San Francisco - Part II

Museé Méchanique

Amusement arcades—the bane of sensible parents and the delight of wayward children—have always operated on the fringe of society. They received a big boost in the late 1800's when the industrial revolution birthed myriad ways to separate the gullible from their pocket change. The Museé Méchanique is not just an homage to these dens of iniquity; it is full of operating machines from as early as the 1880s. While there are a smattering of traditional flipper-type pinball machines and a larger number of the early electronic games, what really attracted me was the old stuff. When I was young my State Fair had several establishments full of such devices. Their continued existence there was mostly due to inertia; it wasn’t until the advent of electronic machines did their owners feel the need to upgrade. The fair had many Mutoscopes (as pictured at right) offering little peep-shows: some were a tiny bit risque, some were silent film dramas, while others were simply odd. I had wondered where they all went and the answer is: HERE! I tried a few and they were just as clunky as ever (hint: don't stop cranking) and just as inscrutable. There was even one that featured a Marilyn Monroe clip (from the film Don't Bother to Knock)! The brass nameplates with patent numbers were a treat, as were the teaser title boards (just what was Virginia Woolf avoiding?):



The larger-than-life friendly/creepy Laffin’ Sal animatron greeted me:



I found the figures in some of the dioramas quite charming:



While others possessed an appeal of a different sort:



But one, in its humble simplicity, was perfect:



See all the FITK San Francisco posts here.