I live in Holiday Florida, near Tampa, and Tarpon Springs, and the Replay Arcade. This was the coolest arcade to show up in the last - well long time! Anyway, I found a NEW place this weekend!

Right out in front of God and everyone, there is a GREAT pinball museum in the XXX shop! Don't get me wrong, when I was a younger man, I used to go to those type of places from time to time.. but they never had any pinballs in them!

This place had a Bizarre with Zipper Flippers, an old OLYMPIC game - that was by far the oldest game I've ever played. They had a buck rogers, a stratoflite, even a Chicago Coin Hollywood! All in the back of this XXX theater!

I have heard the fairly recent trend of putting a Bar and Arcade together, but what the hell is this? A XXXArcade? I mean, they called them arcades already anyway!

-8r1@n

Yo Diamonds- Stay in New York!

Everyone else, Keep on Flippin!

-Brian

I've sort of wondered that for a while too- Not necessarily about Arcades and Gloryholes- Heh, topic for another day-

but the word Arcade- When I was a kid I remember going with my Grandmother downtown, and we went to some place or other and it was the "Melson Arcade" or something like that, and being quit excited for the prospect of dinging pinball machines, only to be disappointed by women's underthings. (Isn't this a great topic

ARCADE- from the French, Arcada, Italian Arcata, and finally the Latin root "Arcus" or Bow. Referring to the arched entry ways to a group of shops. In these covered arcades, sometimes they would have coin operated devices, giving rise to the arcades like the one depicted on Disney's main street - something tells me the main street Penny arcade no longer exists. Or if it does, it's filled with 20 foot connect 4 machines, and Bop the Balony- err, smack the gator or something. And DEFINITELY not the half-electrocution arm wrestle machine, or whatever it was. I can't believe they allowed that stuff in the first place!! Right up there with those Buster Brown see-through shoes machines. I think they had one of those machines too. And of course those movie card viewer things - where you crank the film and - You get to see a picture of a woman smoking. Or, Maybe a picture of a girl swinging on a swing, and she has on some crazy hat or something. It's crazy what pushing the envelope for society meant back then, their "Jerry Springer" entertainment if you will. The kind of stuff that would make your grandmother clutch her pearls. I think these risque "hand crank" card flip viewer things, I think that's the real connection to little booths with coin operated movies.

Still.. I it's quite a ways from arched porticos to multi-channel xxx movies in a little booth with a gloryhole..

Is there some tradition of having arcades mixed in and amongst XXX shops? I remember in Minneapolis, Riflesport, and later Pops, both of which were located between, or right next to XXX shops. I guess I can understand why parents got the ideas of these places as being somewhat seedy, and places for chickenhawks to hunt. At the time I didn't really see it that way, all I saw was the flashing video games - I didn't even notice the book stores until I was a little older I guess, and then eventually having the experience of being hit upon, and the revulsion I felt as a straight young man to this affront on my sexuality. Ahh the joys of growing up in the 70s! Maybe it's better parents DON'T let their children out of their site these days.

-Brian

-Brian

The Entertainment Center. Here it is...

http://www.adultvideotarponsprings.com/

I don't know how long it's been there, but I've never heard of it before. I'll ask some other pinheads from Tarpon what they know about it.

-Brian

I have had a secret dream to have an arcade since I was - in middle school? I saw a guy there doing that, and I thought, "This guy gets PAID to sit around and clean these games and make sure us kids don't beat them up??" Now, along with being an artist, and anything in the social sciences, I was made very clear that something more, white collar, would be the place for me.

I wish someone had explained about graphic artists, and not every artist ends up a broke alcoholic and cuts off their ear. We had SO MANY weird stereotypes in the sheltered midwest when I was growing up. But I digress, is the image of some long haired hippy kid watching the arcade at the beach as false as I think it is? I mean, the job probably wouldn't pay that much, but if you were the proprietor that'd be one less person you'd have to keep on payroll, and if you're going to be hanging around with your head stuck under a playfield anyway, I'd think you'd be able to do double duty- fixing problem games and also policing kids playing games.

I guess the economics of keeping an arcade open today are just different - look at this place! But if an arcade doesn't have a second "business" to help it along, it's not seen as viable? There is one in Tarpon Springs, the Replay Museum, where they mostly have new stern titles, a few pre-dmd games, and maybe 5 EM games, plus about 20 video games. I just don't like the fact that you have to spend $13 to set foot in the place. I'm more of a stop and play a few games on my way home from work kind of guy, and $13 doesn't fit into my economic reality at this point in my life. I'd be happier spending something like $1 for 2 games at a time. If I spend $13, and I only want to spend 20 minutes there, I feel like I'm getting screwed, as a result when I DO go there I end up staying much longer than I planned and am tired and grumpy by the time I leave instead of just leaving when I feel like I want to. I can understand their point I guess, in order to make money, they have to get what they have to get. After all their in business to make money, not to be nice guys and let people play pinball for free.

-Brian

That's pretty interesting- As I was reading the first paragraph and a half, I kept thinking of the Ashville pinball Museum - which I just visited in October and all I can say is WOW. That place is so flippin' cool!! New, Old, most of them worked, and they were very interested in things I told them that weren't working. it was great! Especially in a part of the country where it can be a little difficult to find a place to play outside of a large metro area like Atlanta. Northern Georgia had 3 pinball machines out in public to play that I found. One each in your Mega-play mini-golf/race cars type place, and one at a bar. So yeah, they definitely are harder to find.

In Tarpon they have the Replay, which has been open a few years I guess, but they too like you said, are in a tourist area, and they are only open Thursday-Sunday. The maintenance on the games is definitely not at the level of APM..

I guess what you are saying about needing an anchor, so to speak, and then having pinballs there too- Like a hotel, a bar, or whatever, I suppose that is kind of a return to the way things were BEFORE the big pinball/Video game explosion of the 80s. I remember in Oldsmar Florida, along the main drag through town (haha, tiny suburb) there were three Pickwick convenience stores within the space of 2 miles. You could almost see the two of them from each other. Anyway, they ALL had pinball machines in them. Every bar, bus station, mini mart and hotel. Before there were damned video gam- Excuse me. sorry. I love Defender. I just miss the days of "saturation pinball."

I remember playing pinball with a friend of mine in in the late 80s, and him saying basically that these video games are going to kill the pinball machines off. You were so close to right Bruce...

-Brian

No, someone has taken very good care of these games.

Like I said, it almost feels like a seperate establishment. There's nothing in the game room to remind you that you're in the bookstore - And when I was in there nobody from the bookstore ventured into the gameroom. I was the only one in the gameroom. If they put a door in that room, and closed off the other room they could just say it's an arcade period.

This brings up another arcade i remember from Tampa when i was a kid. It was behind a walgreens in a strip mall in Town'n'country - No sign, nothing. You had to know about it. I was quite surprised that My mother 1) knew about it, and 2) TOOK me there! It was all black inside, with black lights, a couple pool tables, a few pinballs, and- a PacMan machine with was COMPLETELY brand new. Mom had a hard time wrenching me from the place after she was done shopping.

-Brian