THE UNDER THE PIER SHOW
HISTORY
. I have had a recurring fantasy about having my own amusement arcade ever since I was a
teenager, when I had a saturday job for Ruffler and Walker, an amusement machine
manufacturer. I had built the Instant Eclipse machine in 1999 and put it in
Southwold high street, but when I put it out again in 2000, the
people living next door complained and I managed to persuade Chris Iredale,
the owner of the pier, to let me put it outside the pier cafe. It was not
a great success. The salt air kept tripping the RCD, stopping it working. Meanwhile,
Chris had started rebuilding the pier. Despite the dismal performance of
the Eclipse, he agreed to let me have a tiny arcade (about 12 ft
square) for my home-made slot machines the following summer. Most of the initial machines had
recently come back from London when Cabaret Mechanical Theatre closed in
1999. The arcade was satisfyingly popular and I enjoyed keeping
it running and thinking up ways to improve it - with additions like the
photos of celebrities using the machines. I even built my own change
machine. |
ORIGINAL ARCADE ENTRANCE
|
|
THE PIER UNDER
CONSTRUCTION
 |
|
 |
|
Before the pier opened, on a visit to my
house to see the slot machines, Chris saw the water clock in my garden. He asked
if I could put it on the pier. His enthusiasm for the clock was partly why he
risked giving me the space for the arcade see
:
Southwold pier waterclock
.
| During the first summer Chris gave me a few old
machines from the main arcade that had become too unreliable. I found
the Sega Space Harrier particularly inspiring, and decided to convert it
into a machine of my own. By summer 2002 it had become the Microbreak,
and I had also had time to make the Bathyscape. Test Your Nerve, another
machine originally from Cabaret, returned from a holiday in Los Angeles,
and Will Jackson refurbished his old Cabaret machines - Brainwash and
Crankenstein - to join the collection. In June 2002, the arcade expanded
to squeeze in the extra machines. The Booth of Truth, made in
collaboration with Sarah Angliss, arrived in October 2002. By this
time I was keen to take over the entire shed and built Instant
Weightloss, Quickfit and The Expressive Photobooth over the winter and
expanded the arcade again in June 2003 to its current
size. |
|
