Down at the Arcade, Down at the Arcade Oh I'm the good defender and I really think I got it made Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. Flying solo today, but I do have a special guest. No, this show isn't about Snooki, but I do remember the spectacle the show created in Seaside Heights during that summer. In our initial episode, I spoke about growing up at the shore. Well, this episode is an interview about Playland Arcade that was on Route 35 North in Lavalette, New Jersey. I have fond memories of this place growing up in the 60s and 70s. And today, I'm happy to be joined by David Scarpa. He's the author of the book, Beyond Playland. I remember that arcade very, very well as a young man. When I went to look a year ago, I didn't find a lot. And... Right. Now, there's not a lot out there. Well, and that's the reason for this podcast. Now, I know you're a broadcaster. Tell me how Playland began and a little bit about... Okay, are we on now? In a little... Yes, we are. In a little bit about the history. Okay. Well, it started with my dad, I'm going to guess 1957, give or take a year. Because I remember I was three years old when we first had Playland. And my dad, his best friend and him built the building. and the guy also built some homes in Sunset Manor, which I guess you would consider part of North Lavalette, which would be just north of Playland. And his name was Carmen Frida. I don't know if you remember that name or not. From the 50s, he built a Frida's Hotel in Lavalette. He was a big builder in the area. And my father bought a house from his building of small, you know, little bungalows in North Lavalette. So he bought the arcade with Carmen in 57, and we had our first beach, I guess beach bungalow, you would call it, in Lavalette. And in those days, you know, my father paid $4,000 for a beach bungalow, you know. I remember a story from my friend in North Jersey. His parents had looked at a place on Barnegat Bay on West Point Island in 1969. Beautiful old house. It was probably built in the 20s or 30s, so it needed work. $29,000 on the water. Yeah, yeah, you know. In fact, not long after we had that home in Lavalette, not long after that, my father sold that house, and we ended up buying a house on the water in Chatham Beach Island for $30,000. And there was a lot, corner lot, adjoining the property that my father bought for $10,000 more. So for $40,000, we had a beautiful house on the water and a lot that adjoined the properties. So that was pretty much it. Carmen Frida, eventually my father bought out Carmen Frida's second part of Playland, probably about three years later. I'm going to say in 1960, he probably bought the whole thing from him because he was moving on to build, you know, he was a builder. He wanted to go to other parts of the state and build. I think he went down to Seattle City and continued to build down there. My father bought his half of Playland. So, the big question I have personally is, how did your dad come to all those classic games that I remember? And if you'd like me to recite my list of favorites, because I put a lot of money in those things as a young man. I'm sure you did as a young man, right? Saving your quarters. Oh, no, no, quarters. Excuse me, quarters? I played a pinball machine in the 50s with a nickel. And then it went to 10 cents, and then eventually, as you well know, in the 80s, went to a quarter. So I'm of the nickel age, and I'll tell you the games that I remember. My favorite game, every time I went into Playland, was the scientific batting practice game for a nickel. Classic. Yes. That was over, I believe, by the front door on the left-hand side where the Williams baseball games were. Nope. Other side. Right-hand side near the jukebox. We'll get into the layout in a couple of minutes. Okay. I'm following your lead here. There's so much to explore here. So that was one of my favorite games. I put money in that every time. But a game that I did, I don't know, one or two podcasts ago, at the end of our thing, we call it a bonus feature. We did a little bit on Gangster's Saloon. Crook's Saloon. Do you remember that game? No, I don't. I don't have any recollection of it. No, no, this was a gun game where the gangsters appeared in windows and you had a Tommy gun that reacted to the pull while you were shooting. Do you remember that game? It was in the back. I'm starting to get a picture in my head of that one. Go after we record this. Go out and look at it. Gangster's Saloon. Classic game that you folks had. Again, one of the ones I put a lot of money in. Okay. Let's see. How about the Williams Digger game? Chicago Coin. You know, the... Williams, what is it? A Digger. It was basically a steam shovel that picked up, I would guess, coffee beans? Oh, are you talking about the... Oh, geez, it was a little... Fill the hopper and see how high you can get the scale to go. and it picked up the beans and then dropped them into the hopper yes oh i love that game that was that was that was so cute the little kids loved it had the little buttons where you could you could drop the you know the pick the thing i guess the crane part of it to pick up the beans and then you would turn it to the side and drop it in the hopper and it would measure uh how many you know so-called tons that you were that you were dropping into the hopper and then And, I mean, it was no, you know, they didn't win anything, but it was just pretty fun to see how far you could get. How did your dad acquire all these games? I mean, to me, these are classic. Originally, he bought the, you know, the bowling, you know, the skee-ball type games. I think they were used