Thursday, April 26, 2012

Caine's Arcade

This short film features the arcade created out of cardboard last summer by 9-year old Caine Monroy in his dad's East Los Angeles car parts shop. He put it all together, organized tickets, prizes, tokens, business cards, then waited for some customers. And waited and waited. Eventually the first customer, Nirvan Mullick, a filmmaker searching for a part for his old Corolla, stumbled upon the Arcade and was blown away by Caine's creativity and entrepreneurial-ship. He asked Caine's dad if he could make Caine's Arcade the subject of a documentary and used social media to create a flash mob appearance at the car shop location to surprise Caine. Then the 37-year old filmmaker set up a website to raise a college fund for young Caine. $100,000 has already been donated. The family is reportedly refusing to accept any more donations.

An LA pinball shop recently invited Caine to test out their wares and presented him with a vintage pinball machine, so now Caine's Arcade has a "real" game. I wonder if it's as much fun as the cardboard games.