Teenyboppin' tales...

Alladins Castle was the place were all the bad kids hung out, It was a dark and dingy video arcade in the middle of a suburban mall outside of Philadlephia in the mid 80's. This was a time when smoking indoors was still accepted, in fact the arcade games themselves usually had ash trays on the control panel filled with gross cigarette butts, this was my first intro to the arcade, the punks and metal heads ruled the place. It was scary just walking into the place, all the "bad" kids would hang out front with black leather jackets, or denim coats with metal patches, white reebok hitops, long hair, and most definitely a plastic comb in the back pocket of their bone tight jeans to keep their feathered hair intact. The inside of this dark smokey place was a madhouse filled with every video game under the sun, and there was always a crowd around the newest and baddest game, coins were not accepted, you had to wait in line to get tokens, or find a token guy to change up your money. The back of the place was all the old silver ball relics, that the older retail workers would go play on their lunch break or after work. This was a unique time in america looking back on it now, so much has changed in the retail landscape of that mall from then til now, For Christ sake we have arcade games on our cell phones. Arcades were a huge part of my scene growing up, we hung at the mall as we got older every single weekend religiously, and of course the meet up spot would be the arcade. Perhaps my love for lettering and typography could have been spawned from the imagery that was displayed on those machines. Meet me at the arcade!