Still no place like Good Times
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SOMERVILLE - When Somerville’s Good Time Emporium closed last July to make way for Ikea, the area didn’t just lose Skee-Ball and pool. It lost a local home for wrestling.
The arcade and bar popularly known as Good Times was “a great place to have local wrestling events,’’ said promoter Dan Mirade. His Millennium Wrestling Federation booked six matches there, up to the final weekend.
The crowd was enthusiastic, sometimes overly so. Mirade said he wouldn’t let his children go there after dark. Once a young spectator thrust a pitcher of beer at a wrestler in the ring. According to the Somerville Police Department, Good Times had generated more calls than any other establishment in the city.
Finding space is always a challenge, said Jamie Jamitzowski of Chaotic Wrestling Inc., a promoter based in North Andover. He attributed the problem to disreputable promoters whose R-rated events closed the doors for others. (Chaotic never ran events at Good Times, focusing instead on southern New Hampshire and the Merrimack Valley.)
After a show that includes blood, cursing, and spitting on fans, “a school board or YMCA board will say ‘No, we don’t want professional wrestling back, period,’ ’’ Jamitzowski said.
The 500-capacity wrestling space doubled as a nightclub and a children’s party room, Mirade recalled. The room had a decidedly un-macho pink background. It was at least better than the previous setup, a makeshift affair with “walls’’ formed by canvas curtains.
Even if you didn’t want to pay to watch the match, you couldn’t miss the spectacle: Wrestlers had to walk through the arcade to reach the ring, Mirade said. “A guy six-foot-five, all beefed up with face paint on, and this one eating pizza, this one on the go-kart,’’ he said.
To fans, Good Times ended abruptly. It wasn’t a surprise to Mirade. He couldn’t book events far in advance because it had a month-to-month lease. “It was known that it was going to close,’’ he said.
More of a surprise was the arcade’s failure to relocate. A plan to reopen in Brockton fell through in October.
That left local wrestlers like Jarod Ceres with other local venues, but nowhere with the best amenity at Good Times: When you weren’t in the ring, the Middleton wrestler known as Psycho said, “you could just go and play video games.’’
Danielle Dreilinger
