Discussion w/ an Arcade Technician: Santa Cruz Casino Arcade

[racketboy]

This past fall, Sarah and I got to stop by the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, tour the arcade and spend some time interviewing the lead arcade technician, Brian before the place opened up for the day. Here's the results:


Special thanks to racketgirl for making an on-camera appearance in the intro and for helping ask questions and to Lokkenjawnz for helping me arrange this appointment!

If you'd like to see my full-writeup and a video tour of the arcade check out this post:
http://www.racketboy.com/editorial/arca ... dwalk.html

[Lokkenjawnz]

Thanks for the shoutout RB! I feel famous now!

It looks like the arcade has changed a bit since I was last there, which was when I worked there around a year or so ago. You can see it around the 10 minute mark, there's a Dippin' Dots stand behind Brian, I worked there pretty much every day during summer because I desperately wanted a job in the arcade, but I worked food instead. I tried to apply to be an arcade tech, or at least an apprentice or something, but it seems to be impossible to do directly. It got to the point where I was personally keeping track of the games near my store, because the customers didn't take care of them! I remember I had to fish a balltop out from under a Tekken 6 machine and place it back on to the joystick because some moron figured out how to unscrew it. That arcade is way too cool for the people that go there!

It was pretty cool to hear Brian talk about the arcade too, the few times that I talked to him were during business hours so he was always pretty busy and stressed, it's awesome to hear how much he really loves the arcade. Goddamn, now I want to try to reapply down there.