Thursday, March 18, 2010

San Francisco Photo Booths!

I have been on a quest recently to visit every vintage photobooth in San Francisco. With the help of Photobooth.net I have been to 4 so far! The website is so rad, you can find any photobooth anywhere! Just go to the locator and find one near you, and you can even post samples on each booth you go to. Lucky for me, San Francisco has tons :) Photobooths are so magical to me,you pay 3$, sit in a box with a curtain, and voila within minutes you have captured classic moments that are printed out almost instantly. I love walking away with black and white vintage photo strips to add to my collection. I have dragged the boyfriend all over town, trying to go to all. I despise the new machines that are digital, they are just not the same. What's great about the vintage b&w machines is that they are all different! Some pictures come out lighter, some darker, some with special cardboard cutouts you can put over your face, or a prop boxes so you can even take pictures with a pee wee herman doll (totally did this with my dad!)They have such a delectable charm that is found nowhere else.
So far here is my journey:
First we went to the Musee Mecanique, which is located on Pier 45, by Fisherman's warf. Exact address is Pier 45 Shed A (at the end of Taylor Street)
This was my first time going here, and we are so glad we did. It was quite a long walk from my downtown job. but so worth it! Inside there were so many treasures.
"The Musee Mecanique is a privately-owned collection of arcade artifacts. Some pieces of the collection (more than 200 items) come from Playland at the Beach -- a slice of San Francisco history that closed in 1972. Other items come from around the world, collected by Edward Zelinsky."
Inside are vintage arcade games, fortune teller machines("which evoke the carnival scenes in the Tom Hanks film Big",) and two b&w photobooths. We got $5.00 in change and out came a zillion quarters, we put them in every machine between the booths and the doors, while waiting for our strips to be done. It was such a good afternoon adventure!
here's the strips from the two machines and some photos I found around the web here :

Sweet gypsy fortune teller:

Rock em' sock em!

Entirely made out of tooth picks, how crazy is this! And when you put in a quarter it spins :)


The boyfriend so did this, he won once and lost the second time, it's strong!

Another view of the toothpick ferris wheel, so awesome!


And the second place we went was the Beauty Bar on Mission ST.
It is such a fun bar! It has all of the essentials and more. A disco ball, a photobooth, a sweet dj booth and tons of glitter. When you first walk in to the left there is a manicure station with loads of nail polish, and you can schedule a manincure Thurday through Saturday 7:30 to Midnight. It's called Manicures & Martinis.
Here is our strips from there:

2 comments:

Crooked Sister said...

My close friend hates those digital ones too and unfortunately the Santa Cruz Boardwalk has replaced all the original B&W ones with those ugly digital machines. I'll have to let her know about this site. It will make her happy!

The Beauty Bar is great. I forgot about the photobooth in there.

takeshi007 said...

I love those photo booth and if you had a photo booth in your house, for sure you will enjoy and have fun with it.

Photo Booth Manchester