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.

2007 should be a banner year for Photobooth.net, our second full year of existence, bringing new changes and additions to the site, as well as more coverage of the continuing saga of the world’s favorite somewhat instant, usually affordable, always unique moment-capturing contraption. We hope to bring news of another Photobooth Convention for 2007, as well as other interesting an exciting developments. For now, we’ll rattle off a few new additions that have come around in the last few weeks:

• A recent project called The Photo-Silhouette Booth.

• Films from the last twenty years with photobooth apperances including Mi Vida Loca, Lackawanna Blues, The Forgotten, Just Between Friends, and L’Auberge espagnole.

• In the realm of television, recent additions include an episode of “The Simpsons,” an appearance in “Ugly Betty,” and two episodes of “One Tree Hill.” Forthcoming, a scene from this week’s episode of “My Name Is Earl.”

Let us know what you’d like to see in 2007, and keep your submissions, tips, and suggestions coming. 

Just goes to show you shouldn’t listen to your summer intern when they suggest a “super-hip” way to get your customers’ attention. Seems Saatchi & Saatchi are behind a United Kingdom advertising campaign in which a person sits in a photobooth and poses for three photos. Seems pretty standard, that is until the photo comes emerges from the side of the booth. The photos are taken by a camera mounted above the subject, and as such, show the shoulders and top of the head of the sitter. And their dandruff. Get it?

We will be interested to see if this sells any bottles of shampoo.

Photo-Me, the world’s largest manufacturer and vendor of photobooths, has announced its most recent profit report, which saw a drop of 30% over profits of a year ago, according to a BBC News report. After turning down the idea of a takeover earlier this year, the company is now apparently looking into selling off one of three divisions.

“The vending side is more obviously of interest to more people, so that is more likely to have a bigger attraction initially,” Vernon Sankey, Photo-Me’s chairman told news agency Reuters.

“We have no doubt we will find people interested, but the question is at what price.”

The three parts of the firm — vending, minilab manufacturing and wholesale manufacturing — are all being assessed to see what the company will decide to do with them.

Read more news about Photo-Me in our archives.

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.

We learn today from Andrea at hula seventy, home of “Photobooth Friday,” that the beloved photobooth at Niagara in New York City has been replaced with a digital booth, and one that at least temporarily wouldn’t take their dollars, to boot. 

We’d had problems with the booth before, but it was also the center of a few photobooth projects, including a Photobooth art show earlier this year. It’s too bad this booth didn’t survive, and we mourn its removal.

It’s time once again for Gridskipper’s monthly mention of the photobooth (see September’s and October’s); this time, it’s a mini-list of the best bars in New York to document your night out with a photostrip.

Picture yourself in a booth in a bar, man, drunk on Red Stripe and tangerine Skyy. Photobooths are the best strip of nostalgia $3–4 can buy you. The delights are manifold. The cloistered privacy behind the curtain. The blinding flash. The minute long wait while the pictures print. And finally, four B&W photos stacked vertically, a portrait of your life over 3 seconds.

It’s nice of Gridskipper to credit us on the photo, but all we ever did was link to it; the original photo of Ashley and Nick is on eatmydesign.com, which we came across through Flickr.

UPDATE, 11/29/06: Not to just keep recycling Gridskipper posts that mention photobooths, but they’ve gone and done another, using a few photostrips from the booth at the Short Stop in L.A. Calling the Short Stop Hipster Biodome, the piece mentions the photobooth among the “pool tables, a dance floor… arcade games, [and] Bloc Party on the stereo.” 

Less than two years ago, Photobooth.net was founded with the goal of collecting and spreading knowledge about old-style photochemical photobooths around the world. Since then, we’ve been featured on the CBC , the BBC, and in numerous newspaper and online articles around the country. An article in this week’s Gazette in Frederick, Maryland, is a first for us, though, in that it references Photobooth.net as an authority on photobooths, without the story being about the site in any way. We know our listings on Maryland are woefully inadequate, but we’re certainly pleased to be cited as an authoritative source on photobooth locations in the article about the black and white photobooth found CineGraphic Studios in Frederick. Now that the booth is in the public eye, maybe a Photobooth.net reader can take a photo and a sample strip and send it on in. 

Read “1, 2, 3 Smile!” on gazette.net or archived in our In Print section.

In commemoration of its 30th anniversary, the Photographic Resource Center has organized the exhibition “PRC | POV — Photography Now and the Next 30 Years.” Much to our delight, Photobooth.net was chosen as one of their featured organizations! The PRC is located in Boston and is a really fantastic organization. Their mission:

The Photographic Resource Center (PRC) at Boston University is an independent non-profit organization that serves as a vital forum for the exploration and interpretation of new work, ideas, and methods in photography and related media. The PRC presents exhibitions, fosters education, develops resources, and facilitates community interaction for local, regional, and national audiences. 

If you are in Boston in the next few months, stop by and check out the show. It is up through January 28, 2007.