Feb 18, 2020
The Other Arcade Episode: The Dream Machine, Bad Real
Estate, What Happened to Arcades, The Places I'd Seek, Lake George,
Childhood Gone, Quassy Park, My Short-Lived Vending Machine Idea,
Organized Crime, Barcadians, No Documentary, Except a Documentary,
Dream Machine.
Another episode covering arcades, but I wanted to
approach this important-to-me subject through an alternate thread.
I wanted people to know that http://arcadedocumentary.com now points to
a project called ARCADIA, which I'm supporting as a replacement for
what I'd been intending to do with my own film.
Carly Kocurek, who was interviewed for my film, came out with a
book you might have missed called COIN OPERATED AMERICANS, the page
for which is here:
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/coin-operated-americans
In the episode, I don't mention Lyons Pinball, which of all the
public arcades (there were a few private ones I also liked), I
found the most charming, and the most lovely. Here's their website
(they're in Lyons, Colorado), and they are still the only place in
the world you can consistently play one of the ultra-rare JOUST
two-headed pinballs machines (less than 500 were ever made).
http://www.lyonspinball.com/intro.htm
Besides my URL, here's the official URL for Arcadia:
https://arcadiathemovie.com/
Do you need to know about Quassy Amusement park? https://www.quassy.com/
The Wikipedia article of Quassy is currently more useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quassy_Amusement_Park
It's the internet, so there's pages about the Dream Machine in
Poughkeepsie (the other one in my area, besides the one I went to
at Dutchess Mall), and it even has photos of what I'm talking
about:
https://thearcadearchives.com/2011/09/21/raygunn-dreams-of-dream-machine/
All hail arcades!