At the kid's preschool's winter fair over the weekend, I was talking to another parent who had been disturbed by all the shooting games at Chuck E. Cheese. "Well, maybe if they aim at Chuck E. Cheese," I said, just trying to be helpful.
According to Gawker, there's an article out there explaining the nationwide epidemic of Chuck E. Cheese violence:
An alderman in Milwaukee, a town not famous for sobriety, compared the local Chuck E. Cheese to "something out of a Quentin Tarantino film... there is alcohol and pistols being brandished." In Brookfield, Wisconsin, the children's pizzeria-plus-creepy-robot-theater gets far more police activity than a nearby biker bar, including a 40-person riot earlier this year. One participant in a 10-person brawl in Toledo's Chuck E. Cheese actually detached a velvet rope and started swinging the brass end at people. Intrigued? Good, because the Wall Street Journal is dying to tell you why you should watch your back inside the animatronic dystopia.I would go read the Journal's article myself, but I'm too busy looking for the napkin with the list I've been making of animatronic utopias. It's gotta be around here somewhere.
Why Chuck E. Cheese Has More Brawls Than a Biker Bar [gawker]
who-hoo, "Mama Bear instincts"? This oughta be good: Calling All Cars: Trouble at Chuck E. Cheese's, Again [wsj]
Metafilter on demographic shift at Chuck E. Cheese
http://ask.metafilter.com/77089/What-has-caused-the-demographic-shift-of-Chuck-E-Cheese-customers-over-the-past-10-years