The Arcade at Menlo Park

Twenty years ago, this place was a nice mall. Maybe not the best mall, but the kind of place where you could meet up with a friend, have a cinnamon roll or some pizza, and still window shop. There weren’t so many mall staples still open, but most spaces were leased. “Mid-life crisis Mall” more than “Dying mall.”

It had a damn fine arcade, though. Built up on a raised platform over what had been the fountain in the central atrium when the mall had opened in the ‘80s. This was everything you’d want from an arcade: “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “Tapper,” Skee-Ball, Hot Shots, and a dozen pinball machines. All of it dead-center in the mall at a time when there weren’t any jobs for us to have and nowhere to hang out but the mall.

In the middle of the arcade was what we all knew was the largest air hockey table in the country. They’d taken parts of the old fountain and turned it into an air hockey table. OK, we didn’t know it was the largest. And like, how did you prove something like that? The thing belonged in a theme park, not this retail retirement community. During the day, reflections from the skylight above cast rainbows across center-rink. And at night, neon around the arcade made you look through 3D glasses—soft red to purple to blue.

Didn’t matter what kind of day you were having or what time it was: At the mall, you could slide up to air hockey, toss in a quarter, and make a new friend, learn something new about an old one.

One Sunday night in the summer, about fifteen years ago, they tore the table out. We came in the next morning and found a row of slot machines with plush red stools. They took tokens and spat out dollar-off coupons for the food court. Yeah, they totally sucked, but, uh, if you banked enough, you could maybe hit up the good pizza place instead of the greasy dollar slice one. And there’s still Skee-Ball and the Hot Shots we could do and be social.

So we had to get used to slot machines. But then they upgraded the machines to take and dispense quarters. Winning felt good. Losing sucked. And then you’d play so much you wouldn’t feel anything. Win three dollars, lose five. It was still basically food-court pretzel money. We were hacking a recession job-market. Gotta eat somehow.

Early in the fall, we lost most of the arcade cabinets and got more banks of slots. Then, sometime around the holidays, they swapped all the pinball for taller, wider banks of slots. This time with festive lights and programmable neon beckoning to us. They took out Skee-Ball. Left one Hot Shot.

We thought it might be time to pack it in, but they’d upgraded the slot machines again. This time, if you pulled that lever, you were going to win more. Because, see, these had a microphone. Make enough noise when you pull, and you could win the jackpot. Wild, right? They never said how much the jackpot was, but enough to change your life forever.

So we put in our coins, we spun the wheel and did a “Wooo!” And…it didn’t do anything. More coins, another spin, this time with a raucous laugh and then bells—a tiny prize.

We can’t remember who it was, but the first time someone spun the wheel and screamed, they won more than we’d ever seen. And so now we slam the lever down, threaten the machine at the top of our voice, and shake it. Then they switched out the machines again. Took quarters, paid out nickels.

And slowly we realized there were no stores in this mall anymore. Just this arcade. Just the slot machines in this arcade. This arcade that was making someone incredibly rich from our thrashing and screaming. From the machines that demanded more and more from us, but that would never give us anything of value.