Another End of an Era

Last night we were driving home from my uncle's house, along the beach road in Manasquan, when my mother casually mentioned that Gee Gee's closed over the winter.  Really closed, with the whole place being gutted out by the owner-the pizzeria, the arcade, everything.  I guess it made sense.  The arcade machines probably belonged to an entertainment company and could go back, and the pizza ovens probably could be sold to someone else who wanted to get into the pizza business.  Some said it was the best pizza in town, but I don't know that.  I haven't been there in almost 20 years, and there are good places that are closer than where it was.  However, it was within walking distance and once I made that walk on the behalf of art, so it's worth talking about now.

Back in 2009 I walked down to the Manasquan beach front to check out Gee Gee's as research for a new boardwalk print.  The idea was to do an arcade, for a local show, and based on the show theme and my own interest, I wanted to base it on Belmar Playland, an arcade I went to occasionally in my youth.  Unfortunately, it had been torn down years earlier to make room for houses (a real common problem around here). so all I had were memories.  One thing I did remember was that it had a section of skee ball lanes and I wanted that to be in it.  I could probably find some skee ball references on the internet, but I always prefer finding things in real life, and Gee Gee's gave me that opportunity.  

It had two main things, side by side, each with its own door to the boardwalk.  One was a standard pizzeria, and one was a small arcade with the typical machines of the era.  That included several lanes of skee ball, so I took the photo below:

Before leaving, I also grabbed a slice from the pizzeria, which I recall enjoying.  The photo I took in the deserted arcade was useful and helped with my eventually creating the boardwalk diptych I would do celebrating arcades as I remembered them from the 1970's, which is shown below:

I don't think I ever went back there again.  Like I said, there are plenty of good pizza places closer to home, and I found arcades of the 21st century to be a lot less interesting than arcades had been in my youth.  (other than skee ball, which I like, modern arcades are too heavy with coin drop and driving games for my tastes, and not much of the video games and pinball that I grew up with)  Now I know I won't be going there again.  My mother wasn't sure what will be going into the empty spaces- maybe another pizza place, maybe stores.  I'm guessing not an arcade.  Back when I was a kid, the video game machines were far more sophisticated than anything available for home use, but now home video games are much better, and there probably isn't much demand for machines you have to go out and pay for.   Arcades might attract some attention from people staying there at the beach, but I doubt that people who live in town would go there.   In the old days, it was a little different, and that's what I tried to show in my print.