A good bar is hard to find. In so many cities I’ve gone out for a drink and thought, man… If my city had a bar like this I might actually want to hang out in it. Well, writing an article on pinball for All Over Albany gave me a push to check out this bar I had heard about that had a pinball machine and some other arcade games. Jeff and I never go to bars, just the two of us, in our own city. I never thought any of them were really worth our time, because we could just hang out in our apartment and have a drink. I had to do my research though (and either way we knew we were going to get to play pinball!), so we ventured to Troy and headed into Footsy Magoos [17 1st St #1, Troy, NY 12180].
I fell in love on the spot. How could I have never been here before? The first thing I really noticed was the enchanting, clearly cultivated with love, kitschy, retro, design.
Good heavens, it’s perfect. I grabbed a cider and headed to the ‘Bank’ room to exchange some bills for quarters, past the polite dart players. Then it was straight to the games. There are two separate mini game rooms which were empty on a quiet weeknight.
In one room there was skeeball (for a quarter) and a Monopoly pinball machine (for 50 cents). We played a round of skeeball each, and then spent wayyy too much time playing pinball. The machine definitely has its quirks, but when you play it long enough you’ll learn to maneuver around them. We both ended up getting over 6 million points, not bad!! There was foosball in the other room, but we decided we didn’t want to get too competitive because we were playing really nicely that night and foosball has the potential to destroy everything. However we did delve into the arcade game which was a combo machine, I chose to play Ms Pac-Man, one of my favorites. When you’re finished playing the games (or out of money!!) there are a few different sitting areas to hang out in. You really should check out the bathroom too.
It’s awesome. We stayed for two hours, and the whole time I almost forgot we were right at home. Come for the pinball, stay for the ambiance. A good bar is no longer that hard to find in my city.