Eric S.
Yelp
BUSTED STUFF
A 2002 Dave Matthews album, or Logan Emporium's current sad state of affairs? 'Tis both, in this case.
As a fan of alcohol, the combination of watered-down drinks and beer exclusively in cans is far from ideal, but tolerable. Comes with the territory sometimes, I get it. But as a lover of arcade games, this place makes me weep. We're talking full-on, grown up tears here people.
Following dinner at DMen Tap, I stopped here with Maddie B mistaking this Emporium for its other, superior location in nearby Wicker Park. "Whatever", I said to myself, they've still got pool tables, foosball, air hockey, some stand up cabinet games and most importantly, pinball.
I went for a Daisy Cutter ($6) as usual and Maddie B had some disgusting $7 passion fruit asswater (although neither of us has sampled the buttjuice, we can only surmise what it might taste like). So that was a hard beer fail, yet we soldiered on.
We made our way to the token machines and noticed that 1 of the 2 was displaying a blinky red light....not a good sign. The working one accepted only bills, despite the presence of a (non-functioning) coin slot to convert quarters into tokens. The broken machine had its coin slot taped over, so what's the point of even having one? A placebo effect?? Sheesh.
'Defender' was out-of-service, which is fine, but the "temporarily out of order" sign taped to the coindoor was ripped to shreds. It looked super sloppy and unprofessional, like some toddler/drunk idiot got angry and tried to tear it off.
That brings us to the abysmal pinball shtick. I've never in my life seen so many tables switched off or otherwise unplayable. 'Fish Tales', 'Baywatch', 'Firepower', 'Tales From the Crypt', 'Hurricane', 'Playboy', and 'Breakshot' were all dark. That was effectively half of their entire collection. HALF.
Now, I did see what appeared to be a techie going around and making notes of all the broken-ass pinballs. Based on prior visits however, "taking notes" is all that ever happens. I was promised an improved pinball situation a year ago, and they straight up failed to deliver the goods.
*TL;DR*
Fool me once....shame on you.
Fool me twice.....still your fault.
Fool me three times......you get roasted on Yelp and lose my business indefinitely.
I hate to give ANY barcade less then the full five stars, but Logan's Emporium pushed their luck to the breaking point. Half of their sh*t is totally f*cked up and seemingly has been for months/years.
As a rule I never, ever give a business 1* after a single visit. Only if the situation doesn't improve (or in this case, worsens) do they plunge down to the lowest tier of approval. They've had AMPLE chances to win me back and have repeatedly let me down.
It kills me to say it, but I refuse to feed any more tokens into this place.
I'm 100% donezo with these clowns. Bye-bye!