when he bought them. And back then, this might be a little before your time, but we had ski low game too and ski ball, and we gave out tickets and you could win prizes. Now the ski low you might not be that familiar with, but there were seats there like chairs, almost like Fascination if you ever played Fascination, except when you rolled the balls, you had to get like a three of a kind or a straight or a flush, then the little light went on, you got your tickets. same thing with the skee-ball, the light went on, you got your tickets, you went over to the counter and you would cash in your tickets for little prizes mostly funny little things like giant sunglasses or Chinese finger whatever they call them the Chinese finger torture fingers or whatever they call them the handcuffs mostly little stuff like that and then I don't know, maybe 60-something. The town, we were part of Dover Township at the time, came in and said that the guy down at Barnacle Bills wanted to know why we had them and he couldn't have them. So the town came in and told us that we had to take everything out. so we had an attorney look into look into it and see if our legal rights were because we were operating those games for I don't know 7, 8, 9 years before the town suddenly told us we we couldn't operate them anymore I mean we could operate the games but we couldn't couldn't get our prizes right you couldn't I vaguely remember that now that you mentioned it but that was never a big part of my experience but I have to tell you No, that was more families, you know, older people. It wasn't like the kids that wanted to just play the games, you know. Yeah, but I have to tell you, you had, and I looked it up today because I wanted to make sure I had the right name, the Rotary Merchandiser by Exhibit Supply. You had one of those in the back. We had two of those in the back. Okay, well, one of them, this is going to sound really crazy. my mom passed a couple years ago and up on the shelf in the kitchen it had you know the three shelves on each side of the sink you know old school um old school kitchen and i think she had this wooden it was either an elephant or a deer or a squirrel i don't know some kind of curvy looking thing but I think that came out of one of your machines because I don't remember that coming in any other way and I remember playing those machines in the back going wow those are some pretty cool things but it was more the sport than what the thing was okay I know I know we well we don't remember what we used to have years ago in the rotaries but I know they eventually went to like little cameras and and and uh cigarette lighters and stuff like that you could win uh in those rotary games um the town didn't bother us for those or the or the you know the diggers the old diggers that the kids would put two cents in them and that claw would come down and pick up little little bubble gum and little toys that the kids could use they were in the Back by the Diggers. I don't know if you remember those. No, I do. The other game we used to play, and it was probably maybe a little bit later, was the Bali soccer game, that behemoth in the back that weighed like 9 million pounds. Actually, my brother has that. and back in the 80s it was estimated its value was about $8,500 back in the early 80s I can't even imagine what it's worth no it's not worth a lot anymore unfortunately because nobody wants to move that thing and they made a lot of them I've looked from time to time I see them and everybody, you can kind of read between the lines in the ad. It just sounds like, please. Are you talking about the ones with the little soccer players? Yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, we're talking about the same game. But that thing weighed 450 or 500 pounds, if I recall. Heavy. I remember it being like in Sports Illustrated, on the inside of Sports Illustrated at one time. Oh, I played it. I put money in that. Look, there were games every time I went into that arcade I played because they were, you know, you guys are more of the arcade. I don remember Playland being a real pinball centric or it might be beyond my age but a video place either And we talk about your competitor I call it on the other side of town but I know it Ortley Beach Well, it's really north. It was Nova Township. It was taken over. Those streets were all taken over by Lavalette. Oh, no, I remember when it happened when I was a kid. I remember, you know, Dover Township, the best part was Dover Township didn't do a real good job on the 4th of July, so it was like freestyle out on West Point Island. It was great. Yeah, Dover Township, we were like the, you know, the wicked stepsister over here on the beach. We were the neglected child out on the outer island. They didn't really want much to do with us except when it was time to collect the taxes. What happened at the end? Because I remember, foggy, but I remember one day driving by the property and I'm like, there's no building anymore. What happened? But I'm guessing that something happened before that. Yeah, I mean, it was, I think, at the end. And I guess in the mid-'80s, a lot of things were changing. Kind of the clientele was changing. It was going from, you know, a lot of families to, you know, kids hanging out, listening to the jukebox, hanging around, not playing the games, looking for a place to just hang. that drove my father crazy I know that because he wanted it to be you know like it always was a family place you know then we had an incident with the ABC probably the year before we closed up the ABC came in and told us that we had to take out the cranes and the diggers because