Smoking At The Arcade
I don't smoke and I never have. I'm not a nazi about it. If a smoking friend brings up quitting, I encourage them. Maybe I'll joke about it if I know the person really well, but generally I'll leave it alone.
Ironically, I have a lot of happy memories associated with the smell of cigarette smoke. I'm old enough that smoking was almost omnipresent when I was growing up, though not in our home. Smoke reminds me of my first all ages shows. Of holiday visits to certain relatives. The best smoke-memory though has to be sneaking out to sketchy video arcades when I was 11, 12 years old (early-mid 80s). The kind filled with metalheads and drug dealers. They were very dark and scary, yet I knew that the people who hassled me at school never visited such places, so there was a certain bizarre safety about it too.
I really liked going to arcades. I remember being so impressed the first time I saw someone play Tron in the tiny, smoky, 6-machine operation next to the corner store in our semi-rural suburb. But my favorite games to play were pinball machines, because they felt more real than video games. That little silver ball is an actual thing, not just a point of light.
My mom was not a fan of this activity. Hanging out in such dubious establishments, I guess she saw potential for me to become a twelve-year-old stoner or something. It's like those old after school specials on TV... kid gets peer pressured into taking some strange sort of pill, and the next thing you know the world looks fish-eyed to him, he thinks everyone is a monster, and he is jumping out of a high window, thinking he can fly. You know, that familiar old story that has touched all of our lives.
So I was banned from all arcades.
I hated to lie to mom or sneak around behind her back. In retrospect, I was probably way more scared of my parents than I needed to be (certainly more than most of my current friends were at that age). Yet, my desire to play pinball machines was too great to ignore. So I decided to build my own.
In our basement there was a 2' X 2' wooden box, about 5" deep, which had been used to mix cement. The bottom was clean enough to be usable. I nailed a piece of wood on the inside right of the space to create a track for releasing the (golf) ball. At the top of the track were two nails at a diagonal angle for deflecting the ball into the area of play. The ball was shot out thus: a hole had been bored in the right front coner of the box, big enough for a sawed-off hockey stick to be jammed through, knocking the golf ball off the elastic and into the game. Flippers presented a logistical problem; I settled on one large flipper (same hockey stick) shoved through a hole in the left side of the box. It had a fixed range of motion, giving the ball a reasonable chance to end up in the gutter. To score, I nailed plastic thread spools in strategic parts of the box, along with some more elastic bands to make things interesting. You would have to count your own score, or perhaps appoint an independent arbitrator.
I attempted to charge a small fee for the use of the machine by the neighbourhood kids. I don't know how much money I made, but whatever it was had to have been pure profit. Not a lot of overhead went into this. Eventually the novelty wore off though, and the machine went in the garbage.
As for my views on arcades, after we moved from CB to Darkside (age 13 for me), I decided that mom's decree would be subject to renewal. The onus would be on her to renew it. Otherwise I would assume it had expired. This worked out quite well for me. And Fantasy 2000 (MM Mall). And Electronic Encounters (P-Horn Mall). And that place where the strip club is now.
Ironically, I have a lot of happy memories associated with the smell of cigarette smoke. I'm old enough that smoking was almost omnipresent when I was growing up, though not in our home. Smoke reminds me of my first all ages shows. Of holiday visits to certain relatives. The best smoke-memory though has to be sneaking out to sketchy video arcades when I was 11, 12 years old (early-mid 80s). The kind filled with metalheads and drug dealers. They were very dark and scary, yet I knew that the people who hassled me at school never visited such places, so there was a certain bizarre safety about it too.
I really liked going to arcades. I remember being so impressed the first time I saw someone play Tron in the tiny, smoky, 6-machine operation next to the corner store in our semi-rural suburb. But my favorite games to play were pinball machines, because they felt more real than video games. That little silver ball is an actual thing, not just a point of light.
My mom was not a fan of this activity. Hanging out in such dubious establishments, I guess she saw potential for me to become a twelve-year-old stoner or something. It's like those old after school specials on TV... kid gets peer pressured into taking some strange sort of pill, and the next thing you know the world looks fish-eyed to him, he thinks everyone is a monster, and he is jumping out of a high window, thinking he can fly. You know, that familiar old story that has touched all of our lives.
So I was banned from all arcades.
I hated to lie to mom or sneak around behind her back. In retrospect, I was probably way more scared of my parents than I needed to be (certainly more than most of my current friends were at that age). Yet, my desire to play pinball machines was too great to ignore. So I decided to build my own.
In our basement there was a 2' X 2' wooden box, about 5" deep, which had been used to mix cement. The bottom was clean enough to be usable. I nailed a piece of wood on the inside right of the space to create a track for releasing the (golf) ball. At the top of the track were two nails at a diagonal angle for deflecting the ball into the area of play. The ball was shot out thus: a hole had been bored in the right front coner of the box, big enough for a sawed-off hockey stick to be jammed through, knocking the golf ball off the elastic and into the game. Flippers presented a logistical problem; I settled on one large flipper (same hockey stick) shoved through a hole in the left side of the box. It had a fixed range of motion, giving the ball a reasonable chance to end up in the gutter. To score, I nailed plastic thread spools in strategic parts of the box, along with some more elastic bands to make things interesting. You would have to count your own score, or perhaps appoint an independent arbitrator.
I attempted to charge a small fee for the use of the machine by the neighbourhood kids. I don't know how much money I made, but whatever it was had to have been pure profit. Not a lot of overhead went into this. Eventually the novelty wore off though, and the machine went in the garbage.
As for my views on arcades, after we moved from CB to Darkside (age 13 for me), I decided that mom's decree would be subject to renewal. The onus would be on her to renew it. Otherwise I would assume it had expired. This worked out quite well for me. And Fantasy 2000 (MM Mall). And Electronic Encounters (P-Horn Mall). And that place where the strip club is now.
posted by the baron ash von foolishness at 5:43 PM
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