Before me sits a gleaming silver box: sleek, elegant and with boldly defined, prominent vertical lines, giving it a very slight vintage Art Deco look. A golden vent rests on its top and the figures on its grille look like alien hieroglyphs. They ask me to pretend that this is an elevator that will take me from Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade to Earth's orbit.
I enter and stop at an assigned number. Four windows surround me and one is below me. They're actually OLED TVs, housed inside astronaut-white oval frames. Soon, I'm inundated with ambient, serene music. An air conditioner pumps in a cold breeze (partly to offset the heat from the TVs, partly to mitigate any effects of motion sickness) and then the simulation begins. Southern California disappears beneath me and in moments I glide over the Earth, enveloped in stars and the twilight blues of our planet's horizon.
Game technician Quantrel Farris plays at Two Bit Circus on Third Street Promenade.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Normally, the experience of simulating a trip to space is something that happens in theme parks or NASA training facilities. This space elevator, however, is located inside a pop-up arcade from Two Bit Circus, which earlier this year closed its more than 40,000-square-foot gaming space in the downtown Arts District. In the precarious world of location-based entertainment (the last few years have seen animated, gaming-focused, VR-focused startups like Void and Dreamscape Immersive come and go), it was safe to assume the worst when Two Bit closed.
Had its combination of coin-operated arcade machines, future technologies, and immersive theater-inspired games joined the likes of DisneyQuest, Star Trek: The Experience, and a host of other promising but failed experiments? No, insists Two Bit founder Brent Bushnell, who is confident that Two Bit will re-emerge with a permanent space. First up, however, is a multi-week pop-up experience at Third Street Promenade, opening Saturday and currently scheduled to run through Jan. 5, though Bushnell thinks an extension is likely: “We're going to be a month a- one-month kind of decision,” he says.
Space elevator in Two Bit Circus. (Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)
Two Bit, Bushnell says, was never able to recover from the pandemic, so its downtown business dug itself into a financial hole too deep to recover from. “We brought a quarter of a million people there in 2019,” Bushnell says of attendance at the initial location, which opened in 2018. “It was literally millions of dollars. In 2020, we did 20% better than in 2019. Sometimes I wonder what world we would live in. “I was closing investments worth $30 million to open five more.”
All of those plans evaporated relatively quickly. A Two Bit location in Dallas, for example, opened in 2023 but closed within just a few months. Two Bit's downtown branch followed relatively suddenly in April, but Bushnell says it was clear by January that the company was going to have to regroup.
“We didn't have the deep pockets of a gargantuan corporation to put up with that,” Bushnell says of Two Bit's COVID-19-induced closures, for which the backlog of bills eventually became too much to bear. “This is a real opportunity to set this straight and start again.”
And more modestly. Two Bit's Santa Monica location, nestled between the cacophony of casual restaurants and an oversized checkerboard of the Third Street Promenade, is 4,000 square feet, a fraction of the size of the downtown location. That means some Two Bit originals—digital carnival games like a balloon-popping challenge that uses screens and projections, or a train racing game based less on speed but on synchronizing with friends or strangers—remain in storage. . Like its so-called “story rooms”—including one that was inspired by the old board game Operation, only here we perform impromptu surgery on a giant puppet—the game is less about precision than silly communication.
However, it's clear that Two Bit's mission persists.
Brent Bushnell, founder of Two Bit Circus.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
A central bar, for example, will sell a drink it calls “the cocktail shot.” It's essentially one shot, but then participants will be given a Meta Quest 3 and asked to play a 90-second game using headset pass-through technology, which allows digital creations to be overlaid onto our world environment. real. Basically, we'll be shooting giant cowboy hat-wearing eyeballs floating around the Two Bit bar area. Similar games will unfold outside the doors of Two Bit on the Promenade, including a fantasy-inspired game where our Quest controllers will become virtual wands and we'll be magicians throwing fireballs at each other in the middle of the Santa Monica district.
There's also space for group games, including a highly participatory game show-inspired experience. Here, guests will gather around cocktail tables and each player will receive their own box-shaped video game controller with large plastic gaming buttons. You'll compete against other guests in short, silly mini-games, some asking us to frantically press as many buttons as possible, others more akin to a quiz. A version of this was featured in Two Bits' Arts District announcement.
Then, finally, there's Two Bit's range of stand-up games, with an emphasis, Bushnell says, on multiplayer titles: “Frogger,” “Rampage,” “Joust,” “Zoo Keeper,” “Marble Madness,” among many other. offerings. The pop-up will charge a $25 cover at the door, and that will include all of the day's games.
And the most sought-after centerpiece will undoubtedly be the space elevator, developed by local company One World Immersive. The company, founded by Chris Clavio, who previously worked for the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based immersive art collective Meow Wolf, considers the device that will rest on Two Bit a prototype: it is, for example, fragile and built from the aforementioned material. Televisions and wooden cabinets. Footage of the experience comes largely from NASA's public domain collection, Clavio says, as the ultimate goal of the space elevator is to present it to museums and schools.
Chris Clavio, founder and CEO of One World Immersive, shows off his space elevator experience at the Two Bit Circus arcade on Third Street Promenade.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
While the ground vibrates, there is no real lift. Hopefully that detail, Clavio says, will be found in a future edition, but the movement on the screen is slow enough not to be physically jarring and allow for a momentary sense of disbelief. When I am inside space, I feel a sense of calm, enjoying the wonder of thousands of twinkling stars and the peace of our planet when seen from above. The ride lasts only four minutes, but it is cozy, almost meditative and momentarily restorative.
“The original goal of this was to show people the majesty of the planet and how incredible Earth was, and not for it to be a cheesy thrill ride,” Clavio says. “We want it to be an opportunity for reflection.”
Two Bit Circus Santa Monica Popup
It also takes advantage of Two Bit's original idea, which is to merge familiar and unexpected games with immersive experiments loaded with social interaction: Two Bit's calendar, for example, includes singles nights and gift exchanges. Bushnell is also excited to welcome guests with augmented reality glassware from Snap, as he notes that Two Bit has programmed images of dinosaurs wandering the Third Street Promenade.
Ultimately, the space will be seen as a kind of test. Perhaps for a future location in Santa Monica and also to see if Two Bit can attract a different mix of audiences than downtown.
Game technician Quantrel Farris works at Two Bit Circus on Third Street Promenade.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
“When we were in downtown Los Angeles, we could get adults and businesses. [events]but families and tourists were a challenge,” says Bushnell. “I think what's special about Santa Monica is that you can really enjoy everything. So this is an exploration for us to test the waters.”
And, of course, simulate the experience of contemplating those waters from outer space.
