The Retro Arcade Museum before it was closed
As a final note in the story about the New York town of Beacon, the city council has came to their senses enough to pass a law allowing “vintage” arcades to operate within the city. But it’s too little, too late for the owner of the business at the heart of the matter originally. Fred Bobrow, owner of the Retro Arcade Museum will be unable to continue operating as the forced closure has bankrupted him and on top of that obtaining a new permit has an undetermined wait period to go along with it. It’s sad to see any arcade close but in this case it’s rather infuriating. I went over as to why in the last post about this subject and I think my points still stand. As it is, Beacon may be going towards taking the right action, they still should be held accountable for their ineptitude in the matter. If anyone should be contributing to the new US unemployment rate of 9.6% right now, it should be the city officials at fault and not Mr. Bobrow and his employees.
More details and quotes can be found at the Poughkeepsie Journal.
poor guy i feel so sorry for him. He was already against business odds by owning a arcade and than the dumb rule came out of nowhere.
I hate to play devil’s advocate here, but isn’t this the owner’s fault for being unaware of the zoning laws in his city?
The laws were on the books. I am not here to argue whether or not the zoning laws in his city (or anyone else’s) are fair or “right,” but the fact of the matter is that the owner should have been aware of the zoning laws in his city before opening the museum, and he certainly should have been aware of them prior to allowing the cabinets to be playable.
As an aspiring op, I completely feel his pain and I am truly saddened at what went down, but some responsibility must be taken on his part.
I think I covered this in a previous post about the subject – you are right that the owner should have looked into it but also the city shouldn’t have issued the business license in the first place if it was a law that they were interested in enforcing. If the owner had asked about any restrictions and was told that there were no problems, go ahead and open, then he did his part. But we’ll probably never know what happened at that time .