Category: Memories

Ten+ Things I Saw At The Fair

August 18, 2026

I went to the 2026 Altamont Fair today. This is our local fair and I hadn’t been in years, and since we didn’t go to any fair last year this was my first fair in two years. Today was the opening day so my ticket was only $10. Here’s some of what I saw…

As usual there were a lot of animals being exhibited. I liked this goat’s ears, but only after I photographed him (her?) did I realize that he was eerily motionless. No movement at all, not even blinking. Maybe he was asleep? It was a little creepy so I fled.

This sheep was the opposite: full of vim and character. He was sitting, resting his head on his friend’s back, and became very interested in my camera. Many of the sheep were shorn and I assume he would be eventually. I’m sure he was looking forward to it since it’s hot today.

In fact it was very hot! My phone said 86F/30C, and I’m sure I got a little sunburned as I walked around. I had plans to catch the circus but the advertised show wasn’t happening since they were still setting up the tent! That was disappointing 🙁

I believe this hen’s name is ‘Draco Malfoy’ (after the Harry Potter character). And yes she’s a hen since they made that clear under the name tag! Many of the birds were named after characters from games or movies including one who seemed to be called ‘Bugs Bunny’ which could potentially be confusing.

Speaking of rabbits there were hardly any on display and those that were had a fence around them so you couldn’t get closer than about six feet. Maybe there’s a rabbit disease going around?

I was feeling light-headed and needed sugar so I bought a single donut. It was dry and got caught in my throat but seemed to do the trick and give me some energy. At $2 though, it was a ripoff.

The food in general was outrageously priced. $9 for a lemonade, $15 for a funnel cake, $15 for fries and $20 for two slices of pizza and a drink? This is madness. I noticed very few of the food stands even displayed prices, which is a sure sign they’re too high. Taking a family to the fair and eating is prohibitively expensive now.

Speaking of food, how about a cup of Dr Pepper with a big pickle inside it? I wonder how much this cost?

The vendor booths have sunk to new lows. All the usual stuff is still there: hucksters selling knives or Tupperware or blankets, but many of them now also include tables of Chinese trash like squishies, bootleg K-Pop demon hunters items or bootleg Pokemon cards (all insanely overpriced of course). Given you can buy this stuff at any mall for less, who would buy it at the fair?

I also saw a table with two – admittedly impressive – life sized statues of Superman and Spiderman and a guy was beckoning kids over for photos. It was a bit… weird so I lurked and watched as a family stopped and a boy stood next to Superman while his dad took a photo. Then the guy at the booth asked the child about Jesus!!! It was an evangelical bait-and-switch booth! Somehow I controlled myself and walked away.

Let’s discuss the art contests. Above we have the first and third place winners of the annual scarecrow contest. Can you guess who these are? I’ll give the answers at the end of this post.

The photo and painting contest entries by kids were ok, but the adult categories raised my blood temperature a bit. Not only were some blatantly AI art, but I’m not too proud to say I’ve taken many photos this past year better than any of the real ones. Perhaps I should actually enter the contest next year?

Anecdote time. Back in the supermarket days I used to work with a girl who supposed herself the creative type and once asked if she could take photos of me ‘in the forest’ and enter them into a state fair photography contest! It never happened, but I once let her cut my hair since somehow she obtained haircutting tools and a bunch of us allowed her to use them on us. She was a true character, but I don’t even remember her name…

The rides were impressive. They had a gigantic wheel, a large rollercoaster, a colorfully painted Zipper and all the usual favourites. The only ‘new’ thing I saw was this one called ‘Artificial Intelligence’ which was a big wheel that spun on an arm that also rotated. Unfortunately I didn’t see many of the rides running since the midway didn’t open at the scheduled time. I stayed half an hour longer and the lines to ride the rides had become quite long but even then nothing had started.

Returning to the prices, tickets to ride were $1.50 each, or you could get them for $1.20 if you spent $50. Rides cost 4 to 7 tickets each, so (at minimum) $4.80 to $8.40 for a single ride. Imagine again a family attending this event. The parents have somehow gotten over the sticker shock of dinner and now they’re regretting ever coming to the fair when they notice the ride ticket pricing! I could easily see a family paying $50 per person to go to this fair if they ate and rode a couple of rides each.

