In one of the sweetest scenes from Kurt Vincent and Irene Chin’s documentary about NYC arcade Chinatown Fair, former foster/homeless kid Akuma Hokura contemplates his relationship with the arcade’s owner, Sam Palmer. “People would ask me why my best friend was a 65-year-old Pakistani man,” he tells the camera. “But it was true — my best friend was a 65-year-old Pakistani man.” Sam and Akuma’s friendship is one of the many that blossomed in the gritty Mott Street arcade. Bored teenagers, rival gangs, the LGBTQ community, and a dancing Tic-Tac-Toe-playing chicken all made Chinatown Fair their home until it finally fell victim to gentrification and PlayStation consoles in 2011. The chicken, Lily — who wasn’t playing and dancing so much as she was avoiding electrocution inside a jukebox or Tic-Tac-Toe machine — was relocated upstate by animal rights activists in the late 90s. Before her move, she featured in Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Brooklyn Zoo” video and the Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep film “Falling in Love,” both of which were shot in Chinatown Fair.
The Lost Arcade captures the final days of Chinatown Fair and its colorful family: Akuma, Sam, and manager/enthusiast Henry Cen, who is trying to keep the arcade’s spirit alive with his new Brooklyn venture Next Level. (Chinatown Fair has now reopened under a new owner, though most of its former patrons prefer to pretend it hasn’t — a horrified New York Times article from 2012 noted that the owner now describes the arcade as “a blend of Chuck E. Cheese’s and Dave & Buster’s.”) i-D talked to Kurt and Irene about the lost NYC icon’s last days as a weird but welcoming space for New York’s diverse cast of characters.
How did you first become familiar with the arcade and why did you have such a connection to it?
Irene: Our first encounter with the arcade was really unforgettable because we stumbled upon it one night. It was a really cold night in New York in February. We were in Chinatown on Mott Street, and it was deserted. It was around midnight and we were trying to find something to do. We saw a crowd of teenagers hanging around outside the arcade, and we were like, “What is this all about?” We were drawn in kind of naturally, and inside it was like we were in another time. It was pretty crazy. That’s why we wanted to make the film — to capture that spirit that we first felt when we walked into the arcade.
Although people of all ages visited the arcade, the film is particularly sympathetic towards the teenagers. What was it about the arcade that made it so special to young people?
Irene: Teenageers like to play video games, and there are not a lot of places for teenagers to go and hang out with each other, especially late at night. You can go to the movies, and the mall — when there were malls in New York — but [the arcade] just provided a place for teenagers to meet. The games brought people together, and that’s a dying thing.
What was Sam’s response when you told him you wanted to make a movie about Chinatown Fair?
Kurt: We became really close with Sam, but it took a long time to get him to open up. He wouldn’t agree to an interview for many months. I would call him every couple of weeks. He’s very humble and private, and didn’t really care. Then I asked Lonnie — the guy who reopened Chinatown Fair — to contact Sam on my behalf, and that’s when Sam finally said, “Okay, I’ll meet with these people.” As soon as he met us and saw that we were good people and just wanted to tell an interesting story about the place, he was totally willing to share and reveal so many of his experiences there.
He seems very charismatic and uninhibited in the movie. You’re in his house meeting his family and everything.
Kurt: Yeah, it was funny — when we first started, it wasn’t obvious to us that the owner would be a character. I guess it was naive, but the more we started talking to different people we met in the community, Sam kept on coming up. We started to see that he was really the heart of the arcade, and opened it to all types of people — he never kicked anyone out. He was never robbed once in his 30 years of working there, which is pretty incredible. Especially in the 80s and early 90s, Chinatown was a pretty rough, high-crime area. I think he was a pretty blessed guy.
His story about the dream — when he walked past an arcade in a dream and saw quarters pouring out of the doors and took it as a sign that he had to buy an arcade — is pretty incredible in itself.
Kurt: I remember standing inside and interviewing him on camera. I asked him, “Sam, how did you come to own an arcade?” He just said, “Oh, I saw it in a dream.” I said, “What are you talking about you saw it in a dream?” Then Sam told us. I don’t think a lot of people know or knew how he came to own it, but even his family was like, “Yeah, Sam really found himself once he took over that arcade.” That sort of otherworldly, spiritual connection to the arcade is definitely a big part of Chinatown Fair.
What about the other members of the Chinatown Fair family? How did they feel about letting cameras into their adopted home?
Irene: When we were there for the last night filming, everyone was coming up to us. They just wanted to express how much the arcade meant to them. They were basically pouring their hearts out to us, which was really amazing. I think that’s when we were like, “This place is more than an arcade, and we need to figure out what the story behind it is.” It meant so much to so many people. A lot of these kids grew up in the arcade with no place to grow, and they were like, “We’re leaving our home.”
You mentioned how the area was pretty rough in the 80s and early 90s, and there was quite a big gang presence. Why do you think this weird arcade managed to foster harmony between rival gangs?
Kurt: I think Sam was really predisposed to handle that well. He’s a very calm, no-nonsense guy, he’s also not judgemental. He has this energy about him — people respected him if he respected them. So the Chinatown gangs and the teenagers were probably just surprised that he treated them and spoke to them like equals. He listened to them.
Irene: There actually was a lot of violence too in the arcade. They had big guys that worked there — kind of like bouncers. If there were problems, they would be like, “Take it out on the street.” We did actually hear about some pretty brutal fights that happened over Street Fighter.
In the Kickstarter campaign you mentioned that a group of LGBT people trekked from the outer reaches of the city to Chinatown Fair on a daily basis. Why did the arcade function as a safe space for that community?
Kurt: The arcade was full of kids who were just looking for a place to be themselves, and Sam fostered that. I found it funny that on the wall there was a sign saying, “No Loitering,” but it was full of kids loitering. It was a hangout spot. I think word just spread that there was an arcade you could hang out in. It was air-conditioned in the summer, and warm in the winter, and you weren’t going to get kicked out or messed with. They didn’t always come to play games initially, but because they needed a safe place to hang out with friends. It was a really incredible lesbian, gay, queer, and transgender community. I wish we had been able to get more of it into the movie. Another thing is that a lot of people in the arcade community went by nicknames. Akuma used a nickname as opposed to his first name because that’s the name he chose. It represented this ability to be whoever you wanted to be. It was a very liberating place.
Have you had any updates about the dancing and Tic-Tac-Toe chicken since it was taken upstate?
Kurt: No, I haven’t! In the movie there’s a photo hanging on the manager’s booth of the chicken kissing a cow, and I now have that on the wall at our apartment.
The Lost Arcade opens August 12, 2016.
Credits
Text Hannah Ongley
Images courtesy of Brigade Marketing