The Future Perfect: Designing Reclaim Arcade

We will have built an arcade in Fredericksburg, Virginia by Spring 2020.

I have always sucked at grammar, but the future perfect tense finally makes sense to me. It indicates an action will have been completed at some point in the future, which is exactly the case for Reclaim Arcade. We officially announced our intentions with the arcade at the end of last month (check out the Facebook page, Instagram and Twitter–and like and subscribe for more!), but I was traveling much of the last 3 weeks so an update is in order given a lot has happened since the public announcement last month.

Visual aesthetic for Reclaim Arcade

Probably the biggest news is that last week Tim and I secured the funding we needed in the form of a bank loan to build a full blown 80s tech noir arcade to match our vision—which is bold! As you can see from the design reference points above, the arcade and bar will be inspired by a Blade Runner-esque aesthetic because the future is literally now!

We will have at least 30 taps of a wide variety of beer, cider, and wine, and 50+ arcade games and pinball machines. We’ve been working with a local design firm, Spaces, and we have settled on a floor plan and design that is pretty awesome.

We took one of the five plans Spaces provided us, and did some small modifications to get the above layout. You will enter the space through Reclaim Video (at the lower, left-hand corner of the above plan), and  there will be no major changes to that space, other than enlarging the passage to the back room, a couple of mounted 32″ and 27″ Sony Trinitron CRTs and a much needed decluttering or VHS kipple. This will be where we welcome folks, ID any one who wants an adult beverage, and hopefully rent a video or two 🙂 After that, folks will go into the back of Reclaim Video and be immediately presented with a glass-enclosed 80s living room, a la the UMW Console Living Room:

Image of the UMW Console Living Room

UMW’s Console Living room in March 2015

This space will be a reproduction of a 1980s living room that will hit folks coming into Reclaim Arcade for the first time like a diamond through the forehead. You can hang out in the space and play one of several 80s gaming consoles (including Atari 5200), watch TV on several of the OG networks (ideally mixed with localized commercials and news content), and/or play something on VHS, Betamax, or laserdisc from Reclaim Video. The space will be reservable for parties, and like the VHS store, it will be one of several time capsule installations throughout the space. Moving on from there you will go into the actual arcade which will feature 50+ games, the pinball will be along the other-side of the wall from the living room, and you squares and rectangles in the main space represent pinball machines and arcade cabinets. It’s a fairly large open space where we’re currently running CoWork, the main difference will be the removal of the conference room (that glass will be repurposed for the living room) and two additional bathrooms. There will also be several areas to sit and imbibe from the self-pouring taps, order some food from the kitchen, or choose from a wide variety of games to play. 

HP garage from the 1930s

Another cool feature of the space will be the 1930s garage jutting out the back of the building. It is currently office space, but it will be modeled on an exhibit I went to in the early 1990s at the LACMA that has stuck with me for 3 decades now. I have been unable to remember (or trace) the artist—I thought it was Edward Keinholz, but can’t find anything to back that up—but the installation may have been the best thing I ever saw. The artist re-created a 1930s garage, including the chirp of crickets, the smell of the past, and a ton of odd-ball screws, forgotten tools, and the necessary disarray. It will be kind of like the HP Garage museum that was considered the birthplace of Silicon Valley, but without all the venture capital 🙂  I see it as exposed 2 x 4s, a cement floor, as well as various tools hanging on the walls. The space (like all of them) will not simply be for show, rather it will have a garage door opening from within the main space and will be where we maintain and fix the various games that will inevitably break.

Animated GIF of Homer Simpson opening a garage door

We will also have an area designated for food preparation behind the wall of self-pouring taps, and there will be a service window for picking up food, snacks, etc. If you are still following along, you will notice that this is just two-thirds of the space, “What about the other third?”, you ask. Well, thanks for asking, the other third of the space to the right-hand side of the above plan, including the conference room towards the bottom middle, will be the Reclaim Hosting office. So, let’s think about this for a second. To the far right is Reclaim Video, then Reclaim Arcade, and finally Reclaim Hosting (the entity make all of this even possible). We will have everything in the strip mall save the Dentist office, it will truly be a beautiful thing to see all that Reclaim signage side-by-side!!! Anyway, you may have noticed in the floor plan above that the conference room will be connected to the arcade. As of now, the arcade’s hours will not overlap with work day for Reclaim Hosting, so we figured we could make the conference room a dual-purpose space that can work for private parties in the arcade as well as a conference room for our office space from 9-5. We have not really settled on a design fro the conference room just yet, so that will be fun to imagine, but I do think we have an idea or two for Reclaim Hosting’s office. I was chatting with Tim (that’s how all good ideas start) and floated the idea of designing the offices in the spirit of a 1970s server room. Basically get some storage furniture in the wall to the right and make it look like a full blown DEC VAX 11/780:

This is an aesthetic I have been a fan of for a long while, and the idea of reproducing something like this  (which will actually be storage) with a roaming terminal, some tape machines, and a few punch cards would be amazing. I was thinking we could even have some lab coats hanging around for the occasional office photo op 🙂 It will be pretty awesome for Reclaim Hosting to have its own office space finally, and the idea of hearkening back to another era of the internet and hosting might be a fun aesthetic and history to play with, but as of now this is still a pretty nascent idea—although ideas move pretty quick around Reclaim: if you will it, it is no dream!  

This entry was posted in reclaim, Reclaim Arcade, Reclaim Video and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

4 Responses to The Future Perfect: Designing Reclaim Arcade

  1. Pat says:

    You’re going to buy the dentists aren’t you

    • Reverend says:

      They are the anchor of the strip mall, plus they own it, so we are at their mercy. But as it turns out, they have been absolutely amazing every step of the way as we have grown and taken on more space, in fact they put us in touch with the folks who ultimately secured the loan, so I am an absolutely huge fan of theirs, and will not attempt any hostile take overs 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.