Culture
When Video Game Arcades Were Community Centers
A new documentary explores the relationships built—and rebooted—in urban arcades.
As far as battlefields go, it was an unassuming arena: red brick walls, tile floor, and metal folding chairs, collectively conjuring the sense of a school cafeteria or dingy basement rec room. But for nearly half a century, Chinatown Fair hosted some of New York City’s most cunning video game players.
White stenciled lettering on the wall read “No Loitering.” But, says the filmmaker Kurt Vincent in The Lost Arcade, his new documentary about Chinatown Fair, that’s precisely what people did: “they were hanging out, waiting for their turn to play.”