Don't Bring that Red Doo Rag into Chuck-E-Cheese

Daniel's fifth birthday coincided with us being between homes, so we figured that it would make sense to "outsource" the party as much as possible, so we ended up holding his party at Chuck-E-Cheese. It wasn't a bargain, but was a fairly painless way to get a bunch of kids to scarf down Jeno's-quality pizza and provide them a generally good time, even if the party was 5% interactive and most of the time was spent with kids all over the place doing their own thing, namely wriggling through that overhead ceiling tube or playing video games.

The interesting thing about Chuck-E-Cheese is that a good 50% of the games are "adult-appropriate", meaning that they're games that you'd see at the "adult" version of Chuck-E-Cheese, also known as Dave & Buster's. These include the ever popular "Pop-A-Shot" basketball shooting game, where you can square up head-to-head against a number of friends, Guitar Hero, Air Hockey, the Brave Firefighters virtual firefighting game, and a number of other "shoot 'em up" games which simulate you hunting or killing bucks, faceless bad guys, dinosaurs, ghosts or such (on a side note, while playing one of these games with another dad at the party while propping up our kids on our knee so they could "shoot", I wondered aloud to him if these games were really age-appropriate).

The prices of the Chuck-E-Cheese tokens are pretty cheap (maybe around 25 cents per play), so it begs the question, is it worth paying two to five times more to play that same game at a place like Dave & Buster's so you can drink a rum and coke while you play? And laugh as you will, this whole "adults and video games" stuff definitely has some street cred. I remember that when I lived in NYC, there was a this place called "BAR CODE" in Times Square was very much trying to be "Dave & Buster's" before Dave & Buster's arrived in Manhattan. Not only was it a jumping place, but it was also notorious for gang activity, and (I believe) was shut down after a number of unpleasant episodes related to gang violence.

Now it seems that gangs such as the Crips, Bloods, and Latin Kings, being frugal given the bad economy, have eschewed the overpriced games and watered-down drinks at Dave & Buster's and have moved right into Chuck-E-Cheese, leading at least a couple of locations to ban gang-style apparel and contraband. I think the one my kids frequent in the 'burbs is relatively safe, but I'll probably tell them to hold back on any potentially provocative hand gestures that might be misconstrued - for example, Daniel and Sophia are really into fist-bumps nowadays and I'd hate to see either of them capped.