Another quick re-cap of photobooths in the news lately…

• I can’t seem to determine if the episode ever aired, as it’s not available on ABC.com or via any other less legal means, but a February taping of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition took place at the Hughes home in Louisville, Kentucky, and a black and white dip and dunk photobooth was installed in one of the boys’ rooms. A Louisville Courier-Journal article describes the home, and an accompanying video shows the booth as an integral part of the photo-centric bedroom.

• Also, thanks to Chris F. for pointing us to the new video from Million Dollar Strong, made up of Mike O’Connell and Yoshido, a.k.a. Ken Jeong, the doctor from Knocked Up. Check out the moments from the video featuring the Bar 107 photobooth in our Music Video section, or watch the video on YouTube.

• The blog at Modern Mechanix has featured two blasts from the photobooth past recently: first, an article about Anatol Josepho from 1928 titled “Penniless Inventor Gets Million for Photo Machine,” and second, a shorter piece about the invention of the Photomatic machine: “New Automatic Machine Delivers Metal-Framed Photos.” It’s great to see these hard-to-find magazine pieces archived, at least for now, on the web.

• And finally, thanks to Tim, each of our photobooth locations now features a nifty Google map right on the location page, to make your photobooth-hunting even easier.

Some recent additions to the site, as well as photobooth news:

• Photobooth auteur Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the man behind Amélie, directed a video for ’80s French pop sensation Etienne Daho featuring animated photobooth photos, years before he and Audrey Tautou made photobooths hip again

• One of our favorite photobooth locations, Faces in Northampton, Mass., has replaced their color booth with a black and white machine.

• Grammy winner and tabloid idol Amy Winehouse was snapped carrying a framed set of photobooth photos out of her London abode as she prepared to move to the country; apparently this is big news, and you can find photos of the photostrips on this blog, and this one, and on the Daily Mail’s site.

• And finally, this bit is a little old, and we’ll have to do some more research to see what came of it, but Women’s Wear Daily reports on a vintage booth accompanying promotion for designer Stella McCartney’s products at Selfridge’s department store:

McCartney’s brand blitz at Selfridges isn’t just about commerce, however. Caricature artists will be on hand to draw customers’ portraits throughout the two weeks, and a one-man band commissioned by McCartney will play. The designer will also install a vintage photo-booth on Selfridges’ second floor, in which customers can take a shot of themselves for 1 pound, or about $2, which will be donated to the Red Cross. McCartney will make a personal appearance during London Fashion Week on Feb. 13.

Ever since reading about San Francisco’s photobooths in a 2002 San Francisco Chronicle article as I was beginning my photobooth hunt, I’ve thought of the city as a photobooth haven. Never mind the fact that one of the locations in the article had a Polaroid booth and another location had gone digital by the time I was able to check it out, or that the author mysteriously recommends photobooth enthusiasts watch La Dolce Vita (great movie, nothing to do with photobooths) along with Amélie… On a quick weekend trip to San Francisco, we were able to add five booths to the list, check in on some old stand-bys, and confirm some cases where digital booths had taken over.

First, I’ll list a few notes on research done before the trip, based on a few years of mentions, rumors, tips, phone calls, and Flickr evidence (and please feel free to correct if you know otherwise).

• The photobooth at the Elbo Room is digital.
• The photobooth at Seventh Heart was photochemical, but has been gone since February, 2007.
• Treat Street is now Dirty Thieves, and seems to still have a photobooth, but people describe it as “Polaroidesque,” so who knows…
• Jungle Fun & Adventure doesn’t exist in San Francisco anymore.
• My Trick Pony’s booth was photochemical, and “died” in April, 2007.
• Studio Z seems dead; Fat City seems to have taken over, but do they have a photobooth?
• The booth at the 500 Club is a Polaroid booth (as of June, 2007).
• The Cellar doesn’t have a photobooth, and claims not to have had one.
• Studio Z is closed, so that one’s out, too.

Now, for the the run-down: my first stop was at Notte, on Union Street in Cow Hollow. The booth was there all right, but it wasn’t working that night, so I snapped a photo of it, to the annoyance of those in the roped-off section in the back where the booth lived, and moved on. I headed over to The Comet Club, where I’d heard there was a booth, but it was a digital one, so I headed back to the hotel.