they were gambling and the funny thing was that the following year after Playland was gone, they decided that the cranes and the diggers were going to be allowed a year after they told us that we had to take them out, which really put a big kibosh on families coming in. The only thing they came for was the kiddie rides. There was really nothing to do for families anymore. It was getting worse and worse. It was going to video games. The old kind of games from the 50s that we still tried to operate weren't being played as much. Their kids wanted to play the video games. So that was the way the world in the 80s was video games. and then of course the value of the property went through the roof so my father i don't know if you remember but my father owned the golf course the miniature golf course if you're looking at playland my father owned the miniature golf course to the right which was on two lots and he also owned the big house to the left of playland which meant my father owned the entire block oh i i had no idea that your father, I played the mini golf many a time. I had no idea he owned the whole frontage on that block. And I do remember. Eventually, he bought the miniature golf course, and we operated the miniature golf course and the arcade. And then he bought the house on the corner, which was, you know, used to be the house on the corner years and years ago was a tea house. so it had like two bathrooms it was almost like a business that they were running a tea house out of in probably the 30s and 40s so my father bought that property and then people came in and were building condos like crazy you remember the 80s I distinctly remember you know that happening it was condo crazy what was the year that finally they put the business unfortunately into a dumpster and put up the condos. 86, 7, somewhere around there? Yeah. We were emptying out the place in 85. They put up the condos in 86. So I moved some of the games out of Playland and I opened And I don't know if you remember this either, but I opened up the arcade down the street in Ocean Beach Unit 2, the Village Arcade, which was owned by somebody else. The building was owned by somebody else. And I moved some of our games in there and tried to operate like we did in Playland for a couple years in the Village Arcade, Ocean Beach Unit 2. And I had the landlord from hell. so that only lasted a short time I don't remember that but I do like I said remember when the building wasn't there one day which isn't atypical of that area anymore that was that was just before the summer of 85 wow they came bulldozers a guy bought the whole piece of property the whole four lots No, I know the condos that are on there. It's a nice piece of property. No, it was a great piece of property. So it leaves... It was from block to block, you know? A lot of frontage on 35 North. Ton. So the builder bought the whole thing. That was it. I mean, I had, you know, worked there for 20 years for my father. and I even went to school and stuff to learn how to fix the games and this and that, anticipating that it would be my arcade at some point in life. But the best made plans of mice and men, they don't always work out the way you plan them. So I want to circle back because we've gone for quite a few minutes and haven't mentioned pinball, which doesn't bother me in the least because I do this for my own entertainment. I mean, I could tell you about some of the popular ones back in the late 50s, early 60s, if you like. I could do that. Well, I'd like you to go there and then kind of move more towards my era, which would be early 70s just before getting into solid state, if you were still working with your dad. Electromechanical games. Where they were just going from you had to push the ball lift and make the ball come up yourself to they became automatic and the ball would come up automatically. Right, I do remember that. Tell me about the games that you had at Playland during the time that you worked there or that you remember. You can move from the early 60s, but move up through probably early solid state games from Bali, etc. I can do a timeline if you'd like as best I can. I started out, like I said, with the bowling games and the crane machines and winning the prizes, kiddie rides. We went to electro-mechanical pinballs. I remember the ones that were really hot way back was silver and dancing dolls. and I remember one kid used to come in and play silver and then the kid would come in in the morning and leave in the dinner time because he would never lose he just kept winning and winning so my father said to me what's going on there? why did that kid never lose? I said well the tilt is not working so the kid would stay there for almost the whole summer just playing the game for a nickel so finally I adjusted the tilt on it So every time the kid, you know, shook the game and lifted it, it started to start at the tilt. So I was a hero for a little while because the kid didn't take off the whole game all day long. But then we had one with Dancing Dolls. That was a great one. Then there was a horse race game where there was, you know, like eight horses that went down the middle of the board. And, you know, as you would hit the numbers, each horse would advance until one of them won. won and then if your horse won you got you know, you would get a free game and I guess in the 80s Firepower I remember was I was a real hot pinball machine No, we had we still were operating the Williams baseball games, you know, we had eight of those Upper deck and the peanut with the pitching and the batting a lot of shooting games And then we got from the 80s. We started a a whole