Articles
If you are looking for somewhere to go on a day out this summer you could do a lot worse than visiting Southwold in Suffolk. This coastal town, with its sandy beach, multi-coloured beach huts, and shops selling buckets and spades, has everything you’d expect from a good old-fashioned seaside resort. This includes a pier, with seagulls, fish and chips, ice cream and arcade machines, and it’s here that Southwold sets itself apart.
The Under the Pier Show – described as a mad arcade of home-made slot machines and simulator rides – is the brainchild of engineer and cartoonist Tim Hunkin, who admits to having had a recurring fantasy about having his own amusement arcade since he was a teenager.
As a child in the 1950s he made contraptions, struggling to get them to work, until he got a Saturday job with coin-operated machines manufacturer Ruffler and Walker. Hunkin built his first machine a few years after leaving college in 1974. He describes it as having been too successful because “the coins overfilled the box and shorted the electrics”.
The Under the Pier Show first opened in 2001 with just five machines while the pier was being refurbished. These days it houses almost 20 machines made from old arcade games and whatever else Hunkin has found lying around.
The arcade machines on Southwold pier include: Whack-a-Banker, Rent-a-Dog, Test your Nerve, Brainwash, The Doctor, Crankenstein, The Booth of Truth, Microbreak, Gene Forecaster, and Flydrive.
The pier also features an outside machine – the Quantum Tunnelling Telescope – which gives Hunkin’s take on what there is to see while looking over the North Sea – this includes mermaids, shark attacks and hair-raising marine rescues. “There’s never much to look at out to sea,” he explains, “so why waste time with an ordinary telescope?”
The arcade machines cost between 40p and £2 per go, so they’re not as cheap as the traditional two-penny pushers, but the unique experience you pay for is sure to keep the whole family occupied for longer.
Southwold pier is open every day, apart from Christmas Day, but may close in severe weather conditions.
Celebrity snooping
Hunkin has recently opened an arcade near Holborn in central London. Called Novelty Automation, it is also home to almost 20 machines, including his newest creation Celeb! which challenges the player to fly a drone around a mansion to see what its owner gets up to behind closed doors. The arcade is open Wednesday to Saturday.
For more details, see:
www.underthepier.com and
www.novelty-automation.com