Thanks again to Meags, who sent us a massive contribution of booths last year, we’ve got more booths in our directory from Canada and Germany.

The folks at Photoautomat have a large and growing empire across Europe (check out their entire list), and we’re happy to have two more of their Berlin booths listed in our directory. The booths are, like nearly all of the German booths, located outside, at Kottbusser Tor and in front of the Kaiser’s grocery store on Revalerstrasse.

We’re still looking for listings for their photobooths in Dresden and (thanks to Ole for reminding us that we already have the photobooth in Dresden on our list!) Köln, so if anyone has travel plans that will take them to either city soon, please don’t forget your camera and send us some photos and info.

Our Canadian listings have also been expanded, with entries for booths in the Dufferin Mall in Toronto and the Mill Woods Town Centre in Edmonton. Thanks, Meags!

Here’s some happier news to start off the year: while we might have lost a few booths here on the West Coast over the last year, more booths on the East Coast have recently come to our attention.

Virginia now has two black and white photochemical booths in our directory, one at the Rivermill Map Company Bar and Grill in Blacksburg, and another at the New York Deli in Richmond.

Thanks to John in Blacksburg for his photos and info regarding the Rivermill booth, which he describes as “the pride” of his antique camera collection.

Thanks as well to my brother Scott in Richmond for his photos, and to Demetrios for telling us more about his booth, which he owns outright and which is maintained by one of his managers, who has learned to change the chemicals and keep the booth in working order.

Nothing like starting off the year with some bad news: we’ve been sitting on this story for awhile now, but thanks to a flood of information from readers, it’s time to report on some sad disappearances. Photochemical photobooths all over California have been disappearing left and right, it seems. Booths in venerable locations, where they’ve been for years, have recently been sold or replaced by digital booths, much to the chagrin of local photobooth enthusiasts.

Starting up in the Bay Area, the outdoor booth at the Bancroft Clothing Company in Berkeley has disappeared. Thanks to Holly for letting us know in December of 2009. Victoria wrote in with some more details this week:

I was then made aware that they had plans to have their photobooth hauled away that week! This was terrible news as this was the last chem-photo booth in the east bay. Now I have to got to San Francisco to do any photoboothing. Not to mention this was a color booth making it even more of a loss. The manager I talked to told me that it would get vandalized and just didn’t make much money which was why they were getting rid of it. 

Second, in Santa Cruz, the four photobooths at the Casino Arcade are now gone. They began disappearing in early 2009; thanks to Dennis and to Victoria for the updates.

Next, the beautiful Model 11 photobooth (and its slightly less beautiful in comparison companion) at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego. Barbara let us know about their disappearance in June of 2009; my call to the gift shop there didn’t yield any clues as to where they’d moved to, but they were replaced by a digital booth, which seems like a bit of an insult considering the location.

Closer to home here at Photobooth.net West, we’ve lost two photochemical booths in Hollywood, the last two to survive in recent years. First, the booth at Lucky Strike Lanes. Thanks again to Dennis for tipping us off to that change; I’d visited it not two weeks before it left, and it seemed like it was in fine shape, turning out great-looking strips. Sad indeed. Just down the street, Tiny’s K.O., home to the great-looking photobooth that sat outside in their entry way, closed down, and the booth was put up for sale. The booth rarely worked, and we never got a chance to put it to use.

Thanks to Dennis, Holly, Barbara, Alison, Ricky, Victoria, Steve, and everyone else who wrote in to let us know about these booths. 

We say goodbye this week to a few Utah photobooth locations: two different contributors emailed this week letting us know that the veritable bonanza of Utah Kmarts with photochemical photobooths was too good to last. Booths at the Kmarts in Salt Lake City, West Jordan, and Draper are now gone. Thanks to Kylie and Steph for the updates.

We also say goodbye to our old hosting provider this week, and hello to a new one. Hopefully, our readers won’t see anything but a more responsive and reliable site; on our end, things are already miles better. 

One more new addition: the appetite for poorly-faked photostrips on TV seems unsated, and this week we bring you a pseudo-strip from an October, 2009 episode of Desperate Housewives (who knew that show was still on?).

I just returned from a brief visit to Europe where photobooths still abound in all the usual places (post offices, train and subway stations, arcades.) However, I am sad to report that 99% of the booths I encountered were digital. London was the one exception, and two of the photobooths there were the highlight of my trip.

The past year has seen the re-emergence of chemical photobooths in The Big Smoke thanks to the industrious efforts of two independent outfits: Photomovette and Photoautomat. As luck would have it, I hit the city at the perfect time to see activity from both companies. October 31st marked the closing of Photoautomat’s show at Cargo; the following evening Photomovette was hosting an opening party for their booth. I spent the morning of the 31st hanging out at Cargo, chatting with Alex and taking in the show.

Following a quick lunch of steak & ale pie and mashy peas (in case you were wondering), I met up with Carole and Siobhan, the women of Photomovette. I proved not very helpful in resolving a few of their remaining booth idiosyncrasies, but they were gracious hosts nonetheless. They were busy putting the final touches on their booth and organizing the venue for their party the following evening.

