Very cool stuff via The Retroist via atarigames1/YouTube. Watch the kid put his quarter on the Defender machine (1:04), say something to the kid playing (i.e. “Are you any good?”), then take the quarter down again. Intimidation was a foundational ingredient of early arcade culture.
The game sights and sounds (especially Defender), the wall art close-ups, the braces, the Nikes, the bemused mom handing out quarters—it’s a complete, high quality time capsule. I found another video at the same channel that’s shorter but equally fascinating.
It’s a 7-11 in the same year, 1981. Those dudes are us.
Then, in 1986, a judge threw out 21 counts of curfew violation because prosecutors could not prove owner Bruce Houghton was in “direct control of the premises” when the citations were issued. Houghton, exiting the courthouse with a smirk, declared the curfew unconstitutional and vowed to continue breaking it.
Skip to 1998. Upon spying what was once Big Daddy’s, entrepreneur Ken Schwartz exclaimed, “The building is really a dump.” But he knew the area was ripe for redevelopment, so he bought the dump and “gutted Big Daddy’s to create the futuristically styled headquarters for his food service consulting company.”
Skip to 2006. What was once “a rather tacky strip that sported rundown mobile home parks, used-car dealerships and pawnshops with stuffed, costumed gorillas out front”—not to mention video arcades driven to extinction—is now “a throughway featuring national chains and upgraded commercial properties with high-end condominiums tucked behind.”
The photos above are from an unidentified 1983 story about a ban prohibiting the use of “any mechanical or electronic amusement device, whether coin-operated or not” in the coastal town of Marshfield, Massachusetts. (Exceptions were made for devices used in the home.) The ban, initially passed by a “smut”-conscious minority of residents in 1982 and immediately appealed by Marshfield business owners whose game cabinets were removed by police, was upheld the following year by the Massachusetts Supreme Court.
It was upheld by Marshfield residents again in 1994 and one more time, by a vote of 655 to 544, in 2011. Apparently Marshfield doesn’t understand that (1) we live in a free country, and (2) it’s the 21st century and everyone is holding an “electronic amusement device.” Maybe they’ll ban iPhones next.
It’s like all those apocryphal stories of Japanese (or German) soldiers trapped on a deserted island for 20 years who, after getting rescued, refuse to believe that the war is over and their side lost. It’s also a real life version of Footloose, which might be even more desperately sad. Where’s Kevin Bacon on a tractor (or reciting applicable biblical verses) when you need him?
(1) Damn, it’s hard out there for a pimp. (2) How awesome is that raised platform in the background? Talk about product placement. That’s Tempest on the left, so this must be at least ’81. I think that’s Turbo on the right, which also came out in ’81. (Click on the pics for a bigger image.)
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Ladies and Gentlemen, we are floating in space.
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Check out what’s playing on the big screen in the background.
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“Here comes John Travolta. Let me just flash my bell-bottoms…”
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“Over here, John!”
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The wall art. Gnarly.
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What a great shot. I knew kids that never skipped school to go to the arcade. I just wasn’t one of them.
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