A new downtown business is combining your favorite childhood video games with adult beverages.
Davenport businessmen Dan Bush and Kyle Carter have teamed up to open Analog Arcade Bar on the corner of Third and Brady. The bar features 60 different arcade games, including pinball, bubble hockey, Pop-A-Shot, and Skee ball. Nearly a dozen more titles are in storage, allowing the owners to switch out games over time.
They insist the space isn't just for hardcore gamers, though.
"This isn't just a nerd cave. This is for men, women... If you go and visit the other arcade bars around the country, there's people from 21 to 65," said Carter.
Many of the games are rare or hard-to-locate, and Bush and Carter spent the past year tracking them down through Craigslist and collectors.
"Every person we met knew someone else with games, and there's a huge kind of underground network, almost like a fight club of arcade and pinball collectors," said Bush.
Built in 1918, the Analog Arcade building was originally a bank, but it has been vacant for years. The bar nods to that history -- you can still see some of the original marble and mosaic tile floors, and the bank vaults have been transformed into lounge space.
Bush and Carter say they're excited to put their own stamp on downtown.
"It kind of saddens me when people say there's nothing to do in the Quad Cities, because there really is tons to do, but we just really want to add to that. We want people who grow up here to move back after school or stick around instead of going to Des Moines or Chicago or places like that," said Bush.
Analog Arcade Bar opens on Friday, October 23, 2015, with a ribbon cutting at 4 p.m.
The business will be open seven days a week for customers 21 and up.