I had a day in New York this past week to check out some photobooths that had long been on Photobooth.net’s “to-do” list, as well as to see if some rumored booths were really where we thought they were. 

Taking a lesson from some previous, less successful outings, I did a lot of research beforehand to ensure that I wasn’t going out of my way to find a booth in a bar that had long gone out of business, or look for a chemical photobooth that was actually now a digital booth. So, for the record, as of June, 2007, here are some updates that I collected before leaving for New York:

• Jake’s Dilemma had a photobooth; it was digital, and now it is gone.
• Crocodile Lounge has a photobooth; it is digital.
• Pop Burger has something that is occasionally described as a photobooth, but is not.
• Gershwin Hotel has a photobooth, but it is digital.
• BB&R has a photobooth, but it is digital.
• Gallery Bar has a photobooth, but it is digital. I called to find out, and it was described as digital, “but like an old school aesthetic.” Still digital.
• Milk Studios only has a photobooth when they have parties, but don’t own their own. 
• Southpaw had a real photobooth, but now have a digital booth.
• Magnetic Field had a real photobooth, but very recently went digital; thanks to Raul for letting me know and saving me a trip. This is a real loss; the booth produced three photos per strip and made for many a happy bar-goer, it looks like. 

So, with those potential stops cleared up, my first stop was at the Victoria’s Secret store on 34th, thanks to a find on Flickr last week. Sadly, I was a little late, as a store employee showed me where the booth had been and told me it had been removed a few weeks prior. Oh well.

Next stop was Daffy’s in Soho, where I had heard from a number of sources that a real photobooth lived. Sadly, after looking in every nook and cranny, I asked an employee and he said it had been recently removed, and was perhaps seasonal. I wasn’t sure which season he would be referring to, but nevertheless, it was gone, and I was zero for two. Looks like there might still be a photobooth at the Daffy’s in Philadelphia; perhaps a reader in Philly can let us know and send in some photos.

I headed out to Brooklyn, hoping for greener pastures, and found success, finally, at Bubby’s in DUMBO, where, like Bubby’s in Tribeca, a wonderful black and white booth can be found next to the video games and the bathrooms. After a delicious lunch at Bubby’s, I went for a walk and picked up this week’s copy of the The L Magazine, with a cover photo and photos inside of photostrips (from Bubby’s and elsewhere). 

I took the train to Williamsburg, and headed once more to the Bushwick Country Club, where I’d had two unsuccessful attempts in 2005. The bartender unlocked the bar for me, and I spent an hour there as the only patron; it was a little early, but I was happy to finally use the booth and enjoy their two-for-one drink special. The photobooth had a BMX bike on top that was being raflled off, next to the velvet Elvis. Opposite the booth, the wall was covered with contributed photobooth strips showing Country Club members having a good time. Upon returning home, I was happy to discover that a Photobooth.net reader had contributed photos from the booth the day I left for New York, and we’ve used hers in our entry for the BCC. When it rains, it pours, I guess.

We have more than 20 photobooth locations listed in only three cities: New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Our to-do list of places we’ve heard about but haven’t had a chance to visit includes locations all around the country, but these three cities seem to be the national photobooth hubs. In the past week or so, I’ve visited two more local L.A. locations, one of which has had a photobooth awhile, Backstage in Culver City, and one of which is a long-standing store that recently added a booth: Pull My Daisy, in Silver Lake.

We’ve also come across news of a new photobooth at Quimby’s, a Chicago bookstore specializing in “the importation, distribution, and sale of unusual publications, aberrant periodicals, saucy comic booklets and assorted fancies as well as a comprehensive miscellany of the latest independent ‘zines’ that all the kids have been talking about.” The Quimblog has some great photos of the booth itself, its innards, and some nice sample photos from their new addition. Anyone visiting Chicago is encouraged to visit Quimby’s, take some samples, and buy some cool books and zines.

On another note, news of another step toward the death of the photobooth as a functional technology, at least in Europe, where dip and dunk photobooths are essentially dead already (more on that later): a new service allowing customers to upload digital photos which will then be checked for “biometric compatibility” and mailed back as a set of four passport-approved photos.

UPDATE 5/25/07: Thanks to Liz from Quimby’s, we’ve now got an entry for their new photobooth in our directory. And with a superstar of the literary world, Dishwasher Pete, in the sample photo. Nice!

