Dreamy snapshots of LA's last remaining games arcades

One evening in 2019, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Franck Bohbot was dri­ving around the Kore­atown neigh­bour­hood in Los Ange­les. Hav­ing recent­ly relo­cat­ed from Paris via New York, he’d found him­self attract­ed to the city’s dis­tinct visu­al aes­thet­ic at night. ​“I shoot a lot of pho­tog­ra­phy at night – I call it LA Con­fi­den­tial,” Bohbot smiles. “[My style] is very inspired by neo-noir movies like Blade Run­ner, Dri­ve, Blue Vel­vet and The Dark Knight.”

After pulling up on a qui­et street, he came across a hum­ble-look­ing bar with only a soft red light mark­ing its entrance. Decid­ing that he want­ed to see what was inside for him­self, he reached for his Leica and walked in. On top of the late-night bar he was expect­ing he also found an near-emp­ty arcade, fit­ted with 80s leather fur­ni­ture and dim­ly illu­mi­nat­ed by rows of retro, coin-oper­at­ed arcade games.

“It was super weird and intense. It’s very small, so it remind­ed me of a speakeasy vibe,” he says. ​“I realised then that I had to do some­thing on arcades, so I was check­ing on my phone how many there were in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia and [read­ing] about their history.”

Bohbot spent the next few months dri­ving across Los Angeles’s sprawl­ing greater met­ro­pol­i­tan area, from San­ta Mon­i­ca to Pasade­na, in search of the neon lights and tall con­sole machines of its arcades. Hav­ing vis­it­ed more than 20 in total, tak­ing pho­tographs swift­ly and qui­et­ly before mov­ing on to the next spot, a num­ber of his shots are now pre­sent­ed in his new pho­to­book Back to the Arcade.

With washed out, sat­u­rat­ed colours and cre­ative fram­ing of machines as sub­jects, Bohbot’s trans­portive, dream­like pho­tographs cap­ture the diverse array of arcades – from the casu­al beach­side spots, to the fresh-faced mod­ern haunts, and those that appear unchanged through the decades. ​“A lot of gam­ing comes from Japan,” he says. ​“But Cal­i­for­nia and Chica­go have been very involved in the arcade indus­try and gam­ing indus­tries, so there’s gam­ing for kids, for adults, lots of new places and a lot of barcades.”

But his shots also doc­u­ment a cul­ture, activ­i­ty and space that has long been declin­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty. While some show thriv­ing busi­ness­es, oth­ers depict rows of emp­ty, untouched machines. Their hey­days came in the late 70s and 80s, as the addic­tive fun of titles like Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Galax­i­an saw a wave of excite­ment sweep across the States, East Asia, Europe and beyond. But with rapid­ly advanc­ing tech­nol­o­gy, gam­ing has become more com­plex, acces­si­ble and portable, leav­ing arcades large­ly out­mod­ed as peo­ple play instead on home con­soles and mobile phones – save for some devot­ed enthu­si­asts keep­ing arcade cul­ture alive.

“The own­er of Retro­volt Arcade was work­ing in IT in San Fran­cis­co, but decid­ed to stop because he was such a huge fan of video games,” says Bohbot. ​“He start­ed to buy a lot of machines and build a small busi­ness. Then COVID was super tough. They were con­sid­ered [to be] like a club, so they couldn’t open, but they sur­vived. I have a lot of respect for these people.”

For arcade own­ers and reg­u­lar vis­i­tors, the val­ue lies in more than just the games they play or the joy­sticks they tog­gle. ​“I think it’s like vinyl,” Bohbot says. ​“It’s like so many things from the past that I think deserves to be alive – espe­cial­ly in LA. It’s good to have places to go and meet peo­ple, because I think peo­ple are very lone­ly in this city.

“When I was a kid there was always an inter­ac­tion with some­one when you go into the arcade, like when you play against some­one,” he con­tin­ues. ​“This is some­thing that I love, and I saw a lot of peo­ple who are pas­sion­ate about them.”

Back to the Arcade is pub­lished by Setan­ta Books.

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