Arcades may be rapidly fading away, but don’t tell that to Caine Monroy. Caine’s a 9-year old kid from East L.A. who liked going to the arcade so much, he decided to build his own in his dad’s auto parts store using cardboard boxes. Caine’s arcade is about as functional as an arcade made only of cardboard and household items could possibly be — all his games have actual objectives and challenges, and if you win he’ll even crawl into the box and push out some prize tickets for you. The prizes? His own used Hot Wheels cars.
Yeah, it’s all pretty cute, but don’t think for a minute Caine isn’t a serious businessman. You have to pay to play Caine’s arcade. It’s $1 for four plays, or you can pay $2 and get the “Fun Pass”, which is good for a month or 500 plays, whichever comes first. Sadly, despite the Fun Pass being quite the steal, Caine’s arcade wasn’t getting much business.
Caine sat out every weekend waiting for customers and nobody would stop — that was until Nirvan Mullick passed by and decided to play a few rounds of miniature hoops. Nirvan wasn’t just Caine’s first customer, he was also a filmmaker and, well, I don’t want to spoil the rest of the story — you can watch Nirvan’s short film about Caine’s arcade for yourself after the jump. Just a warning, your heartstrings will be tugged…
Well, that was inspiring! If anybody has a refrigerator box they’re not using, I’ve got some designs in mind for a pretty rad rocket ship.
via Caine’s Arcade