Every time we discover a new photobooth, another one seems to disappear. Sometimes this happens to the same booth, and today we present listings for two photobooths in the Los Angeles area that came and went before we even had a chance to notice. Ricky visited photobooths at a salon called Lucas Echo Park and at a nearby Rite Aid pharmacy in December; by the time I visited in March, they were both gone. Another one of Ricky’s submissions, the photobooth at Café 50s in Sherman Oaks, has also gone away, replaced by a digital booth. 

While we’re happy to be an up-to-date guide for people looking for photobooths to visit as they travel the country, we also think it’s important to keep track of those dip and dunk photobooths that are no longer with us, or no longer where they once were. As we move into our third year of operation and get closer to a whopping 200 photobooths in our directory, look for some changes to the way we present our listings, making them easier to search and browse, and making it easier to tell which booths are still actually up and running. 

Thanks to the time and generosity of a photobooth enthusiast in Germany, our international photobooth listings have grown by five booths. As we near 200 photobooths in our list, we’re happy to have five fantastic-looking outdoor photobooths from Berlin in the database. Klaas first submitted the Rosenthalerplatz photobooth back in 2006, and this week, has passed on five more locations, all black and white booths that live outdoors and are accessible year-round, 24 hours a day. The photobooths are found on Zossenerstrasse, Warschauerstrasse, Marienburger Strasse, and at the S‑Bahn Rathaus Steglitz rail station (plus one more on the way).

Update: S‑Bahn Treptower Park has been added, bringing the total for Berlin to six booths.

Klaas’s photos are particularly evocative: check out the full version here and below the fold.

more…

I guess I should have stayed in Las Vegas another week: thanks to a comment on a previous post, we’ve seen flurry of black and white photobooth pictures of NBA All-Stars in Las Vegas for the game this past weekend.

The photobooth was at the Palms Casino, for an “All Star Media Availability” event on February 16, and the photos showcase the goofy grins of Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, LeBron James, and other familiar faces. Thanks to Amy for the original comment, which led us to Kevin Garnett, and then to a few Google Alerts that led us to the other photostrips around the web. You can check out seven photostrips here and four others here (with some duplicates).

The photos, as seen on Yahoo! Sports, are credited as “by Jennifer Pottheiser,” (see more of her NBA photos here) which brings up the age-old conundrum of how to credit a photobooth photo. The subject is usually the one who initiates the photographic action by inserting money or pressing a button, but when you get down to it, a machine is taking the photo, and we can credit the subject who pressed the button, the person overseeing the booth, or the whoever grabs the photo out of the slot and scans it.

Photo: Shaquille O’Neal, by Jennifer Pottheiser/NBAE via Getty Images on Yahoo! Sport.

We spent the past weekend in Las Vegas, and I hoped to find a couple of photobooths, ready for enthusiastic partygoers to document their weekends of debauchery. I should have known that in a place so heavily trafficked and constantly upgraded as Las Vegas, most of the booths would be digital. At the arcade at New York New York, the photobooth was digital, as it was at the arcade at MGM, and from examples I’ve seen on the web, the photobooths at Stratosphere and the Rainforest Cafe are both digital, as well. A photobooth in front of the Imperial Palace casino closed last year, and was probably digital anyway. So, I was pleased to find a Flickr photo of a photostrip from a real dip and dunk chemical photobooth in Las Vegas.

On Saturday afternoon, I paid a visit to this photobooth, at the Golden Palm Hotel. From the MGM Grand, where we were staying, I took off along Tropicana Boulevard toward the Golden Palm, about a mile away. I expected a brief stroll, but it was more like a hike, over two giant pedestrian bridges, through the parking lot of the Excalibur, over Interstate 15, and around the chainlink fence and into the Golden Palm’s parking lot. Crossing I‑15 from the Strip is like entering another world, and the hotel was pretty dead. It used to be the Golden Palm Casino and Hotel, but it seems to be the Golden Palm Hotel and Lounge now, with the “Casino” unceremoniously painted over on their sign. The photobooth was indeed a real Photo-Me booth, but it was in the lounge, and the lounge didn’t open for another four hours. So, I was stuck snapping a photo through a locked exterior door, and I hope an intrepid Las Vegas photobooth enthusiast will send us a scan of a photo from this booth at some point in the future. I also hope I’m not right, and that there are a few more old-style photobooths still around in Las Vegas.

Phoeniz Arizona’s Trunk Space, home to a photobooth we’ve long had on our “To Visit” list, is having, as we speak, a sort of going away party for their photobooth technician, Mike.

More about Mike: He has worked at this job for 21 years! In the past 2 months he has lost all his profitable photobooths (the ones at Spectrum got robbed twice) and the other mall went digital. He has kept our photobooth from getting removed (due to poor sales) more than once. 

