SOMETHING FOR everyone" is the tagline printed on a brochure for the Good Time Emporium, but a better catch phrase for the venue’s spirit might be John’s reminder: "two sides to every story." On a Saturday afternoon at Good Time, two teenage girls from Charlestown chase each other through a maze of four-player combat stations, then plop into a booth in the expansive children’s-birthday area. Outfitted in sideways-facing baseball caps and puffy down jackets, they sit, silent, for more than 15 minutes. But when asked how they’re doing — and presented with the observation that they look bored — the older one promptly objects. "Nah, we’re not bored. We’re just sitting here talking," she insists. Then they run away.

Which illustrates another pervasive sentiment at Good Time: leave me alone. Owner Dan Hayes, a long-time Somerville denizen who also owns Billerica’s Hayes Instrument Services, forwards this reporter’s phone calls to Rinfret, a one-woman human-resources department overseeing the place’s 90 employees, who range in age from 16 to 65. "He doesn’t want to talk to the press," says Rinfret, who’s been on staff since Good Time opened. "Anyway, Dan’s out of town now."

In the presence of a reporter, the 40-year-old Rinfret — a congenial woman with the beleaguered air of someone unfairly accused of corrupting youth, conspiring to cause trouble, and enabling drunks — is visibly nervous. Seemingly uncomfortable with her role as Good Time’s mouthpiece, she admits to having had bad experiences with the local press. Every word that comes out of her mouth, she says, "gets twisted." The mother of a five-year-old and a former Somerville School Committee candidate back in 1999, Rinfret asserts that Good Time’s bad rap is totally unwarranted, which causes her to make statements like, "You need two hands to play almost everything in here — whether it be pool or darts — so drinking isn’t always the focus." (It should be noted, however, that some of the video games at Good Time are equipped with drink holders.) So why does Good Time have such a stigma? "I have no idea. Seriously," she says, adding, "Maybe they’re just jealous."

But Rinfret’s biggest criticism is that nobody draws attention to "all the good that we do." Good Time hosts blood drives at least twice a year. It sponsors the Somerville High School basketball team. It holds end-of-year parties for Pop Warner, a Somerville youth-sports program. It sets up pancake breakfasts for the Kiwanis Club. Last summer, it sponsored a roller-hockey competition, and it regularly donates use of its large space for community meetings.

The Mayor’s Office confirms all this. "Good Time contributes a lot of things to the city," says press secretary Bill Doncaster. "They provide space for a lot of organizations to hold parties and events. It’s a large space in the city — which we don’t have a lot of — and they’ve been very generous."

Despite these acts of good will, Good Time can’t seem to shake its hardscrabble reputation. Rinfret emphasizes that the venue does all it can to circumvent conflict: the staff members carry two-way radios, security video cameras tape the grounds, and between one and five detail cops are on duty every night. Since both babies and barflies convene here — though you have to be 18 to enter after 8 p.m. — the Emporium gives its staff an incentive to prowl the premises for kids sneaking drinks and brandishing fake IDs: employees get a $10 cash bonus for each underage drinker they catch. And, as in Amanda’s case, the staff confiscates the keys of anyone visibly doped up or obviously wasted, since, says Rinfret, "even if we put them in a cab, they’ll just get out of the cab halfway down the street and walk back."

Yet in addition to the detail cops regularly posted at the place, the Somerville Mayor’s Office cites roughly 279 calls for police service and 40 arrests at Good Time last year. (The statistics are "rough" because, as Doncaster explains, "if you go by the police logs, sometimes it’s actually the address of Good Time, sometimes it’s the parking lot.") Two of those calls occurred on the evenings of the 2001 World Cup final and last year’s Super Bowl, episodes described by Lieutenant Frank Kelley of the Somerville Police Department as "large incidents." What defines a large incident? "On those nights, we had to call in surrounding communities for assistance, that’s how many people were there."

On the night of the 2001 World Cup final, Brazil was a competitor, and Good Time caters to a large Brazilian population. That also happened to be around the same time that local energy-supplier NSTAR was having problems, and in the middle of the championship match, the electricity at Good Time went out. Rumor has it that when the power shut down, the place exploded, bodies crowded the parking lot, and all hell broke loose. "They didn’t go nuts," swears Rinfret. "There wasn’t one ounce of damage in this building. Not one ounce. The police overreacted." Still, a dispatcher called in a SWAT team and a state policeman made one arrest for assault and battery.

"There was no problem," Rinfret continues. "There was a language barrier, but once we explained to the customers — they were hanging outside, we got them out, no problem. They were hanging in the parking lot because they wanted to see their World Cup; that’s their Super Bowl. They wanted the lights to come back on. They weren’t causing any trouble."

A similar situation unfurled on the night of last year’s Super Bowl, when the cops took three patrons into custody for disorderly conduct, assault and battery on police, and resisting arrest. (To be fair, there was bedlam across the entire city of Boston that night.) The evening’s events prompted an official hearing with Somerville’s licensing commission to determine whether the incident violated the terms of Good Time’s restaurant or liquor licenses. "They hold a liquor license in town, and with that comes a significant amount of responsibility to call police themselves," says Doncaster. "And when they don’t, we will." In the end, no action was taken against Good Time.

"It’s a busy place," says Lieutenant Kelley. "If there weren’t paid details down there, and cruisers had to respond for every incident down there, we’d be inundated."

SO ABOUT that IKEA. Has the furnishings giant factored the Good Time Emporium, with its sundry personality quirks, into its plans? "If there’re problems over there, we don’t anticipate they’ll spill over into the IKEA side," says Pat Smith, real-estate manager of the Somerville IKEA project. Smith says his company has been dealing with Taurus New England, the owners of Good Time’s building, but not Good Time. "The way we look at it, we’re going to be a part of the bigger Assembly Square redevelopment."

But the final nail in Good Time’s coffin probably won’t be IKEA; the long-term Assembly Square Redevelopment Project — which has been held up by sundry revisions and permits — doesn’t include the entertainment complex in its current draft. Instead, the plan provides for something called Yard 21, a residential, office, and urban-style retail complex on the land where Good Time sits.

"[Good Time] would have to be relocated or there would have to be some change in its usage," admits Taurus New England Investments president and CEO Peter Merrigan. "They are right in the middle of it."

So if the plan for Yard 21 advances, Good Time will be relocated, sold, or shuttered. But even that wouldn’t happen anytime soon: the projected time line is two to five years. "We’re not living our lives worrying about the future," says Good Time’s Rinfret. "They’ve been talking about it for so long that it’s an intangible at this point. But like any business, who knows? Anything could happen."

Today, Good Time is still a place where lots of things do happen. You can be a WWF wrestler, flip a car off the road, free a hostage. It’s still a boutique of fantasies, a plaza off the highway that satisfies nearly every legal impulse — drinking, dribbling, kicking, screaming, eating, gambling — and some that aren’t so legal (shooting, manhunting, murdering, ’rasslin’, bitch-slapping). And if that sort of outlet for aggression is closed down, it’ll certainly be a gloomy day in Somerville.

"God forbid," Rinfret sighs. "There will be a lot of sad, sad people out there."

Camille Dodero can be reached at cdodero[a]phx.com