new era with like, you know, video ping pong, which was like the first video games that ever came out. Do you remember when you got your first Atari Pong game? Yes, I do. And then not too far after that, we got our first Space Invaders and then our first Missile Command. Do you remember those? I do, and that leads me to the big question. Go ahead. What do you consider the biggest earning game in the history of Playland? What do you think earned the most money? Well, you're going to probably not believe what I'm going to tell you. the game that made more money than any other game in playland history was a sit-down driving game called pole position i remember it so the kids loved to sit down and play it was like they were actually in a car and i think if i'm not mistaken it was like 50 cents to play it because it was a sit-down game rather than a stand-up game. If I recall, that game was right out front by the garage doors. Yeah, I think off to the right, I think. But it was up front. It was come give me your quarters. Yeah. I know there was some driving games up front, but I think the sit-down pole position was halfway back on the right furthest wall to the right. about halfway back. But that game did, I mean, a lot more than most of the other games did. So I'd say the sit-down pole position. But as far as regular video games, you know, you'd have to put, you know, Galaga in there, Centipede, Defender, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong. you know, games like that. And then, of course, second level would be like Dig Dug, Zaxxon, Mario Brothers, Star Wars. A lot of kids like Spy Hunter, too. Spy Hunter was a good one. And then the Punch-Out! boxing game. But the unique one was the Dragon's Lair. If you remember Dragon's Lair with the laser disc. I do remember when that game came out. Yeah, that was like the first one with the laser disc. I never liked it, but, you know, because it really didn't follow a pattern, you know. It was like either you missed the turn and then you missed it. You didn't go, you went left instead of right and the game was over. So, so, so play land. Stuff like that. Another one was fun was Czechs hockey. If you remember Czechs hockey, it was like right after the United States had won the, won the gold medal in the Olympics, you know, and it was, you know, U.S. versus Russia was the big thing on the Czechs hockey games, you know, which did well for them. But they were slow moving, but they did well. Kids liked to play them, you know. What happened to all the games? who when he said it lived right by playland growing up in fact he lived on the next street and i remember him coming in playland when he was a when he was a little guy he was so wide-eyed i mean it was like oh my goodness it was like a little kid he opened his eyes and so my god playland you know it was like the biggest thing in his life and i remember even saying at that point that wow this kid really really he's a he's a playland guy you know he's an arcade type guy And eventually he opened up his own place in Seaside, Randy Sano. He opened up, I can't remember the name of it, Flippers maybe? Fascination? He liked the Fascination game so he opened up some Fascination games I like to stop you and interrupt there because that is foreign to a lot of people Although I live in New Hampshire and there a place north of me called Fun Spot They claim to be the world's largest arcade, yada, yada, yada. But they had those machines there. And I remember him, obviously growing up in Lavalette, going to Seaside and seeing them, but never played them. Can you tell the audience a little bit about that game and Randy? Because it sounds like he's been involved with that game for 40 or 50 years. Yeah, Randy's a little younger than I am. I'm guessing he's probably somewhere around 60 years old. he's been in the business since I can remember since he was probably in his 20s his father and mother had a house there his father was an attorney and then passed away and then he had a little bit of money to get started God bless him had a fascination he rented in Seaside lost his lease ended up in Wildwood and he has an antique I guess he was trying to do this is a good story he was trying to build like an arcade museum in Wildwood but he bought an old Woolworth's store in Wildwood on the street and because it was on the street Wildwood wouldn't let him open it because the arcades are supposed to be on the boardwalk however he wasn't opening it as an arcade he was opening, trying to open it as a museum well he's still in that same battle probably 15 years later with Wildwood but meanwhile he has an arcade on the boardwalk that again he's leasing property he owns a giant piece of property and they won't let him open it so he's leasing some space on the boardwalk in Wildwood, and it's got a lot of old arcade games. And I think why we're talking about this, I think what you're trying to get at is that we're transitioning to where I knew him, and when I had all these games that I was stuck with and had no place to put them, I sold a lot of the old ones to Randy. so Randy's actually operating some of the old games from Playland in his arcade in Wildwood I did want to move in that direction but it's funny the games that we talked about earlier I didn't see but he is a character and I mean that in the most sincere way you can just see the passion but all the, I don't even know what to call them, the exhibit pieces from all the rides along the Jersey Shore and memorabilia. I guess from what I read, he was also on TV on a hoarder's. Yeah, that's Randy. He's got tons of that stuff in his museum, but he's operating. when