Boardwalk Arcade part 1

Today I officially started on the 3rd print in the Floating World series, this one devoted to boardwalk arcades. It's not that you have to go to a boardwalk to play any of the games that would be found in a typical arcade, but they are traditionally part of all boardwalks. Research for this one goes back as far as 2007, and last fall I started doing location sketches of some of the machines. A trip to some local beachfront arcades last week helped me obtain a lot of details that will be helpful to the final print.

This print will pull information from multiple locations, but it's mostly based on my memories of Belmar Playland, a huge arcade with a rooftop mini-golf course, which occupied most of an ocean front block in Belmar for decades, before being cleared away several years ago to build yet more expensive houses. I'm looking back in time for two reasons. First, there's an upcoming exhibition at the BAC with a theme of Belmar Memories, and this image (which would need to be done at some point anyway) would certainly suit that. Second, other than reference material, the thing I came away with from my recent visit to the arcades was learning that today's arcades are not very fun anymore. I mentioned in a previous post that the majority of games are devoted to the winning of prizes, by either earning tickets/tokens for redemption, or direct action like a claw machine. Since the prizes don't interest me, there is no point in playing most of them. (I still enjoy a little skee ball now and then, more to test my skills than for the two bit prizes that can be earned in a short session) Other than the prize games, most of the arcades had a few large driving games, that stupid dance game, and maybe a pinball machine or two. Traditional video games were few and far between; I'm guessing that today's high powered home gaming systems have killed demand for quarter operated machines. The Belmar Playland of my youth had all the prize oriented games, but also rows and rows of pinball and video games, fun for their own sake.

So I decided to model my arcade on the ones I remember for the late 70's/early 80's, when those traditional games were still big. The top photo shows the first 9"x 12" paper sketch, representing a portion of the diptych. The second photo shows a full size sketch, which includes a few more items. At this point, I consulted with a few people older than myself who were familar with that arcade, a supervisor at work whose family had a summer house in Belmar in the 60's/70's, and my cousin Todd, who grew up in nearby Wall. A lot of what they recalled confirmed my hazy memories of the place. (for compositional reasons, I'm consendensing the arcade's actual layout) I started my block sketch today in the upper right corner, putting in skee ball lanes and a piece of the prize redemption counter. On the other side I continued the counter and started putting in some games in the back. One is a rifle target game. (one of my sources says they had them in Belmar, one says they didn't, but they were regular visitors in different decades, so I'm going to include it as an example of a vintage game) The other will be a classic video game, but I haven't decided which one yet. In the lower left I started roughing in some back to back pinball machines, but they need a lot more work- I may have to construct a 3D model to get the perspective right. In the lower right I roughed in some claw machines. I'm thinking an air hockey table in space next to those, but that could change. Long way to go, but it's a good start.