It’s time for another guest post and this time from a fresh name. “James UK” recently discovered the blog, where he wanted to share some thoughts on a couple of things that he enjoys about the arcade business, starting with the carpets one might find in an arcade.
As an operator myself, this is something I had to consider each time I moved into a new venue. A couple of times I went with carpet, until a few years back I decided to try VCT, which has some advantages over carpet, but some disadvantages too. Unfortunately I can’t find any photos of my old carpets, but I have a couple of pics from my present arcade floors that use the VCT that you can find below.
Anyways, take it away James!
If I was to say to you that the carpet they put down in the majority of casinos was specifically designed to keep you awake, you’d probably laugh.. I don’t know just how true that is but it would make sense given the lurid and garish designs that jump out at you when you visit one. We’ve all heard the legend that there are never any clocks or windows in casinos to purposely prevent gamblers from seeing what time of day it is, so I suppose it’s possible someone had the idea to make the carpets so “busy” that you didn’t want to look away from the machines.
While they are not casinos, arcades sometimes get lumped together with them, and similar design ideas can sometimes come into play. I got into the habit of looking down when I started visiting amusement arcades here in the UK in the early eighties and became fascinated by the designs I found. Most I recall were bespoke and featured the arcade name woven into the material, and I started snapping images of these where I could. It drew some odd stares and questions from the operators!
At the time I last picked this up, I created a Flickr group (see below for link) and was pleased to see that other people were submitting carpet pictures, although I wanted to steer it away from casinos and concentrate on the arcade ones myself. Since Flickr was taken over and changed it’s free account policies, I’ve not used it, so it is lacking in more recent updates.
That said, please feel free to browse the group and enjoy. Are you an operator with a distinctive carpet in your arcade that you’d be willing to share a snap of? Why not send it in or comment with a link below[Likewise you can post it to one of the Arcade Heroes social media channels]?
Daily Mail UK article on Las Vegas casino carpets
My section on the Arcade Carpets Flickr group
Main Arcade/Casino Carpets Flickr group
Arcade Carpets/Flooring
Electric Avenue carpet in the UK
Arcade Galactic Ogden, UT, after polishing but before placing games (VCT, not carpet)
Carpet at a Dave & Busters
From the Arcade Carpets Flickr, Location Unknown
I like browsing through the FEC section on the website of Astro Carpet Mills from time to time:
https://astrocarpetmills.com/family-entertainment
So many great designs. Too bad that pretty much all of the companies making such carpets cater to FEC sized orders only.
Chiming in to ID that fourth pic as definitely coming from a Round1 USA location. Not sure which one, but that’s the house carpet design and you don’t Dekaris very often outside of R1s, or even in R1s.