he shot the hoarders he wasn't operating the arcade on the boardwalk that he's operating now so a lot of the games you might have missed uh he's got the arm wrestling game that was in playland uh he's got the metal thing where you turn the metals and you print out the little metals oh yeah oh right yeah that's that's a classic he's got the basketball game where it's a there's a bubble over the game and you push the buttons and it shoots the basketball. Put a lot of money in that game as well. Keep going. That game was great. I think that was a dime. But he has that now. He's operating that particular game in his arcade retro. Is that some kind of a retro? No, it's on YouTube I think is where I saw it today because I wanted to do a little show prep, I'm like, who is this guy? And I had no idea who he was. And he's very, very up on all this stuff. He knows a lot about the history of games, you know? Well, it's... I wanted to make sure that this gets out into the public, no matter who listens to it, few or far between. It's things you don't see. I actually appreciate, you know, this stuff. It's probably a story worth telling, you know? Well, and it is because you don't see them often. And I'll bring this to your attention, whether you've seen it or not. It's, I was looking for that batting game, the scientific batting game. And I come across this auction site in Pennsylvania. and they do an annual auction on arcade games and other types of associated paraphernalia. But I saw that game restored, which was perfect. It couldn't have been a better specimen. And when I saw the price, my jaw dropped, it hit the ground, and it bounced back up. But I said to myself, how many of those could there be? There can't be many. and it's a classic game. It's electromechanical at its simplest. They're worth money. But you know something? You can't get a nickel for the Pac-Man and all the ones you think that are worth a ton of money. It's electronic. It's not mechanical. They were worth $300, $400 a piece and then the guy would have to, you know, take the whole thing apart and try to get it to work so he could get 1400 for it you know yeah i mean i sold a couple star wars and all kinds of stuff like that but the older games uh i sold to randy i sold the williams baseball games to some guy up by you actually he drove all the way down to to get the williams baseball games i sold them to him i had no place to put anything you know i was you know a teacher a football coach trying to make ends meet uh because i thought i was you know like i said inheriting the arcade never happened i was fortunate enough to grow up at my grandfather's house um you might remember it you might not but it was a visible icon on barnagot bay it was the pink roofed house on west point Island, and it was a Navigator's landmark. And it was cool growing up there. I mean, you know. I can imagine. You know, everybody knew me from Playland, you know. I couldn't go out without somebody saying, oh, I know you from Playland. I mean, it was a good thing, you know. It was a positive thing in a lot of ways. At the beach, I even lifeguarded for, you know, four or five summers, and then still worked at the arcade in the evenings, you know. Did you, you, But you didn't grow up there for your school years, did you? I bought the beach house when I was three years old, the first beach house. So I was down every summer from when I was three years old. We had a home up in North Jersey. Right. I went to college. Right. I read your dossier, so I'm familiar and we don't have to go into that. But it leads me to, because you're a couple of years older than me, and the football part of you fascinates me. Yeah, I coached football for 25 years. No, I know, and I want to ask you this. And I do announce, I announce, announce. No, I saw that as well. I knew that a year ago when I first found you. Yes, yes. But when I was a kid growing up at the Jersey Shore, I had family that lived in Herbertsville i.e. Brick Township and I heard more about the Brick Dragons as a kid than I heard about any other high school football team in the world so from your perspective because you're a little bit older not by much but a little bit top notch run outfit by a guy named Warren Charles Wolf who's recently passed away, but he ran that team for a long, long time, and the kids loved him. I coached, actually, many different high schools along the way, but I was coaching in Tom's River South, and we had a play brick, which we lost to most of the time, but I remember the town having a big party when we finally did beat brick. you know I I I knew that had to be part of your history because I grew up in North Jersey I grew up in a little town called Hohokas but went to school but I went to school in Ridgewood and my junior and senior years at Ridgewood were unbelievable we were top ranked team and I remember and now it seems like nothing but back then it was something I guess 5,000 people. You're talking about my two favorite subjects here. I do a little bit of homework and I usually don't. I usually free wheel it but I really wanted to dig into you after I saw a couple of things. I'm like wow. Football for 25 years. Don't hold anything back home. I said that to you when I contacted you. You're probably like who's this guy? Talk about whatever you'd like and if you don't want me to include it like i said something you might find interesting that you that you might not have known was was when i was um i guess maybe in the in the 70s i was just getting out of high school trying to get my life together before i went back to college and played college football but there was some down time in