Infinite ride wristbands do exist, but you could only buy them online and sales ended before the fair even opened! They had special lines on each ride for people with wristbands and I saw noone in any of those lines.

Back in my day – only forty years ago – I’m sure we had hours and hours of fun at The Newcastle Show for $20 or less. Those days are gone forever, I should just let them go.

At least some of the rides – like this kiddy walkthrough fun house – still have beautiful artwork. Not all though, since the specter of AI art has absolutely made its way onto amusement rides. Here for instance is the art on the side of the ‘Artificial Intelligence’ ride:

The carnies are as scary as ever. After taking the above photo I turned and spied one eyeing me with a murderous glint in his eye. I lowered the brim of my fashionable hat and hurried away.

I’ll end with this effigy to a nameless god I discovered in the circus museum. Many of the ‘attractions’ at the fair are hopelessly dated, with the circus/farm/tool/car museum displays not having received updates since the 20th century.

That leaves the animals, circus, food, rides and vendors to draw a repeat crowd. Animals are always great but there were fewer than ever this year. The circus wasn’t even ready today, food and rides were criminally overpriced, and the vendors either sold garbage or were creepers.

Maybe it would have looked different to a child (with rich parents), but to me this fair seem like it’s only living on yesterday’s memories.

(Scarecrows: ‘Phoebe from Friends’ and ‘Kramer from Seinfeld’)

Fading Memories

February 26, 2026

Our memories are fluid, and our brains change them as we age. Days and months and years get grouped together, and specific are lost as events become generalizations. We also tend to remember happy events with more clarity than sad ones. As a result nostalgia – the reminiscence of past events – becomes increasingly positive, and we typically remember our youth as better days.

Our brain sometimes fabricates memories as well, and since they are ‘stored’ in the same parts of the brain as real memories we have no way of determining which are real and which are fake except by comparing with others. This process can happen surprisingly quickly, and some specific details in the memories of what you did yesterday may even be incorrect!

I have a childhood memory of visiting a mall far from home. It was with Bernard and dad, but I can’t recall if mum was with us. We did take one or two vacations during school holidays with dad only, so perhaps this was during one of them. I recall the mall as being much bigger than the ones I was used to in Newcastle, which at the time was probably just Kotara Fair since I don’t think Charlestown Square had been built.

While walking around the mall we spied – from an upper level – a cluster of arcade games in the gallery below. We went down and played some, including one I had never seen before (or since), which involved shooting spiders on webs. Doing some research now the game was probably Spiders or Frog & Spider, both of which were released in 1981.

Perhaps one reason I remember (parts of) this visit so vividly is because we were each allowed to purchase an action figure from a toy store, and both of us chose a Star Wars figure. I picked ‘R2D2 with Sensorscope’ and (I believe) Bernard picked an Ugnaught. Both figures were initially released in 1981, but remained available for several years afterwards. We opened them both in the car afterwards, and I’m sure we were both very excited.

And that’s it! Only fragments of this memory exist, and to me it’s notable they are related to video games and action figures. If this was 1981 then I hadn’t started buying books yet (this began with Warlock of Firetop Mountain in 1982), and my world would have revolved around games and toys which is why they’re so strong in my memories.

But as for where we were, and exactly when this occurred, I don’t know. Are these real memories or fabricated? I don’t know either. But since I can close my eyes and picture the view from the gallery to the games below, if this didn’t ever actually occur then my brain has done a wonderful job making it up 🙂

Space Invaders

September 11, 2025

The first arcade game I ever saw was Space Invaders. It was at – of all places – the kiosk at Nobby’s Beach, but I didn’t play it since there was quite a crowd. I believe this would have been in 1979. I do believe the first arcade game I ever played was Space Invaders as well, although I don’t recall exactly where.

The game was released in Japan by Taito in 1978, and while not the very first arcade game, is unquestionably the most important and influential in creating the video game industry. It would eventually take the world by storm, but not until after it had completely conquered Japan.