The next morning, we headed down to the Embarcadero, and along to the Musee Mecanique at Pier 45. Both black and white booths are still there, and I had a nice chat with the man behind it all, Dan Zelinsky, who helped us out with a finicky bill acceptor and told us about his massive collection of abandoned photostrips. We took a few sets of photos, happy see that these great booths are still in action.

Later on that afternoon, I headed west to the Haight to check out a photobooth at Wasteland, a clothing store on Haight Street.The photobooth is located in the rear of the store, and is apparently used as a dressing room on occasion, as a sign inside the booth testifies. The booth provided very crisp black and white images with a clean white border, and in was good running order.

From Wasteland it was a little over a mile to the Buckshot Bar and Gameroom (which unfortunately comes up as “Buckshop” on Google Maps and has no website), where I stopped in just as they opened to test out their black and white booth. The booth had all of the right elements: photos of dogs, photos of bar-goers in various stages of undress, a half-dressed mannequin and a goose on top of the booth, and a Farrah Fawcett poster on the side. I tried to complete the scene by downing a beer in between the four flashes, and did pretty well, but the camera seemed a little cock-eyed in the booth, and didn’t capture my nearly-empty glass as I held it up. When the photos came out, not only were the sepia and nearly overrun with white border, but image they captured included the light from outside and not much of the entire right half of the seating area. Strange indeed.

After dinner on Valencia Street, we checked out the San Francisco location of The Beauty Bar, an unassuming little place with a few hair salon-style dryers above the seats and some related paraphernalia on the walls. The photobooth took some solid, if a little dark, black and white photos, but the mechanism could use a little adjustment, it seems: our photostrip received a half-inch gash in the top frame on its way out.



On Sunday morning, before heading to the airport, I made one more stop: the RayKo Photo Center, not far from SFMOMA and the Moscone Center on Third Street. Michael Shindler’s beautiful 1947 Model 9 booth sits at the far side of the front area of the building, all gleaming metal and curved walls. The booth wasn’t working that day, but I had a nice chat with Michael about it, and Ann showed me some of the many photostrips the booth has produced, plastered on the walls. I poked around inside the booth and took a bunch of photos. I look forward to a return trip where I can see the booth in action.

Almost all of the photobooth locations I didn’t have a chance to check out this time around are in a pretty small area, which would make a good night’s work for a Photobooth.net reader. These aren’t all confirmed locations, but are places I was going to check out out if I had time: Annie’s Social Club, The Transfer, The Endup, Cassidy’s Bar, Club Six, and Thee Parkside Cafe. Let us know what you find…

More European photobooth news this week, as we’ve belatedly posted a little information about a recent project undertaken by Sleep Club, a.k.a. artists Dell Stewart and Adam Cruickshank, at Takt Gallery in Berlin. Simply put, they

…made some flocked Schlaf Klub tshirts and wore them while we slept in six different Photoautomats in Berlin. We took a lot of pictures and made this little installation as a result.

Check out more pictures of the beautiful and gigantic blown-up photostrips on their website. Thanks to Adam for letting us know about the project.

The New York Times City Room blog asks the question, will Stumptown Coffee Roasters be “planning an outpost in the lobby of the Ace Hotel, a Portland transplant that is scheduled to open on 29th Street and Broadway in 2009”? A fair question, to be sure, but more to the point, will the Ace be bringing another photobooth with them to New York, along with their painted brick interiors, camouflage bedside bibles, and their Rudy’s Barbershops? We shall see — and while we’re at it, when is the Seattle Ace going to get its own photobooth, as well? 

Thanksgiving in Portland was a cozy affair, a little chilly but that means more hot toddies, right? We visited four black and white photobooths over two days, all of which were well maintained and in interesting locations. First, two notes about locations I had heard of and tried to visit: Despite what is written here, I can confirm that there is no black and white booth at Le Train Bleu. Also, the photobooth that was located at Rudy’s Barbershop on Division is no longer there, and has moved to either the Ace Hotel (according to the woman who answered the phone at Rudy’s) or Ground Kontrol (according to this Flickr discussion); no matter, as we’ve got both locations covered.

So, as far as we know, the only booth that remains undocumented is the booth at the Oaks Amusement Park, which we’re eagerly awaiting from a contributor who has offered to send in photos.

We’ll start with the booth in the lobby of The Ace Hotel, which was already posted in our directory but required an in-person visit to check out the details and see how the booth fits in with the general greatness of the hotel. The engraved glass, above, and the nice window sign, below, were particularly nice touches.