The gallery, whose booth was voted best photobooth in Phoenix, is home to “Experimental Theater, Performance, Music, Puppets, Weird Stuff, Circus Side Show Acts, Fine Art, Handmade Gifts, & Espresso drinks, as well as being a meeting place for artists, curious people and weary travelers.”

We’ve seen a lot of photos from the booth on Flickr and LiveJournal, but we’d really love an official contribution to our Locator in the form of a photo of the booth itself and a nice high-quality scan of a photostrip. It would double our count of Arizona photobooths, and we’d love to have the ‘Space represented. 

A not-to-be-missed photobooth buying opportunity is happening right now, as a Los Angeles-based photographer is having a moving sale that includes a 1945 Auto Photo booth. The booth, which looks like a classic rounded-end Model 9 and seems to be in absolutely mint condition, comes with a stock of paper, chemicals, parts, and a copy of the original manual. If you’ve got $16,500 to part with or make the best offer received, the booth is yours.

A piece of downtown Los Angeles history, manufactured at the original Auto-Photo factory on Santa Fe. Sit down, drop a quarter in the slot, and the fun begins. The original air compressor fires up, the lights turn on and off four times, an amazing mechanical contraption processes your portraits, and two minutes later, out slides a vintage looking b&w photo strip. Ready to use.

If only we had enough time to start a fundraising campaign for the purchase of an official Photobooth.net Photobooth — this would be the one. We’ll try to keep tabs on where this beauty goes.

Save Tillie, a “volunteer organization comprised of 1,000 friends of Asbury Park,” New Jersey, is an organization dedicated to saving the Palace amusement park and its iconic Tillie image. After the demolition of the building in 2004, the group “saved more than 125 internal artifacts from the Palace and the Tillie mural from the Cookman Avenue wall…; In the last few weeks, another prized element from the Palace’s past is on its way home: the photobooth.

In a great story on the Save Tillie site, the group tells the story of the photobooth, which had been at Palace for 30 years, making a move to Folkheart, a store in Vermont, in 1988. Now, nearly twenty years later, as the photobooth sat in disrepair and Folkheart’s owners prepared to close up shop, they donated the booth to Save Tillie. Folkheart was long on Photobooth.net’s radar as home to the only booth in Vermont, so we’re saddened to hear that it’s no more. Any other leads, readers? Now, back to the story:

On December 28, 2006 Save Tillie members Dan Toskaner, Frank Saragnese, and Mary Lynn Purcell drove to Vermont with a large trailer to rescue this valuable Palace artifact. Despite some dust, grime, and a large spider web inside the camera window, they found the machine to be in remarkably good condition. The exterior oak and white/gold speckled Formica is completely intact. The illuminated script “Photographs” sign still sits on top. In recognition of its history, someone stamped a small Tillie face next to a handwritten $2.00 sign. Best of all, beneath a sheet of plexiglass on the outer graphic panel there is a homemade collage of very old photo strips. The owners of Folkheart confirmed that these strips were already there when they bought the booth, which means that they were taken at the Palace. Save Tillie is hoping that some of the people in these photos can be identified.

The photobooth is currently undergoing restoration, and will be ready for action again soon; Save Tillie hope to return it to use in Asbury Park, where it began its life. Besides being a great story about nice people who care about history, the story is a testament to the power of the photobooth and the pull it has on generations of New Jersey amusement park-goers and Vermont store-browsers and all of us. We wish the best of luck to the folks at Save Tillie, and hope they keep us updated with the progress and the future of their beloved booth.

Photo of Save Tillie volunteers and the booth outside Folkheart from savetillie.com.

A few months after moving here to L.A., I’m still tracking down photobooths I’ve heard about in bars and restaurants around the city. Friday night, we ventured downtown to Bar 107, described in a Gridskipper review as “a very respectable hole in the wall on 4th, [bursting] with ironic hipster chic one might think lacking on the left coast- red walls, ginormous NSFW Bible art, stuffed deer heads, random signs, etc.”

The black and white photobooth in the back room is nestled behind a few curved booths with just enough space in between to allow for entrance to the booth. The height of the booth (the one to sit on) comes up to the height of the drying slot and makes it almost difficult to get the photostrip out once it’s finished. The booth makes some nice photos, and the bar has got a good feel to it.

Try to get a glass of tap water maybe, though, rather than being stuck with their $4 a bottle “Liquid Salvation Ultra-Hydrating Water” like we were.