"He'd be... a Ninja Turtle, wearing a tuxedo," said Brad Johnsen, co-owner of John John's game room, when asked to describe John John. "With a tommy gun. No—an AK-47." The newish Capitol Hill arcade and bar is called John John's because John is both Brad's and co-owner Travis Echert's middle name. Essentially, they are both John John, and I must say, Brad is very much like a tuxedo-wearing Ninja Turtle in spirit, if not in appearance. He stripped off his shirt for a photo shoot in the bathroom, then gave me a John John's T-shirt, screen-printed with a cartoon rat holding its enormous boner and the words "Beat this."

Brad and Travis opened their first arcade, Add-a-Ball in Fremont, with money Brad's uncle won racing trucks in the Mojave Desert. "He brought us a briefcase of cash, and we spent it on arcade games and a liquor license," Brad told me. He then presented me with the biggest can of beer I have seen outside a cartoon—a foot-high Cold Spring IPA. "We call this the Man Can," he explained. I felt very manly after three-fourths of it, playing Addams Family pinball under a life-size papier-mâché polar bear.