These photos were taken during the late 1970s Space Invaders craze in Japan, when Taito could hardly manufacture cabinets fast enough. Shortly after the game was released they engineered a new type of sit-down (cocktail) cabinet to satisfy the requests of business that wanted their patrons to be able to drink and smoke as they played. These became extremely popular in Japan, and accounted for the large majority of Space Invaders cabinets made for the Japanese market. (In researching this I learned that cocktail cabinets were also very popular in Australia, but relatively rare in the rest of the world.)

In almost all of these black and white photos, the only game being played is Space Invaders (or some variant of). In under a year 100,000 cabinets were distributed around Japan, and even this was hardly enough. It has been reported that the average cabinet in late 1978 Japan was played over 50 times a day, and recouped its cost within a month.

Space Invaders had become a phenomenon and showed no signs of slowing down. Popular with both children and adults, in those heady days the game was playable almost everywhere. Some businesses changed into arcades as they found Space Invaders more profitable than whatever else they were trying to sell.

The Japanese ‘Game Centers’ we know today were born then, originally in the form of squalid rooms filled with cigarette smoke and the sounds of invaders and laser blasts, but in time into well-lit and very large halls full of games and people playing them.

Arcade gaming was a spectator sport, and the cocktail cabinets a perfect arena for a crowd to watch. Good players became famous, and some were even invited to play live on TV so others could observe their skill. Some players even wrote books on how to better your score, which became best-sellers.

It was during this time two urban legends about the game were born: that it caused a shortage of ¥100 coins and that it led to a rise in delinquency among children. Neither claim has born up to investigation in the decades since, and seem to have been inventions of non-Japanese journalists, but the popularity of the game in Japan between 1978 and 1980 was still incredible. It was the #1 video game in Japan for three years, and earned more money than any film released during that time.

Isn’t it wonderful seeing how popular the arcades were – and this was mostly for one game! You didn’t go in those days to play ‘video games’, you went to play Space Invaders. Imagine the sounds of so many machines being played at once!

Even the arcades were unambiguous about their purpose, as the above photo shows. The earliest Game Centers were even called ‘Space Invaders Houses‘ since that was why they existed. (I believe this image – which dates to 1979 – shows the same building in Ikebukuro that is now Mikado Game Center.)

I found a few colour photos from that era as well, although these date from a couple of years later (I think that is Galaxian in the above shot). Woodgrain paneling on the cocktail cabinet is so evocative of those days.

The above was an early Game Center in Nagoya, Japan. Most of the games look to be Space Invaders, and you can see four upright cabinets lined up in the background. The game on the left (The Driver) was a driving game released in January 1979 and was apparently a failure in arcades.

The above arcade looks so large and comfy. Once again it’s dominated by cocktail cabinets, and most of the uprights (at the back and far right) look to be Space Invaders or variants.

This photo is lovely! Plush chairs and cocktails (the drink, not the cabinets)! A proto-barcade if you will, showing there’s no such thing as a new idea. This brings back memories of a childhood trip to Canberra, and the arcade games they had in the bar. (I believe these guys are playing Moon Patrol.)

The above is a still from a (sadly now removed from YouTube) 1978 video of Nagoya city, showing a large billboard for Space Invaders displayed alongside a marquee for the first Superman film. When was the last time (if ever) you saw a billboard for an arcade game?

It wasn’t long until the Space Invaders craze spread worldwide, as the above story from the September 9, 1980 Sydney Morning Herald reveals. At the time of writing Sydney had 3000 machines, but Japan actually had almost 400,000. In time Japan would have over half a million, and to this day the total number of cabinets manufactured worldwide is unknown.

The rest of the world had its own version of the craze of course, but it wasn’t as intense or sustained as it had been in Japan because the game was six months old when it was released in the USA and almost a year old when released in Europe. This was enough time for other games (notably Galaxian) to steal some of its thunder. I was in the arcades by then – as often as possible! – and even with other games available I remember still playing Space Invaders, like the couple in the above photo taken in New Zealand in 1980, or this pair playing in Penn Station, New York in the same year:

Arcade game technology evolved quickly and only a few short years after 1978 Space Invaders was looking long in the tooth to most gamers. It had conquered the world, made an incredible amount of money, and even created a hobby now enjoyed by billions. But nothing lasts forever, and by 1980 the mania of Space Invaders – and arcades in general – seemed at its end, and the days of arcade games taking over the world looked to be fading into memory…

Robot Claw