Bye Bye to the Dancing Girls

One of the greatest places to see moving pictures in Minnesota has been shut down. No...this isn't another story about the Oak Street (you can see a German film, "Go For Zucker" there this weekend.) No, I'm talking about the Penny Arcade at the Minnesota State Fair. The ramshackle collection of photobooths, vintage videogames and pinball machines was one of my favorite annual stops at the Fair. Sometimes the machines didn't work - they seemed to have repairmen on the job, even at ten at night - but they always happily gave you a refund for your dime, quarter or even dollar.

So where were the moving pictures? The Penny Arcade had these ancient flipbook machines that you dropped a nickel or dime into - I forget which - and then you turn a crank to watch a dancing girl or a comedic scene. You may have seen these in the Smithsonian or another musuem of American culture, but there was nothing quite like watching one of these dancing girls surrounded by the sickly smell of cotton candy, the pinball wizards and giggling teenagers piled in the photobooth.

Penny Arcade, I'll miss you.

It would seem that the Oak Street Theater has, a few weeks after you wrote this blog, also now gone the way of the Penny Arcade. I did see "Go for Zucker," and found it amusing. I also saw "Sketches of Frank Ghery" at the Bell Auditorium, and learned a lot about the architect who gave the U. of M. its showiest building, the Weisman Art Museum. Now the Minnesota Film Arts web site is down, the projectors have apparantly gone dark and who knows what will happen next? These are good films and they don't play at my neighborhood ma-and-pa two-screen, or at the area big-box stadium-seating suburban cineplexes or anywhere else in the East Metro. For years I've been getting into my car for the drive west to one of the art houses clustered in Minneapolis. Now even these are in danger of folding. Are Twin Cities cinephiles giving up on the big screen experience and staying home in droves?