I grew up in Tacoma and this used to be the SPOT! Even just a couple years ago I took a date there Friday night to kill some time before our dinner reservation. The place was still lively, lots of games, clean, and stuff worked.
I went in there recently before having dinner with some family, and the place was in terrible shape.
Most of the games were disabled or closed off. The coin machine didn’t work. The place was filthy, looking like it hasn’t been cleaned or renovated in forever etc etc.
My uncle who passed away was one of Dorkys very first customers, even had his picture up as having the unbeatable score on one of the pinball machines. He would be sad to see the shape this place is in.
TL/DR sum up: owner was responsible for an employee getting shot so everyone quit and then vendors pulled the machines out because the owner is a horrible human and the shooting was the final straw.
The owner is PARTLY responsible, you know what they mean. It doesn’t help that the owner got mad at protesters during George Floyd protests and on camera was caught calling them the N word over and over.
I wondered if it was the same owner, I haven't been since that happened. I'm so disappointed Tacoma gave a blatant racist another decade of business before this happened. It's disgusting that someone else had to pay the price for the dude's stupidity. I hope he's healing well in all ways. I like pinball as much as the next guy, but can we finally let Dorky's go, please? We're better than this.
Everyone else is right about the owner being a POS and causing the downfall of his own business. This is a screenshot from a much much longer post on this sub that I think got taken down
All this to show that he never really learned from his first controversy during the BLM protests. Dude is bad news, if you want games I'd go to triple knock on 6th instead
I feel sick we gave him our business. We had several of our kids birthday parties there too.
I won't ever take for granted even slight rumors or others saying it's a misunderstanding again.
I'm so mad at myself for this.
I used to go in there, like daily, around 2011-2012ish. Probably not daily but a lot. I used to drink a lot and would go there and get shitfaced. This was before all the racist shit. I would talk to Les a lot, but I always thought he was a tool. Total loudmouth blow hard. Also he has a really fucking obnoxious voice. It’s like his voice is gone from yelling too much or something. Obviously cigs and booze will not help, but I know people that smoke and drink and don’t sound like that. Anyway, Les was married to Caroline, but had a son from a previous relationship. I’m ashamed to admit that I once heard his wife berating the young boy of like 8-9 years old and I’m pretty sure heard her smack the shit out of him multiple times. I didn’t do anything because I was a wastoid and kind of just in shock. But I was down by the bar and they were up on the middle level where the Pac-Man/galaga/dig dug/asteroids style games were, so I didn’t SEE her smack him, but I heard her yelling at him hella harshly and then some smacks, and I was like uhhh this bitch fuckin sucks.
I just thought I’d share this story because the screenshotted story above seems to paint her in a positive light, and she is very much not a good person either.
Because no one with any knowledge of what goes on/has gone on there will give them their business, and the word has spread pretty far. One of the most no-brainer business boycotts in the city.
It was slowly recovering from the BLM protests under the lead of the co-owner doing her best to keep it going forward. However after the shooting last year and how her partner dealt with the situation lead to her leaving the business and most the employees quitting since they were only there because of her. After that most of the vendors pulled out and thus you are left with that bleeding wound until it finally fully fails.
One of the owners went a little crazy during the BLM protests and was shouting the N word with a megaphone... I think that did a real number on the business.
If you search for Dorkys in the subreddit you'll find several posts on the topic. Tldr most of the employees quit en masse after the majority owner was a massive asshole one too many times. An employee was seriously injured due to the owner escalating a situation. He's also said a lot of racist shit.
Thats the name! I got quoted in a news tribune article about it. They had a reporter come down and interview people standing out front. I was smoking a cigarette and got asked my feelings about it.
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
REMINDER: This Subreddit requires user flair in order to comment or post in this subreddit.
Comments and posts submitted by users without user flair will be automatically removed.
You may add user flair via the main page of r/Tacoma. Or instructions for mobile can be found here. Thank you.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.