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
Interview on Play The Past
photo by Vivienne Gucwa
In the past two weeks I have discovered an entire world of online commentary focused on the various aspects of gaming culture. I have had the pleasure of having dialogs with a few of them. Over the weekend I had a lot of fun answering questions posed by Trevor Owens, a contributor to Play the Past (a website “dedicated to thoughtfully exploring and discussing the intersection of cultural heritage (very broadly defined) and games/meaningful play (equally broadly defined)). Trevor is a digital archivist at the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) in the Office of Strategic Initiatives at the Library of Congress and a doctoral student at GMU. I think I need to interview him, I’m pretty curious about his line of work and studies.
The interview forced me to put into words a lot of things I have been thinking about.
The Last Night At Chinatown Fair Arcade: Interview with Director Kurt Vincent.
I am excited to meet up with Ben Gilbert, a Brooklyn based writer for Joystiq, to do an interview this week. He actually lives in the same area as Irene and I. You can read a post that he made on the movie here.
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