Paul Baker’s Birthday at Headquarters Beercade

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For his birthday, Paul Baker got everyone together at Headquarters Beercade. This is a new(ish) arcade/bar that opened in the fall. We had fun playing a bunch of arcade games and pinball games and celebrating Paul’s birthday.

Headquarters had most of the same arcade games that Emporium has, the bar/arcade place we’ve been to in Wicker Park. I couldn’t help but compare the two places. Headquarters lets you play the games for no charge, where Emporium charges a quarter. I almost like paying the quarter more because then there are consequences when you die. At Headquarters you just keep pressing “Continue” til infinity if you want. It makes it so it doesn’t matter if you die. And also people can hog the machines forever! Headquarters is a little more of a sports bar feel. They have a lot of TVs and even when the games were over, they played some old Hulk Hogan WWF and American Gladiators. Both bars have good beer lists.

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Dallas left after a few hours to meet some other friends. At some point after midnight Jess and I went and met Chris, Tim and Ken at Barrelhouse Flat. I’ve always wanted to go there after hearing my coworker Garrett talk about it. We had some fancy drinks and fancy popcorn. Then everyone said it was time to go home, but I went and met Alden for some decidedly not fancy tacos at Arturo’s. Somehow it was 3am and I had to go. Dallas and I got home at pretty much the exact same time. Long night. .. but fun. Happy bday, Paul!

Sunday Funday at Emporium Arcade Bar and Antique Taco

Last Friday Dallas and some friends went to check out Emporium Arcade Bar, but it was super packed, he said. Trevor mistakenly bought $20 worth of tokens (you put in the machine instead of quarters, though they still only cost a quarter), but Dallas only needed one. He put one token in the Street Fighter 2 and then beat every person who walked up to challenge him. After a while he just gave up!

We went back to Emporium Arcade on Sunday to check it out and it was not packed at all. During the day the bar was bright and pretty. Lots of nice wood. The arcade games line the walls and there was plenty of seating for our small group. Trevor had given us his $20 worth of tokens, so we had plenty of gameplay. I checked out Double Dragon, Rampage, and of course Tetris. I remembered all of these from when I was young. Dallas played a bit of Street Fighter 2, but was disappointed that there was no one there to challenge him! He was up for some more butt kicking.

The arcade doesn’t have a kitchen, but you can bring in whatever you want. One of Dallas’s friends showed up with tacos and said he got them two doors down. I assumed it was some old taqueria, but when I headed over, the “taqueria” was Antique Taco, a new restaurant I’d read about that had just opened a month or so ago. So, yay. I got to try two new things in one day, and both of them were great.