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thatvoodoochickThere are many mysteries about Chuck E. Cheese's.
What, for instance, does the "E." stand for?
Is the cartoon mouse mascot of that name the same figure Rickie Lee Jones wrote about in her 1979 hit, "Chuck E.'s in Love"?
And when the chain's signature ball pits were removed a few years back, were the discarded balls more or less virulent than your average emergency room garbage bag?
The big one lately, though, is this: When you go to Chuck E. Cheese's, should you bring the brass knuckles or the nunchucks?
You understand why families visit this boisterous restaurant featuring animatronic musicians. It's a relatively cheap, convenient way to throw a birthday party, and most kids, happily pumping tokens into the games, don't notice how tightly their grown-ups may be gritting their teeth.
Yet in the past few years Chuck E. Cheese's has developed a reputation as a sort of impromptu fight club, a place where fisticuffs break out almost as often as complaints about the pizza.
Just over a week ago, the chain's Arlington Heights store hosted its own version of the game. A Buffalo Grove woman, 50, went after her brother-in-law, 47, with a metal napkin holder, according to Arlington Heights police.
She hit him once in the face and once in the back of the head, sending the man to the hospital. This was at a party for his 14-year-old son, said the police report, which does not explain what may have caused the altercation.
The Obscure Store, a Web site reporting the story, noted, "Chuck E. Cheese brawls are so common they're hardly 'news,' " before adding, "But if you're keeping track of these fights, here's another one for your file."
A Wall Street Journal story last December reported that the outlet in Brookfield, Wis., had prompted more police calls in the previous year than any other restaurant in town.
The Flint, Mich., paper noted in January how much better things had been at the local Chuck E. Cheese's since an 80-person brawl there 11 months earlier led the store to stop serving alcohol. About two-thirds of the 544 restaurants do.
"In the whole scheme of things, it is a very small problem that we have," said Brenda Holloway, spokeswoman for the parent company, CEC Entertainment, in Irving, Texas. "Chuck E. Cheese's is a wholesome, fun place to take your family, and some of the headlines do get blown out of proportion."
"Fight at Chuck E. Cheese's" is an irresistible headline, Holloway noted, correctly. But, she said, "We have a lot of birthday parties, where emotions run high, and these days, with family dynamics being what they are, a lot of stepmothers and fathers, they all get brought together at Chuck E. Cheese's."
An Arlington Heights police official also pinpointed family dynamics, saying that the local Chuck E. Cheese's has not been a trouble hot spot.
"That business has been open in our town for quite a long time, and we can count on one hand the number of incidents that happened there," said police Cmdr. Michael Miljan.
In the Nov. 29 incident, "I'd like to know," Miljan said, "have these two people had a history of provoking each other or was this just an isolated incident that happened at Chuck E. Cheese? You know, what happened at Thanksgiving dinner?"
"I had a guy stabbed in front of the library several months back. That doesn't mean the library is a dangerous place."
Miljan's assurances are, in a way, comforting. Now I can go back to avoiding Chuck E. Cheese's for the usual reasons: I can't stand bland pizza and I don't like singing rodents, especially when said vermin serve as mascots at a restaurant.
And, the biggest reason, my kids and their friends have moved on to birthday parties at places that offer laser tag or, most recently, archery.
Nobody wants to brawl at an archery range.
