide sole with it whenever they need to.
As basically the guy that does everything in our center.... I know that those approaches are cleaned better than any other center in our Association. During the league season they get dust mopped 2-3 times a day. Monday thru Saturday they also get cleaned with alcohol at least once a day. Tuesdays we have two leagues. The first league is a lazy ladies league that isn't USBC and just for fun, they get dust mopped. Then during the 15 minute turnaround we have they get dust mopped again and then hit with isoprop and the settee area is dust mopped as well, while we are laying out the house shot for the second league, the money league. So it all happens rather fast on those days, but it all gets cleaned. Every single square inch of the approaches. Every single square inch is done 28-31 weeks in a row for that league.
They get to sit maybe a 3-5 minutes to allow for any remaining iso to evap. In case we missed anything (rarely) we spot check the approaches and take care of issues during the 10 minutes of practice.
Everything is cherry. Every time we have a major complaint we give that bowler a shoe brush and they take care of their slide sole, or they have me take after them like I am re-shoeing a horse, or they take them off and I work on them. If there is a serious problem it is always their shoes and never having any maintenance done to them.
So, I got a wall of text going, and I haven't been active as of recent... but I am going to make it longer!
There are many ways for centers to condition not only the lanes, but also the approaches. Not all approaches are treated the same. Yall bowlers notice this when you go from center to center. Some are always super slick yet never cleaned, some are always sticky but they are cleaned ALL THE TIME.
Some centers are like me and they just clean them with ISO all the time, and sometimes have to pull out a razor to get off gum, or have to soak the stains with ISO, and barely ever use a buffer or apply approach conditioners. Some centers don't do shit at all and they are always slick AF. Some centers clean them daily and apply conditioner and use a rotobuffer daily or a few times a week.
As a bowler you will see all sorts of varying approaches just as much as varying house shots. Every center has a certain way of doing things, and they may be very hands off or extremely meticulous in their approach to cleaning the approaches. This is why we have interchangeable slide soles.
With the advent of synthetic lanes and approaches, you don't really need to take care of them as much as wooden approaches covered in whatever. Finished wood approaches, in my experience, can be a hell of a lot slicker than any synthetic approaches, or they can be very sticky. This all lays in the maintenance, done to them. Freshly finished wooden approaches tend to be more smoother than synthetic approaches. And you normally will stick more? Why is that? The smoother the surface, the harder it is to actually slide on them.
Synthetic approaches are not manufactured to be perfectly smooth. They actually have a texture to them. There were some failures in the early synthetic approaches, and DBA's Perma-Lane got some stuff right. So, the early failures were due too the synthetics being too smooth. As the bowler approached, and released a ball, more of the slide sole was in contact with the surface of the approach. More slide sole contact meant a higher coefficient of friction, led to more stick. Any amount of humidity made it even worse. So from my understanding of current synthetic approaches is that the they are textured, and due to static electricity they will always bring dust particles in the air to stick on them. Now that they are textured, you have an overall less surface area for the slide sole of the shoe to slide on, but the ambient dust in the air actually acts as a slide lubricant between the shoe and the approach surface. That means that during dust mopping, most of the debris will be removed but there will always be a certain amount left on them, and then ambient air with dust particles will always cause a very fine layer to lay on top due to the HVAC systems pumping air throughout the center. The static electricity will always draw some on it.
So yeah...