Crank a 1905 mutoscope at an arcade that still takes pennies
Eight buildings, real coins
A part-outdoor arcade occupying eight buildings in the middle of town, holding several hundred coin-operated machines from the 1900s to the present.
Why it's unique
The arcade has run in this town since 1933 and now spreads across eight historic buildings with somewhere between four and five hundred coin-operated machines, spanning more than a century of the form. Crucially it still runs on coins rather than a card or a token, and many machines are still a penny, a nickel or a dime.
It started as Bingo Jacks, a bingo hall, and turned to pinball only after the state attorney general ruled that for-profit bingo counted as illegal gambling. The oldest machine on the floor is a mutoscope from 1905, a hand-cranked flip-book viewer that predates the arcade itself by nearly thirty years.
Before you go
Bring actual coins, and more than you think. The machines take real currency and the change machines are the bottleneck on a busy afternoon.
Much of the arcade is open-air and unheated, which is delightful in July and a serious consideration in January. Look for the 1905 mutoscope specifically; it is easy to walk straight past it on the way to the pinball, and it is the oldest thing in the building.