between and i worked for this company on Springfield Avenue in Union, New Jersey, called Mundial International Corporation, and they were distributors for Gottlieb pinball machines. So my job was to take the machines off of the trucks and assemble them. And then when old machines came in that weren't working, it was my job to get them working. and I also would tear them apart, put all new rubbers on them and polish them and make sure everything on them worked. So I did work for a godly pinball machine distributor and the funny thing is right up the street from where I was was a company called H. Betty Industries, which was also known as Betson, who distributed Williams and Bally pinball machines. I'm familiar with that, and I'm sure our audience is as well. The hours in the thick of it, you know? No, that's, and again, I would never know that. That's, wow, that's a great history lesson. And we've been accused of being like the History Channel. Somebody's got to collect this information so it stays out there and people know what it was like back in the day. I know it's an overused phrase, but seriously, it's part of Americana that's kind of faded. And I think there's a lot of people who would like to see it. that Randy, you know, he has the same philosophy that we have, except he's in a financial situation where he can make it come to reality, you know. God bless him. And I'm still hoping beyond hope that they're going to eventually let him open up this museum in Wildwood, you know, it would be terrific for all of us. Randy is open, right? He's open. He's got this retro arcade. I mean, I walked through that place, and you're talking about an old Woolworths building. The square footage is beyond belief, and he's got every inch of that place filled with antique arcade games. Wow. It's worth a trip down just to peruse what he's got. The quarter show just showed what he was operating in his arcade. in the building he has thousands of square feet worth of antique arcade games and it's unfortunate that the city doesn't allow him to open that I don't think they see what you and I see they don't see the history of it they just look at it in dollars and cents is this place going to take away from the boardwalk, you know. And the boardwalk you know as far as I concerned the boardwalks in general have gotten away from what they were originally there for which was families Now, you know, it's pizza pie and beer, you know. Well, let's talk about that for a second, because you were Seaside Heights and Seaside Park, obviously the casino pier. People are familiar with the Jersey Shore. We don't have to get into that unless you want to. But I try to tell people who are new to pinball and maybe arcade games that you can't imagine the number of games that were on the boardwalk in Seaside. And when I tell people that some of the arcades had five Captain Fantastics right next to each other, people playing them and then waiting to get on the games because the quarters were lined up. They look at you like you're kidding, right? It goes on to save their space like you do in a bar to put a shot glass upside down so you can get the next drink. This is what they were doing. They were putting quarters on top of the machine. That meant they were next to go when you were done. Right, but people don't understand the scale, and there were multiple arcades. But my question is more along the line of, did that help or hurt your business, or was there so much to go around it really didn't matter? Right. No, I agree with that. Seaside had their people that they drew, that parked there, they brought their families, they played at stands, they got something, you know, they got a cheesesteak, they were happy. You know, there was plenty to do for the whole family. They have little games for children. I still remember they had a little fishing game where the little fish went by and they gave you a little handle with a hook. And it was simple. You just put the little hook through the fish that were floating by, and they gave you a prize. It was beautiful for families to come down. And they were guaranteed to win a prize. Now, Seaside, I'm not picking on Seaside, but, you know, all of them. Times of change. You know, and alcohol. It's just gotten in that direction. Well, let's talk about that because I remember when the change happened, and perhaps you do as well. Do you remember when the Sawmill Pub started in Seaside Park? Of course I do, yes. And giant pizza and alcohol right there. you could sit and have a beer while you were... Well, let's take it a step further. You could stand on the boardwalk within the lines and have a beer. And I was a young man then, again, a little younger than you, 25-cent beer night on certain nights. Yeah, everybody could get sauced and start fights. It was great. You know what? I don't remember about the fights then. No, I'm being facetious. But it was the beginning. I remember when that happened, and I remember the town fathers not being very, very gracious when that business tried to launch itself. You're right. You know, in Wildwood right now, you could go up to the bar, get a drink, and take it with you, and walk up and down the Wildwood boardwalk with your drink. If there was ever a state I thought that would never happen in, it would be yours. I never thought I would ever see that day, but of course they're blaming it on the virus you know because you can't go in and drink so so now you're allowed excuse me you're allowed to take the drink with you yeah it's i i never thought i'd see the day but um it's interesting to see how you know things evolved from uh you know when we were younger and then