Name: The Last Play-For-Cash Fascination Parlor
Uploaded: 2020-04-01T01:07:53.000Z
Duration: 5 min
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I'm in Hull, a small seaside town near Boston in the northeast United States.

I grew up visiting the British equivalent of towns like this, and sure,

it is so bitterly cold here that the ocean foam has frozen.

There aren't any tourists, nearly everything's closed for the season,

but this town still feels a little like home to me.

There is one place on the seafront here that's open specially today though.

And it's the last play-for-cash Fascination Parlor in the world.

- A lot of these did exist back in the day.

I'm not exactly sure how many, all I do know is: this is the longest standing.

It was transported up here sometime over the past century from Coney Island

so on a busy night here we'll have 64 players.

The game begins with your bill on the glass,

to a dollar and maybe two dollars at a point in time.

We have the entertainment and gaming licence

for anyone to come in and play, as long as you're over 18 years old.

Like everything in life, there is some luck that goes into it,

but certainly there are some skilled players that I have witnessed over the past year.

- So here are the rules: roll the balls into the holes.

the corresponding light on the board switches on.

First to get a line of five, horizontal, vertical or diagonal, wins,

or in some cases, first to light up the whole board.

but this is the only one where you're not playing

for tokens you can redeem, you're not playing

against the house, you are playing against everyone else.

But it is winter, it's the off-season, there are no tourists,

so today I am just playing against Chas, the owner.

- I do, I'm ready to go, how 'bout yourself?

Think I might be out, but let me double check.

- Do you need to borrow a dollar(?) - I think I do.

- Alright dollar on the glass. - Dollar on the glass.

"so the plan for the next few months is to reestablish the arcade,

"for everyone to join, understand the rules,

"and get in here and be a part of the fun."

- [CHAS] "Every so often, these games will peter out because of their age,

"who comes in on a weekend, fixes them for us,

"so we get right back at it the next week.

""It is still running on century-old technology,

"just a few different components are changed in and out, of course.

"They are all tied together into one circuit and work amongst themselves."

- Am I in the lead? I think I'm in the lead, just.

- Oh yeah, it's by three or four there! I gotta catch up.

[CHAS] "I think there's a place for it to expand and grow

"and be in a lot of different places throughout the world

"but the reason it isn't everywhere is, I think,

"and with different ways that you can stay busy nowadays,

"cell phones and gaming consoles, televisions,

"there are other things that pull away from old-fashioned fun, if you will."

- It's just not... yes, okay, three! I've got three, you've got four.

[CHAS] - "We're going to continue to build off of the history that Fascination,

"here on Nantasket Beach, has had for decades.

"I've heard numerous stories of the folks

"that used to run this over the past five or six decades,

"even more, and I wish these walls could talk

"because there would be a lot to talk about."

[TOM] "What I love about this is that these are

"century-old machines, built with the same relays

"that powered old telephone exchanges, and they're all interlocked together,

"No microelectronics, no wifi, just a lot of things that go clunk and buzz."

[CHAS] - "So when someone lights up the board,

"everyone on the sidewalk, everybody in here

"There's usually cheering, all the lights on the board go off

"and the gentleman calling the game, or the woman calling the game,

"will make the announcement that the winner is at, for example, 'table 13!'"

- I've hit the one next to the one I need

Good game sir, I'll take that and I'll take that.

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The Last Play-For-Cash Fascination Parlor

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