Turtle Power!

A side benefit of hanging out at your Friendly Local Game Shop is that you make friends with some of the cool people who work there. My friends Esther and Judy from Labyrinth are awesome! Last weekend, the three of us went out with a meetup.com group to a new "barcade" (bar + arcade) that just opened up, Atlas Arcade. It was rumored that they had the old-school Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, so we honored everyone's favorite heroes on the half-shell by meeting up for pizza first.

I had the Farmer's Daughter at H & Pizza...
if you know what I mean!

I love the idea of Atlas Arcade, since it combines two of my favorite things - booze and nostalgia. Unfortunately, everyone else on the planet likes these things too. When we got there around 9:30 on a Saturday, the place was busy. There was still some room to move around, but the people playing pool kept having to ask people to move out of the way of their cues. Little by little, however, people started filing in and soon there wasn't enough elbow room to play half of the games (which were all crammed together along one wall). By the time we left around 11pm, the place was PACKED - we had to basically nudge and shove our way out the door. 

Eventually, I just broke out my nun-chucks. Kidding!

I can see Atlas Arcade as a cool place to go on a weeknight after dinner, when it's not so crowded, to have a few drinks and a few laughs playing awesome (or awesomely bad) old-school arcade games. Still, the meetup was fun and I think we all had a good time. I'm already looking forward to the next one!