The Real Reason Why Arcade Bars Are On The Rise
The whirring and dinging pinball machines that once dominated arcades lived, for a while, shrouded in nostalgia in your grandparents' basement. But now they are having a resurgence, brought on by the rise of arcade bars.
There are about a dozen of these bar-arcade fusions in Chicago, said Jody Dankberg, director of marketing and licensing at Stern Pinball, one of the world's largest remaining bastions of pinball machine manufacturing. But the trend is not just local, and the presence of pinball in bars could help the industry tread water for years to come.
"We're seeing that trend all over the country, and we're starting to see it all over the world," he said. "These people will become the next generation of collectors."