Pinball is making a comeback, Erik Gilly explained as he stood inside his new game bar in downtown St. Charles a week before its opening.
A few steps away, a mural proclaiming that pinball was “born in Chicago” and is “loved by St. Charles” is on a wall behind a row of the arcade game machines.
As the director of North American sales for Stern Pinball, a major manufacturer of pinball machines based in Elk Grove Village, Gilly, 37, of St. Charles has a vested interest in the game’s resurgence.
But now, he’s hoping to share his love of pinball — and other games — at his new game bar, Rec Haus, which opened to the public last week at 12 N. Third St. in St. Charles.
The bar has rows of games — pinball, of course, as well as shuffleboard, darts, foosball, bocce ball and more — that patrons can play alone or in groups, along with a variety of food and drink options.
And now, after a change to its planned location and several months of construction, Rec Haus is officially open.
Gilly, the game bar’s owner, said he grew up in the Chicago suburbs, but wasn’t always into games. It was his professional career — which he says he’s spent in entertainment, specifically in the “coin-operated industry” — that informed his passion. He ultimately took a job at Stern Pinball, the world’s leading pinball manufacturer, which is estimated to control about 75% of the current pinball market.
“I was convinced that (the) pinball resurgence (was) real,” Gilly said of his taking a job at the company.
The first machines to resemble modern-day pinball appeared in the 1930s, with the Chicago-based company Gottlieb. Pinball manufacturing grew in Chicago in the 1940s, but largely died by the 1980s with the advent of video games. For a time, Stern was the only pinball maker left.
In recent years, however, the industry has shifted toward individual consumers purchasing the machines for their homes.
Gilly pointed to the game’s growing popularity in the last decade or so, saying that the machines have started popping up in bars and breweries, for example. That’s also what his job at Stern entails: boosting sales of the machines, including in places where they weren’t always common, like breweries.
But St. Charles’ new game bar has more than just pinball.
“I’ve always been a fan of … games that bring groups together, as opposed to single-player games,” Gilly said.
Rec Haus has both group games and single-player games found in pairs or groups that enable multiple people to play simultaneously.
To play many of the games, patrons can buy game cards, similar to chains like Dave & Buster’s and Chuck E. Cheese, Gilly explained. Others, like the bar’s game lanes for bocce ball and bags, are time-based rentals.
Rec Haus has many of the well-known arcade games, along with bar staples like darts and pool. Gilly says there are plans to let leagues come in to play foosball, pinball and pool, and to host tournaments of its own for things like bocce ball and shuffleboard. The game bar also has a space with chairs and a television that a group can rent out to watch a sports game of their choice.
As for drink options, Gilly pointed to Rec Haus’ self-pour beer wall, for which patrons can get a wristband connected to their credit cards and pay for the beer by ounce. He pointed to nearby Tapville Social in Naperville as a similar model.
The game bar also has a traditional bar for canned drinks and specialty cocktails, he said. It also has a kiosk and pick-up window for food options, which Gilly said would include more “mobile-friendly” items like paninis.
On the space’s walls are odes to some of the classic arcade games, like Pac-Man and pinball. Those were done by local artists Joshua Schultz, 50, and Rebekah Axtell, 48, both of Oswego.
Gilly’s family is going to be helping out with running the operation, he explained. He said he’s had the concept for Rec Haus in mind for years, but didn’t settle on the St. Charles spot until recently.
The original plan was to open up in downtown Aurora, in the space above Society 57, but, after those plans didn’t work out, Gilly said the decision was made on the downtown St. Charles space this past spring.
Gilly recalled he and his wife having come to the space while it was still a restaurant and bar. They’d been discussing the possibility of opening up a game bar, but hadn’t found a location yet.
“We sat down, we were like, ‘Wow, this would be a really cool venue for Rec Haus,’” Gilly said.
Gilly’s using his family’s own game machine collection in Rec Haus, but, despite his connections to the game, said he doesn’t consider himself to be a “pinball wizard.”
The game bar’s location does, however, have a historic connection to the creators of the famous 1969 tune by The Who, according to the St. Charles History Museum. The English rock band performed at the St. Charles location, then a venue called the Jaguar Club, just a year before “Pinball Wizard” was released.
But a knack for the game is not what drew Gilly to pinball, he said.
“My love for pinball comes around the community that loves it so much,” Gilly said. “I love providing a space where people can come and enjoy leagues and tournaments, because you sit and just watch a league and people absolutely love it.”
And he thinks Rec Haus will fill what he sees as a missing kind of entertainment in the area.
“There’s a lot of locations that you can sit, eat, drink and talk, but not ones you can actually play games,” he said.
And he’s hoping to one day open multiple locations in the Chicago suburbs.
“When you look at Chicago, there’s a lot of competition as far as drawing people in, whether it’s arcades down there, restaurants, bars, music venues, comedy clubs,” Gilly said. “When it comes to the suburbs like St. Charles with entertainment, you have the famous Arcada Theatre, and then you have a lot of amazing restaurants and bars, but not a lot of entertainment spots like this, where people can actually play … a lot of different type(s) of arcade games and group gameplay (in) one space.”
The Associated Press contributed.
