The Chinatown Fair, 1944. It’s official.
Irene holding the light. Owen with camera. on Flickr.
Friday night shoot at Next Level. We interviewed Amanda and Ben. I think we got some great footage.
-Kurt
Money Match on Flickr.
Money Match.
We have been filming at Next Level.
We shot all around Chinatown this week. Definitely captured the neighborhood. Here is our director of photography, Owen Strock, getting the very necessary shot of duck and chicken hanging in the window. You can barely see it, but in the background is a cook in his chef whites chopping meat. Owen is amazing at rack focusing, which he nailed on this shot.
We are in the middle of a lot of shooting. I will be documenting the process. Check our Flickr page and Facebook (www.facebook.com/arcademovie) for more!
-Kurt
My only picture from my last visit to Chinatown Fair.
Last Friday I was a part of a panel discussion about arcades at NY Comic Con. It was an amazing time. Somehow, at 11 am on a Friday, we filled the room with people eager to hear a talk about arcades. Leaves me feeling hopeful that the movie will receive a lot of attention when it is finished! The panel was moderated by Tal Blevins who has been at IGN since the early days, 13 years and counting! He was the perfect host. Seth Killian was there providing an incredibly unique perspective (As far as I can tell he has one of the coolest jobs in the world). Jamin Warren was beyond articulate, as always. And let me state this here: In 20 years, Kill Screen will be the Rolling Stone of video games. The Harlem Hero, Norman Burgess, was there waxing poetic about Chinatown Fair. And the star of the panel, Henry Cen, “Golden Cen” aka 50 Cen, was wonderfully cynical and cracking up the audience with his musings.
Thank you all for coming and saying hi. I met some new friends and look forward to continuing this discussion!
-Kurt
So, as you may or may not know, NYC Comic Con arrives at the Javits center on Thursday, October 13th. ARCADE is happy to announce that we were selected to host a panel on Friday October 14th at 11 AM to 12 PM. The panel will be moderated by Tal Blevins and participants will include: Seth Killian, Henry Cen, Norman Burgess, Jamin Warren, and our very own Kurt Vincent.
If you don’t already know who Seth Killian is, he is the face of CAPCOM and a Street Fighter bawse (no literally, the SFIV boss Seth, is named after him).
Henry Cen is a New York City arcade legend and former manager of Chinatown Fair— he has played in every arcade in the city and lived through the golden age and downfall of arcades. Against all odds, Henry opened up his own Arcade, Next Level, and he will be discussing the role of arcades past, present, and future.
As arcades were dwindling in number, pockets of gamers were gathering in living rooms and basements. Norman Burgess’s uptown apartment is Harlem Arcade. Every Friday night, Norman hosts a gaming night with a dedicated group of gamers. These nights usually end around 7 am Saturday morning.
Gamers Don’t Read. This is the misconception Jamin Warren is out to dispel with his groundbreaking quarterly, Kill Screen Magazine. Jamin was an arts and entertainment reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was a columnist for GOOD magazine, and in addition was also a music critic for Pitchfork. The director of ARCADE, Kurt Vincent will be answering questions about our film.
See more about our Panel, Meet Me at the Arcade: here.
I’ll admit, I’ve never been to a Capcom Fight Club before, so I really did underestimate the line. “You’ve got to be at least two hours early”, I was warned. But I shrugged it off, “I’ve been to CF on a Friday night, I know what to expect”. I did not. I was expecting maybe a few hundred people over the course of 3 hours, not enough to warrant getting there early, that’s for sure. I was wrong. When I arrived a half an hour after the official start time, there were literally over a thousand people waiting in line. I was truly stunned. I have never seen the fighting game community out in such force. Everybody was repping their Broken Tier shirts (some even cosplaying) and talking about the latest SFxT and UMvC 3 reveal videos while determined to put in the time to get a chance to play some early builds. And boy, did we put in some time. I was online for waaaay to long (I should also mention that is was raining half the time), but I finally got in. Once inside I could tell Capcom put a tremendous amount of effort into this shindig, and it’s awesome to see them so engaged in the community. The wait finally paid off when I got a chance to play Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and got my hands on my new favorite character Nemesis. That guy is a beast! All in all, it was an amazing experience, both seeing Capcom give back to the community, and seeing how huge the NYC scene really is!
-Reed
One Last Time: My final visit to Chinatown Fair
“It stinks in here”
Those were the first words said by Henry Cen, long time CF manager and fighting game ass-kicker, as he entered the doors of 8 Mott Street for one final visit. It was just about 6 months ago that CF closed its doors for good, but for one day, they were opened again to a lucky few for some amazing shooting and exquisite garbage rummaging.
I am not going to lie; when the gate was first opened I cringed. These unattended months had not been kind to the arcade, and between the doors and the gate were about a thirty cubic pounds of garbage, consisting of flyers, phone books, and Yu-Gi-Oh cards. It was like going to visit a relative’s grave only to find some drunken frat-boys had passed out on top of it. Inside was just as double-take inducing. Quiet, dark, and empty are adjectives I never would have used to described CF. The place was always alive with chatter and video game noise, which was almost always drowned out by the booming techno of the dance games, and while it may have been dimly lit at times, you were always engulfed in the light of CRT’s. And even midday at its least crowded, there was never enough room to swing a cat in that place. This was really the most harrowing of the three, the place was just so empty and it looked so wrong.
But that feeling only lasted for a few seconds. It was still CF, so it was still home. All around were cabinet parts and posters and old brackets that needed to be explored. It is really hard to explain what it was like, but imagine being a kid in an abandoned toy factory; I felt an obligation to look through everything that had been left behind, because the place was littered with things that still had meaning to me. I swear on Dan Hibiki I will keep a Chinatown Fair token until the day I die.
We got some truly amazing footage, but the real treat was having Henry Cen come by for a final visit, and give us the full tour of the place. He told us awesome stories of letting the chicken loose, building Sam’s office, and showed us how to properly throw someone out. And while I felt sadly nostalgic for CF, Henry seemed genuinely happy not to be working under the unwinnable odds that forced its closure. I could tell that he really cared about the place, but at the same time was determined to make Next Level even better.
I always regretted not being able to visit Chinatown Fair on its last day, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain how thankful I am for being able to go back to the place that meant so much to so many, for one last time.
-Reed
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