after you know post sandy how it changed the complexion of that whole area and it reminds me when i went down i still had a very good friend of mine living on west point island and he got hit and that's a story onto itself the piece that makes pinball sense is he ended up losing almost 25 classic bolly games because he had four feet of water in his first floor. It's a shame. And I saw all the games when I went down to visit him. It was Christmas of that year, so two months later. And all the games out on the curb by Barnacle Bills, which we tried to get to earlier, your competitor, I'm guessing, or compatriot on the other end of town. it was a shame to see that it was awful yeah well you know in the old days we would go up to my brother and I would take a ride up to Seaside and we perused early on before the season started and we would go up to see the big arcades what they were buying so they were buying 3, 4, 5, 6 Pac-Mans so we didn't even know what the heck Pac-Man was, or Mint, or whatever it was. But the big barquets were buying five of them. So we went back, told my father, big barquets are buying five Pac-Mans. So my father made a phone call, and he bought two. So we had two Pac-Mans, you know. Eventually, well, we had six between Pac-Man and Miss Pac-Man. We probably had six of them operating at the same time. Right, but they didn't break, and they earned. I mean, they were money makers. And let's face it, if you compare that to the arcade games and games that you were using prior to that, it was a revelation. It was like printing money. And I'm not putting words in your mouth. It's pretty well known that they were great earners. Well, you know, we're operating pinball machines. and other games, you know, bowling and whatever for 10 cents, 10 cents a pop, you know. And the beautiful thing about the video games was, of course, they were very expensive to purchase. They were back in the late 70s, early 80s, they were $3,500 to buy one game, which was, you know, astronomical. Wow, that's incredible. Because you get your money back, you know. But you were charging a quarter a pop, you know, instead of a nickel or a dime to play, you know. No, look, I remember a lot of nickels in the baseball games. Most of the games you talked about or we talked about today were nickels. There were some dime games. But mostly, you know, my quarters went down the street. I don't know why we gravitated towards Barnacle Bills. I'm guessing because they had a lot of the latest pinballs and quite a few of them. Right. I didn't focus on pinball machines, really. Right. And they were two different businesses, and I wanted to ask you about that because you were more family-centric with the mini golf. They had it too, but they were definitely more pinball-centric. I played pond there for the first time, but I remember them primarily as a pinball parlor. We had a row of pinball machines, but we had a row of everything else also. So pinballs weren't our focus at the time. But we weren't real big fans of barnacle pills either, obviously. No, two different markets, and both can do well in any environment. Who's your audience you're attracting? Where they sent the town down on us, which didn't make us very happy with the owners of the Barnacle Bills. So does that family still own that property? since... I think the son owns it. I think they have apartments above the building. Last I looked, that was years ago. They had to put apartments up on top and they had a snack stand on the side and a miniature golf course. As far as I understood, the son had inherited it and he was operating it. When was the last time you were out on the island? I took a ride through that area a few years back. I wanted to see the damage from the storm, of course, and how the beach area was coming back. Of course, it used to be all nice, and now everything's on stilts, so it's not as appealing as it used to be. It's very odd looking at all the elevated homes. It really is. My grandfather's home was, this was very strange. My wife and I happened to be in New Jersey two days before the storm hit. And we went by my grandfather's home that was sold and there were no windows in it. And I struck, you know, it struck me as odd. I'm like, why are all those windows not in the house? And drove by, didn't give it much thought. two days later the storm hit but before the storm hit that Monday the crew came in and tore the house down and put it in the dumpster my buddy rode by and he said hey you know your grandfather's house isn't there anymore and that concludes today's episode I want to thank David for taking the time out of his day to revisit the memories I had of Lavalette and that area of the Jersey Shore. He clearly demonstrated through this episode that he has the passion for arcades and truly misses that on a day-to-day basis. You know, I would love to be there today, you know, hand it out, change. Vanity Arcade, the defender is there Down off of Broadway, he's there playing his games It's very dangerous Putting money down on Overtron Oh, I'm the great defender And I really know just how to get along Down at the arcade, down at the arcade Down at the arcade, down at the arcade Down at the arcade, down at the arcade Oh, I'm the great defender and I really think I got it right. A fistful of quarters, a $50 steak. Life is a gamble on videotape. So you know when you've got it But you don't know where from It hurts to talk It hurts to talk And I can't even breathe Money and drugs Here we are So many to choose from I don't know To go to the doctor I'll stay right here And watch this show Like a fool I feel down, down, down I feel down, down, down