Los Angeles, the US city, is about to lose its last mall arcade, Art Tavana reports for LA Weekly.
With tears in his eyes, Jim Rowton describes getting the news.
"After 22 years in business, I get a phone call," he says, looking like a Disney Imagineer who's about to lose his theme park.
"It's like they're throwing us out with the trash."
On March 15, L.A.'s last traditional mall arcade will close its doors as Texas-based company Cypress Equities (the agent for CAPREF Manager LLC, the new majority owners of the mall) makes way for a newer, but not necessarily better, Burbank Town Center.
"A New Burbank Town Center ... Coming Soon! More Fashion. More Food. More Fun."
That's the advertising copy hanging from signs posted inside the mall. Jim's arcade, and several other mom-and-pop retailers inside the mall, won't be a part of that future, as rents begin to rise and entire sections of the mall are redeveloped.
Since 1995, Jim and his wife, Susan, have operated the All Amusement Fun Center, the arcade inside the Burbank mall, as if it were their own mini-theme park.
For most of the past year, I've been a part-time employee and full-time fanboy at the arcade. For Burbank residents, the All Amusement Fun Center has been the setting of innumerable childhood memories, lost weekend afternoons and first dates (including my own).
The arcade has been an unofficial playground for everybody from the city's special-needs community to teenagers at Burbank High School. People have come of age inside the walls of this colorful playpen of blinking lights and plastic joysticks.
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