If you’re an 80s baby looking for something to do in Nashville (or a handful of other cities in the US), Pins Mechanical Co., a bar with free games (like Skee-Ball) and duckpin bowling, must be on your list.
For more help planning your trip to Music City, check out all of our post about Nashville.
When you’re planning a trip to Nashville, you always think about Broadway. That’s the main strip downtown, which is lined with bars and filled with musicians almost 24/7.
You absolutely need to spend time there, checking out the historic bars like Robert’s Western World and Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, plus the new celebrity-backed bars with names like Post Malone and Blake Shelton on them.
But, if you venture off of Broadway and head to The Gulch, you absolutely have to check out Pins Mechanical Co. It’s in the same 30,000-square foot space as 16-Bit Bar+Arcade, so it’s easy to think of them as one entity even though they’re just sisters sharing a room.
Pins Mechanical Co. is a bar with a ton of games. There’s Skee-Ball, bocce ball, hookie, a giant slide, and duckpin bowling.
To its left is 16-Bit Bar+Arcade, which is filled with free console video games. Between them is a section of pinball that cost one dollar.
If you’d like games and you’re looking for something pretty chill to do in Nashville this spot is it.
Also, quick note: Our Pins Mechanical Co. and 16-Bit Bar+Arcade review is based on the Nashville location. There are more around the country, but we haven’t been to them (yet) so we can’t comment on their specifics.
Pins Mechanical Co. is in a really fun section of Nashville called The Gulch. Find out more about it in our 24 hours in The Gulch – Nashville post.
Pins Mechanical Co. History
Pins Mechanical Co. started in Columbus, Ohio in 2016 and has opened in a dozen cities now, including the Nashville location, which was opened in 2019.
It’s the sister barcade to 16-Bit Bar+Arcade, which was originally opened in downtown Columbus in 2013 (although the original location at 4th and Cherry Street closed earlier this year after 12 years in business).
That original location was a free standing 16-Bit Bar+Arcade. Most, but not all of the eight that are open around the country now, are part of a building that also houses Pins Mechanical Co. locations.
Pins Mechanical Co. Review
We had such a fun night here.
When you walk into Pins Mechanical Co., it reminds you of a bowling alley counter where you check in and rent your shoes. There is someone working at desk and prices for all of the activities are on a letter board above them.
And there are a lot of activities.
There’s ping pong, which costs a quarter to buy the ball. There’s foosball, which is $.50 per game. And then there’s bocce ball, cornhole, hookie, and patio pong, all of which are free.
On the second floor, there’s Skee-Ball, which is free.
The part where pins comes in is because the entire back row of the building is lined with duckpin bowling lanes.
If you’ve never played duckpin bowling, I highly suggest you do.
It’s similar to candlepin bowling. Tiny pins are attached to string and you use a very small shotput-like ball (size wise, but not weight) to knock down the pins. Fun fact: Candlepin bowling, played mostly in the Northeast, has long thin pins while duckpin bowling, played everywhere else, has short, stout pins.
With duckpin bowling, you get three rolls. If you get all the pins down on the first try, it’s a strike; with two tries it’s a spare. If it takes you three rolls, that’s just 10.
We played a couple of games and neither of us ever got a strike. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but we also didn’t see anyone else get one.
Duckpin bowling is $8 per game on weekdays, $9 on the weekends. But, on Mondays after 8 pm, it’s free.
We went on Monday night during football season, when my home team — the New York Jets — were playing. Since we were planning on watching the game there anyway, we just waited until 8 to bowl.
I say this a lot, but when you’re planning a trip, try to figure out the free things to do and find out when they’re free.
Could we have bowled at 7 o’clock? Sure. But instead, we just played free video games until bowling was free. Saving money on bowling meant that we had more money to spend in the bar on drinks (since you need to be drinking in order to play the free games on the 16-Bit Bar+Arcade side).
Duckpin bowling was so much fun, but I actually think the best part about Pins Mechanical Co. is the giant slide that leads from the Skee-Ball room on the second floor down to the outdoor area on the first floor.
When we were in Durham, NC, we went to OC Aerial, which is an American Ninja Warrior course, and it had a gigantic slide as well. That was the best part of that facility.
On that slide, you flew onto these really soft mats and it’s impossible for me to explain the joy you feel flying through the air — as an adult.
Slides should not just be for children.
The slide at Pins Mechanical Co. is more of a typical enclosed metal twisty slide, but it still brings that childlike joy.
16-Bit Bar+Arcade Review
So the majority of Pins Mechanical Co. is on the right side and the back of the building. On the left side is 16-Bit Bar+Arcade.
It is a barcade in its purist form. There is a bar on one side of the room and the rest of the room is filled with old console video games, like (my favorite) Q-Bert, Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros. (which I didn’t even realize was a console game at any point), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tapper, and more.
All of the games are free as long as you’re drinking.
In the back of the room is a wall filled with television screens. Some of them were playing the Jets game, one of them was playing old MTV shows, and the four underneath were so you could play the video game systems under them.
That wall was decorated with wooden squares, four of which were painted to look like Scrabble tiles. I bring that up only because the four tiles were an A, S, I, and L, which if you read them backwards, spelled Lisa.
Why was my name on the wall? I don’t know, but it brought me almost as much joy as that slide did.
Between 16-Bit Bar+Arcade and Pins Mechanical Co. is a little tiny alley filled with pinball machines (technically it’s part of the latter). There are a lot of them and they cost $1 per game.
Pete is obsessed with pinball, so of course we had to play there for a little bit. It was so much fun.
Honestly, the whole experience was great and it’s one that I would recommend to anyone.
Barcades aren’t a unique-to-Nashville experience. Barcades are popping up everywhere, so you might have one in your town.
We have one in Wilmington, but it doesn’t have all the extra activities that Pins Mechanical Co. does. Plus, at the biggest one near us, each game is between $1 and $1.50 and that adds up very quickly, so it kind of turns into a rushed experience and you don’t enjoy it as much as you do somewhere like 16-Bit Bar+Arcade where you your dollar goes further.
We said if we lived in Nashville, this would be our go to spot. We would hang out here every single weekend.
So, if you visit Nashville or somewhere that has a Pins Mechanical Co., definitely spent an evening there. You’ll really enjoy it.
Have you been to Penn mechanical in Nashville? Let us know about your experience in the comments.