Also downtown, we visited the booth at Little Finnegan’s, the younger sibling of Portland’s venerable Finnegan’s Toys. Somewhat more rebellious and geared toward an older crowd, Little Finnegan’s stocks Last Supper lunchboxes and librarian action figures and the rest, and the photobooth fits right in.

After spending an afternoon on Hawthorne, I walked back on Belmont St. and found Holocene, a block up on Morrison, not long after they opened for the evening at 5pm. The place was empty, but the photobooth was in fine working order, and I even found a dime on the floor while I was taking my photos. Who says this is an unpaid job?

The last booth we visited lives at Matador, a dark little bar on Burnside on the way to Nob Hill. The photobooth is back by the kitchen, and is plastered with photos of drunken bargoers, often with shirts pulled up, pants pulled down, or whatever else seemed like a good idea at the time.

From a family-friendly toy store to a true dive bar, Portland’s photobooth scene seems healthy once again.

The beautiful black and white photobooths of Berlin have tempted us from afar ever since we first caught wind of them, flipping through Flickr a few years ago. Thanks to our contributors, we now have listings in our directory for a number of Berlin booths, like this one, on Kastanienallee.

These photobooths now have a web directory of their own, with photos, addresses, U‑Bahn info, and a list of new locations coming soon: Photoautomat.com (or .de, if you want to be authentic) is a great resource for info on these priceless old-style booths holding their own in the overwhelmingly digital Europe. The site also clues us in to the fact that the dip-and-dunk booth in Paris that we remarked on last month is actually a permanent fixture in the Palais de Tokyo and is run by the same fine folks as the Berlin booths; check out the info page about the Paris photobooth. We would be overjoyed to have someone contribute a photo and sample from this booth so we could put Paris back on the map — hint, hint.

Thanks to Ole for letting us know about the site.

Photobooth.net is and always has been the work of two people, who, for all of our geographical separation, still can’t manage to cover the whole United States, much less the world, and though we make it a point to incorporate photobooth-hunting into pretty much any kind of travel plans we have, it’s a lost cause without the help of generous and helpful photobooth enthusiasts around the country and around the world.

From Utah to Berlin and Latvia to Portland, we’ve received invaluable contributions from people who have helped our listings grow to more than 250 entries around the world. Now, admittedly, we’re a little weak on the international side, but then again, so it seems are the booths themselves, and we’re pleased to have the listings that we do, proving that while endangered outside of North America, old-style photobooths are not yet extinct.

Contributions to Photobooth.net come in two forms: either a name and address of a booth location or the complete deal with booth photo and sample photostrip. For the time being, when we receive a contribution in the form of a tip about a location, we file it away in our ever-growing (though occasionally-shrinking) “To-Do List” of booths around the world, waiting for a time when someone contributes photographic proof, an occasion to visit the area ourselves and snap some photos, or the point in time (hopefully soon) when we revamp our photobooth listings. In addition to the current list of confirmed locations with photos, dates, and relevant information, we hope to list those unconfirmed locations contributed by others, mentioned in the press, or found on the web, in hopes that our readers will then visit them and make an official contribution — or, as the case may be, confirm for us that in fact, no photobooth at that location exists any longer.

Until that point, please take a look at our Guide to Contributing a Photobooth Location and keep on sending in those photos and scans!

The photobooth at the Fun Zone in Newport Beach, a mainstay of that town’s boardwalk, was placed for sale by auction on eBay this week, with a starting price of $999. The booth received much interest, but no bids at its starting price, and according to the auction page, “The seller ended this listing early because the item is no longer available for sale.”

Now, we don’t know if that’s because of a change of heart, or an offer too tempting to turn down that was received outside the eBay system, or another reason, but we’ll keep our eyes out for this booth, whether it remains in Newport Beach or moves somewhere else. 

Thanks to Ricky for the tip.

Amidst all of the news of Europe going completely digital, it seems one booth in Paris has either survived or made a comeback. One of the most frequent questions we get on our discussion board asks whether or not there are any more real photobooths in Paris, and it seems that a Flickr user has found one, at the Palais de Tokyo. It seems likely that the booth is there as part of an exhibition, and if it’s the current show, it’ll only be there until the beginning of 2008, so if you’re interested, head over and check out the great-looking old booth.