Location Play: Barcade LA (2022)

In my "Top 5 Pins" post last year I mentioned in passing that in December 2022 my former company flew me down to Los Angeles to see Metallica's All Within My Hands special charity concert, their first since Covid hit. I wrote that in reference to how it led me to play more Metallic pinball and to put the game into my Top 5, but there's more to the story. I meant to tell it sooner but got sidetracked by other things like my new games.

My employer was one of the sponsors of the show and as a result was granted some free tickets. As luck would have it, 2 tickets came my way. Most of my co-worker friends that loved Metallica were tied up and unable to attend, but one of my co-worker friends, Alex, was free so we made the trip to LA. The concert was amazing and a great experience...one of the highlights was when Iron Man himself - Robert Downey Jr. - came on stage to introduce the band! Jimmy Kimmel was the host and there were also appearances by Tony Hawk and Mike Rowe (the host of the "Dirty Jobs" TV show). Opening act Greta Van Fleet is also one of my favorite bands.

What I neglected to mention in that previous post was that I did get to play some location pinball. After the concert was over, we had some time to kill, since our return flight didn't leave until 2:30 pm the next day. We had planned to go to the La Brea Tar Pits the next morning, so I suggested to Alex that we hit a brewery or bar/arcade with pinball (ideally both in one place) after dinner and the concert, and he was all for it. Because Los Angeles is so big and spread out (and doesn't have as many pinball locations as Portland or Seattle), there weren't a lot of options close to our hotel. We drove to a nearby place (I don't recall the name) but there was a line to get in so we went with Plan B - Barcade LA in the Highland Park area, sandwiched between Pasadena and Glendale.

Per Barcade's website: "Barcade® is the originator of the arcade bar concept and the largest operator of arcade bars in the United States. Barcade locations feature 40 to 75 video games and pinball machines mostly from the classic period of the 1980s as well as 25 to 30 American craft beers on draft. In addition to beer, Barcade locations offer a full bar with craft spirits and cocktails and creative variations on classic pub food. There are currently nine locations in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut,  California, and Michigan. All locations are owned and operated by four of the company founders; Paul Kermizian, Pete Langway, and brothers Kevin and Scott Beard along with a small group of private investors.

The original Barcade opened in 2004 in a former metal shop on Union Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. At the time, Kevin and Scott were working in graphic design, Paul in film and television, and Pete in advertising. Paul had just completed directing the feature film “American Beer”, a road trip documentary profiling the American craft beer industry, and the friends were spending time drinking craft beer and playing the classic 1980’s video games that lined the walls of Paul’s Williamsburg loft. Those beer and game filled nights inspired the group to open a neighborhood bar focused on American craft beer and classic video games. They quit their day jobs, maxed out their credit cards, and began work on Barcade. The friends did most of the construction themselves, keeping the look of the warehouse and garage that the space had previously been, and the bar opened in the fall of 2004 to immediate acclaim.

Looking ahead with plans for expansion, the company registered a federal trademark in 2007 for the name Barcade. In 2011 two new locations opened; one in downtown Jersey City and another in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia. Barcade opened two more locations in 2014, both in Manhattan: on West 24th Street in Chelsea, and on St. Mark’s Place in the East Village. The sixth location, in New Haven, Connecticut opened in 2016, the seventh location opened in Newark, New Jersey in 2017, the eighth opened in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles in 2019, and the ninth opened in Detroit in 2021. Barcade began utilizing the tagline “The Original Arcade Bar” in 2015 as a way to distinguish itself from the hundreds of arcade bars which have now opened across the United States. Many of these arcade bars cite Barcade as their inspiration."

Note: After reading this, I decided to stop referring to my home arcade as "The Barcade" and instead changed those references in all my posts to "The Barncade".

It was about a 20 minute drive to get there. Parking was nowhere to be found, so we parked about 3 blocks away and walked to the site. Upon entering we were hit with a wave of sound - the place had blasting music and people were yelling to talk over it. Barcade was mostly dominated by classic video games, but there were 2 small banks of pinball machines that Alex and I gravitated to. There was an Ultraman, Dr. Dude, The Addams Family, and Data East Star Wars (if I remember correctly) in one bank; and an Iron Maiden, Stranger Things, Medieval Madness, Willy Wonka, Twilight Zone, Demolition Man, and Monster Bash in the other. While we couldn't hear the games, it was still a lot of fun. I got to put several more games on Iron Maiden and Willy Wonka, but I think Iron Maiden stole most of my quarters and is probably why I added one to my home collection in 2023.

The craft beer I had was terrible - pretty much a drain pour - so I switched to a mixed drink, but the rest of the experience was fun. The place was absolutely jam packed, being a Saturday night (I took these photos earlier before it really filled up), it was too loud and there was nowhere to sit, but it was still a lot of fun. Several people there wanted to know about the Metallica t-shirts we wearing that we had purchased at the show. It was a great weekend, probably one of the best of the year along with my first pinball competition at Ground Kontrol and my weekend at the Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show. So I checked off another location on my list.