Saturday night at the Arcade with Nelly, Nike and pinball
Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Jan 10/01) - It's Saturday night and the kids are hanging out at the arcade.
Outside the snow is piled up on the curbs and people walk by wrapped in scarves, the whir of a snowmobile cuts through the evening -- typical Yellowknife.
But inside, this place could be anywhere. Teenagers walk in with Nike toques and hip-hop swaggers. Rapper Nelly is coming in loud over the speakers rhyming about life, the hood, it ain't easy. The beeps, explosions, and tin-techno of video game language layer the building's audio landscape.
It's a culture drenched in urban hip-hop, from the clothes, to the talk to the way they play video games. The Computer Games Arcade on Franklin Ave. is one place where part of Yellowknife's teen sub-culture can come and just be. With little options in this small city, teens hang out here throwing quarters into video games, shooting pool and hanging with their friends.
That's what they say anyway.
Four teenaged girls are playing foozball, behind them someone's ripping around on car race game Rush Rock Alcatraz. This is the bottom floor of the arcade, the video game room. Pin-ball machines and arcade games line the walls. South Park, Twilight Zone, Dracula and Medieval Madness on one side, Tetris on the other side along with some game with a sniper rifle, Street Fighter and hand-to-hand combat games. Upstairs it's just pool tables.
Nothing else to do
Penny Buckley, 15, Marion Kikiak, 17, are playing Bella Payne 15, and Vicki Vogel,15, on the foozball table. After a couple of flicks Payne and Vogel score. They take it very casually.
"There's nothing else to do in Yellowknife," says Buckley taking a swipe at the white foozball.
Before here, the girls were at Ryan's having a coffee. If they're not here or having coffee they usually hang at someone's house.
"It's OK hanging out here," says Kikiak, "it's something to do."
"There's not enough stuff to do here, all we have is the arcade and it gets boring sometimes," she says.
Upstairs a couple of tables are being used. Twyla Brule 15, Erin Goode, 14, and Stephanie Landry, 15, just finished their pool game and are getting ready to leave.
They get theoretical when explaining the reason they hang out at the arcade.
"People come here because it's just a place to get away from their parents," says Brule.
She says this is her first time at the arcade in four months.
"This is a place you can hang out and not get kicked out," she says.
Brule doesn't buy the bad rap the arcade gets.
"This place is not as bad as it seems, not just bad kids hang out here," says Brule.
Family business
The arcade has been around at the same location since Aug 1981. It was started by husband and wife team Perry and Donna Smith.
"My husband was always interested in electronics, he thought it would be a good idea," says Donna Smith.
Over the last 20 years a lot has changed in the arcade business says Smith.
The early 80s was the golden age of the arcade game. Back then Pac-Man was all the rage and Atari games couldn't quite match their arcade peers.
But things have changed, says Smith. Now home entertainment systems are more powerful and arcade games are getting more expensive.
Games in the early 80s used to cost Smith around $4,000, now games range upwards of $30,000.
The arcade's Home of the Dead game cost more than $30,000.
"We don't earn our money back as quickly as we used to," says Smith.
"It's always a crap shoot when buying games now," she says.
Despite the difficulties Smith says the arcade is sticking around.
"We have no plans for it," she says, "it will continue to meet its obligations."
"We've had at least three generations of kids," says Smith.
Ron Rosnawski has been with the arcade for 11 years. He's seen a lot of kids come and go. He believes the arcade provides a community service.
"This place gives kids a place to hang out and have fun," says Rosnawski.
He says the arcade's bad rep is just a myth.
"A lot of people think it's a rough place," he says. "It's not."
The arcade has a list of zero tolerance rules: no smoking, no intoxication, no drugs and no fighting.
"We have four cameras located throughout," he says.
"When we get kids who have been drinking we kick them out," he says.
Rosnawski says parent's fears of the arcade stem from class differences.
"The arcade is a melting pot, kids from all walks of life hang out here," he says.
"It used to be that a Yellowknifer was a Yellowknifer, now that the city has grown we have classes of people," says Rosnawski.
Twelve-year old Josh Moore is pounding away at the paddles on the South Park pin-ball machine. The silver ball whirs through a gauntlet of bumpers, tunnels and lights. His score rolls up like a lottery jackpot gone insane. His friends Kevin Mitchel, 12, and Corey Sarasin, 12, lean against the machine watching the sound and light show.
Mitchel says he doesn't spend more than $10 a night, his buddy Sarasin says he only spends $5. They know they don't need to spend money to hang out at the arcade anyway.
They usually stay at the arcade until is closes at midnight.
"It's fun just hanging out," says Sarasin.
Moore loses his last ball as it slips through his paddles. The lights and the music fall and an LCD display under South Park foul-mouthed fat-boy, Cartman, reads GAME OVER.
It's 10:30 p.m. One of the guys who works the surveillance cameras and hands out change leads a drunk man out of the arcade. Moore, Mitchel and Sarasin hardly notice, they move to another game, pop some quarters and start all over again. Someone puts some money into the juke-box, the beats start up again and the kids are all right.
