The Arcadrome is a Brutalist dream gone neon. It has the endless, looping corridors of an M.C. Escher lithograph. The floors are a hypnotic black-and-white checkerboard that extends to a vanishing point you never reach. On the walls, rows of arcade cabinets sit back-to-back like monoliths, but they are not connected to power cords. They are connected to the architecture itself.
There is a specific frequency of sound that hits you the moment you step through the glass doors of a 1980s arcade. It is a chaotic symphony of synthesized explosions, digitized voice samples (" Finish Him! "), the rhythmic thwack-thwack of a trackball, and the sticky carpet squelch of spilled soda. For those of us who grew up clutching rolls of quarters, that sound is the sound of home. arcadrome
Go to your computer. Open an emulator. Load Robotron: 2084 . Turn the sound up. And for ten minutes, forget about the outside world. Watch the geometric shapes swarm. Watch your little humanoid survive. The Arcadrome is a Brutalist dream gone neon
But you can visit it.