After parting company, I headed for the Tube to make my way back to my West London lodging. The subway ride was notable for two reasons: 1) I happened to sit beneath an ad adorned with a fake photostrip and 2) it occurred to me I had inadvertently slated my travel for Halloween. If you’ve never experienced it, trust me when I tell you it is slightly disorienting to experience a new place on Halloween. It certainly left me wondering if London Tube traffic was always as colorful, or if it had something to do with the holiday. See for yourself:

For those of you who missed either of the above-mentioned festivities, fret not, more opportunity awaits you. Alex’s booth remains at Cargo, and is outside in the beer garden. Feel free to stop by anytime. As for Carole and Siobhan, they are hosting another photobooth party on the 13th of December.

Thanks to Katherine sending photos and sample photostrips from two more photobooths in Australia, this time from Melbourne. First we’ve got the booth in a covered market on Chapel Street, and then a shopping mall booth at the Jam Factory. Thanks as well to the couple she found taking photos in the Chapel Street booth who let us use her photo of them.

Just in time for back-to-school shopping, we’d like to let everyone know about our Photobooth.net t‑shirts, available in a variety of styles and colors for him and her in our Spreadshirt Shop. Tim and I tried out the first versions during the Photobooth Convention a few months ago, and since then, readers all over the world have picked up their own shirts and, in some cases, sent us photos of them in the wild. We know you won’t all have quite such a dramatic backdrop, but if you’d like to send us a photo of you in your Photobooth.net shirt — in or out of the booth — we’d love to see it and post it on the site.



Thanks to the wonderful Martin and Ira of Schnellfoto in Moscow for the photo.

Thanks to a tip from Stephanie, we see that Time Out New York has updated its somewhat-annual New York photobooth article. In September of 2007, we noted a Time Out piece called “Strip Mining” that the author, Rachel Sokol, contacted us about as she was researching. Looking at that link again, it seems the 2007 article has been replaced by this new one, with the much more pedestrian title of “The city’s best photo booths,” by Anna Brand. Both articles list photochemical and digital booths, and neither seems to make much distinction between old style and digital. Eight of the eleven booths in the original article were photochemical; now the ratio has slipped to six out of ten photochemical booths in the new piece. The booths are at Otto’s, Lakeside Lounge, Bubby’s, Bushwick Country Club, Union Pool, and the Smith.

We’ve added a new Manhattan booth which apparently didn’t make the Time Out cut, a black and white booth at The Living Room. Thanks to Gabby for the photos and info.

We are still digging out more updates that piled up during our summer hiatus, and present a few more today. First, Stephanie was kind enough to check out the new Ace Hotel in New York City, which we reported on in late 2007, wondering whether it would feature a photobooth in its lobby. Our question was answered: like its counterpart in Portland, the Ace New York does have a black and white photobooth, which takes credit cards only and pushes the upper limit of photobooth pricing up to $5.

The new Ace in Palm Springs apparently has a booth, as well, though we haven’t visited there yet, but when we visited the Ace in Seattle a few years ago, there was no booth to be found. Anyway, the photobooth at the Ace Hotel in New York is a welcome addition to the often volatile New York photobooth scene. Thanks, Stephanie.

Back in January, I visted the Motley Coffeehouse in Claremont, California, and checked out their black and white booth, which looked like it turned out great photos, but wasn’t on at the time, as the coffeehouse was actually closed.

And finally, we add another movie to our long list of films featuring faked photostrips, this one the highly anticipated and promptly critically lacerated Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, starring Nicole Kidman as the famed photographer.

For many years now, we’ve heard of a remote colony of photochemical photobooths that have survived in Australia, far from the familiar “photobooth cities” of New York, Chicago, Berlin, and Paris. We’ve seen them in music videos and TV commercials, but we’ve never had any officially submitted to our Photobooth Directory.

We’re happy to report that we’ve received our first Aussie submissions, which came along with the massive group of photobooth locations in Canada that we posted about earlier this week.

Thanks again to Meags, we’ve now got two suburban Sydney booths listed, both in the Broadway Shopping Centre: one a black and white machine , and the other a color booth. We’re very happy to have these booths listed, and we also hope it encourages others, who live in Australia or plan to travel there, to take photos and contribute more Australian locations for our directory.

Just when you start to think you’re hearing more about photobooths disappearing than you are about new locations being discovered, a kind reader of our site will send in a massive update that makes you feel a little better about the whole situation. Courtesy of Meags Fitzgerald, we just received a big update, twelve photobooths in all, none of which have appeared on the site before. 

We’re adding them in installments, so the first to go up are the Canadian locations: nine booths in Alberta and one in Vancouver. The majority of the new booths are in Calgary, which just jumped from “unlisted” to somewhere in the top ten as far as active photochemical photobooth cities are concerned. We’ve always known that Canada is home to many active photobooths, but beyond a few in Toronto and BC, we haven’t had much documentation before now.

So here they are:

Edmonton City Centre 

Bonnie Doon Shopping Centre, Edmonton

Northland Village Mall I, Calgary

Northland Village Mall II, Calgary

North Hill Centre, Calgary

Eau Claire Market, Calgary

Deerfoot Mall, Calgary

Chinook Centre, Calgary

Calgary Greyhound Station

Antisocial Skate Shop, Vancouver

I don’t think we’ve ever seen a photobooth decked out like a bag of popcorn (at the Chinook Mall), but now that I see it, I can’t believe no one else seems to have thought of it before now. Very nice. Thanks to Meags for these locations, and we’ll have the rest of her contributions soon.