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“Barcade” = bar + arcade coming to Amish space
Notices are up on the door of the former Amish Market on West Broadway and Murray (the space goes through to Park Place) for Barcade — an arcade with a liquor license that has two locations in the city.
The meeting with CB1’s Licensing Committee is scheduled for April 12, 6p, and those are still held live on Webex here.
Barcade® describes itself as “the originator of the arcade bar concept” and they have even registered the name as a federal trademark. The original is in Williamsburg, which the four founders opened in 2004 in a former metal shop on Union Avenue. They are still the owners, along with a small group of private investors.
Their bars feature 40 to 75 video games — Asteroids, Millipede, Pac-Man — and pinball machines mostly from the classic period of the 1980s as well as 25 to 30 American craft beers on draft plus a full bar and pub food. (Sounds a lot like the ESPN Zone, if anyone remembers that from Times Square.) I am pretty sure the Amish space is about 7500 square feet.
The video above shows an adorable man-child who appears to leave his date at the bar to play Anteater. But she’s still there when he returns!
From their website: “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 1980s video games that lined the walls of Paul’s Williamsburg loft.”
There are now seven locations total, including one in the East Village as well as Jersey City, Philly, New Haven, LA and Detroit. It seems like they might have closed a couple recently…
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Man does this look awful.
Heidi, don’t be a buzzkill. This is awesome.
Zach, I’m buying your first beer and unlimited Pac-Man. Heide, you’re welcome to join us too. It’s called fun.
They have one in Chelsea on West 24th Street. Very nice
business.
For a moment I thought it was an Amish arcade coming to the space :).
Great to see a new business in the neighborhood!
Yay that’s awesome!! Loving new businesses in the area
I wish I was about twenty-five all over again! This does sound like a lot of fun…. as does the new sports bar. Nice to see new life and energy coming to the neighborhood.
Love those classic video games. I’ve been to the location in the East Village several times, and it’s good fun.
As someone who used to live in the building, that’s a great use of the space. Barcade is usually a really chill, quiet place to have a craft beer and play some pinball or classic arcade game with friends; pretty much perfect for the neighborhood.
Oh, this is interesting.. I was just waiting for the day a TJ’s moved in there, but I welcome it.. Something is better than nothing!!
Really disappointing…. it should be another market. Tribeca could use it
Barcade across from a strip club? What neighborhood is this????
Just for the record, the strip club has been in Tribeca longer than most of us — since 1987 — and is the only business on that block that has never had a complaint sent to CB1.
I am curious if a place like this can actually make it in Tribeca. It makes sense in areas like the East Village or Jersey City, but the average Tribeca resident is a bit older and out of that demographic.
Maybe they’re counting on the same traffic that regularly fills Treadwell Park in BPC, but this will certainly be a different offering from what the neighborhood has had in a while.
That’s true, it will be interesting to see. Although there are lots of young people with disposable income to feed the machines and buy craft beer in the Financial District.
I give it 6-8 mos—just not the neighborhood for it. Why can’t we get a great Tapas bar or Jazz club ( yeah I know both of those failed).