(A social media reminiscence I came across about THE most infamous arcade in Detroit. If you grew up on the east side back in 80’s, at some point in your life you probably set foot at in this mythic venue.)
@Christi Junior @Cyrus Dhu al-Qarnayn
RICK’S POP SHOP
MotownManiac June 24, 2025
There are places that don’t just live in memory. They lurk there—like static in an old TV. Rick’s was one of them.
Situated along that eternal stretch of Gratiot Avenue, Rick’s wasn’t the kind of arcade you saw in movies. There was no neon glamour. No mascot. Just arcade cabinets shoulder to shoulder, flickering in unison. Satan’s Hollow. Karate Champ. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The classics were all there, and so was something else—an atmosphere so tense it felt electrically charged.
I didn’t live in Eastpointe—but I was pulled in by Rick's electronic gravitational field… and an obsession with Elvira and her Party Monsters.
Kids from East Detroit High cut class and drifted in like smoke, jackets perfumed of weed, F bombs echoing off every surface due to someone losing their last life or ball.
And looming behind it all was the infamous Rick himself.
Rick Vartanian : The namesake behind the arcade is the kind of man you could draw from memory if you only saw him once. Bald head. Thick, dark mustache. Dark-framed glasses that perpetually slid down his nose. Always scowling, always watching.
Rick was not known for his charm. High school students typically aren't the friendliest bunch either, but the energy that resonated between them made Rick's what it was. Rick didn’t just own Rick’s. He was Rick’s.
Rick’s notoriety didn’t stop at the Pop Shop. In 1991, he was investigated by federal agents for threatening to tamper with Pepsi products over a delivery dispute. In 2000, he was sentenced to home confinement for threatening to chop up the real estate agents showing a home to a black family across the street. That’s just what made it to ink.
The rest—the Rick lore if you will—passed through whispered warnings in locker rooms and the back parking lot.
I don’t think Rick liked people. He tolerated them.
Some say Rick made the place what it was. Others said the misfit teens, the truants, the weed-scented outcasts—they made him. Hardened him. Eroded him. Turned him into a bitter artifact of arcade-era decay.
Maybe he was just a crank.
Or maybe he was the unwilling gatekeeper of something older.
The building itself was a shapeshifter. In the ‘30s, it was a Mich-I-Penn gas station. In the ‘40s, a realty office. By the ‘50s, a diner. Then came Rick. But even before all of that—who knows?
Sometimes I wondered if the land was cursed. Maybe it was a burial site. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be disturbed. Rick’s had an energy. The kind that made the hair on your arms rise. The kind that made your skin tickle like the bubbles of Vernor's below you skin.
Today, the building stands quiet again. Most recently, it was home to The Cultivation Station. Now it sits vacant once more—up for rent, waiting. Watching.
Rick is still alive. 74. Last anyone heard, he’s up north in Michigan, probably alone, maybe still muttering about quarters and vandalism. Maybe he misses the racket. Maybe he doesn’t.
But for those of us who stepped inside Rick’s—who fed it our allowances, our angst, our second-hand smoke—it never really closed. It just moved into that weird, dusty back room in your memory. The one with the busted coin return and the buzzing light overhead.
Some places don’t get remembered because they were great. They get remembered because they left a scar—and maybe that’s better.
