The End of an Era
One the last traditional arcades in the city has finally closed down. It was truly a staple of Mott Street and Chinatown. When I was younger, I went to school just up the road from this arcade and was told to never go in there by my dad. He said it was full of hooligans and kids who never did anything but play games.
As I got older, I had the chance to finally walk into the arcade and actually see what it was all about. Though it was nothing special to me, I knew it was really important to the people who were regulars there. In general, it just sad to see anything get shut down, especially after 50+ years.
I’m sure some of you feel the same way about shops that have closed down (especially Grimaldi’s recently). Let me know what you think!
Source: http://nyctheblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/chinatown-fair-last-arcade-in-chinatown.html
2 responses so far
I actually never came here for the arcade, but it did use to have a photo booth, which is why I remember this place very clearly. A year or two before the arcade closed, two of my high school friends and I pasted our group photo onto the photo booth, as others had done so in the past. When these same friends and I went back to Chinatown, we were so disappointed to find that the arcade was closed. I wonder what happened to the photo booth and all those small photos that had been pasted on it…
Wow, I can’t believe this. This arcade place has been on my list of places to go someday for over a year now, but as always, procrastination or something got in the way. I have been to Barcade in Williamsburg and thought it was a fun environment, so I was looking forward to visiting that arcade as well. It’s a surprise to me because it seems that our society is moving towards preserving memorabilia of the older time. Anything can change in a New York minute (to use an appropriate cliche phrase) but I think fads tell us so much about a generation and our history and it is just as important to hold on to these things as it is to save factual documents, etc.