After 70-plus years, it’s game over for Newport’s Bay Arcade

The Bay Arcade did not go quietly — not out of defiance, but because it simply wasn’t a quiet place.

The thud of basketballs and the rumble of Skee-Balls were the bass line in the arcade’s soundtrack, and the clink of the air hockey puck and chirps of the driving games were its melody.

The Bay Arcade, an old-school game room that was a fixture of Newport Beach’s Balboa Fun Zone since the 1940s, turned off its neon lights for good Sunday after its building sold and the new owner declined to renew the arcade’s lease. The space will be converted into a doughnut shop and café.

In its final hours, people came in with prize tickets and memories.

Manager Jeremy Crawford, who worked at the arcade for 10 years and played pinball there before that, witnessed first dates and engagements. Sometimes arcade employees were in on the proposals, stashing rings among the prizes to surprise the wife-to-be, he said.

All eight Skee-Ball machines bore “sold” signs. So did all the Pokereno and Lite-a-Line games, the blue kiddie ride next to the ticket counter and the yellow ticket crane. A few rub-on tattoos, plastic jumping frogs and rubber poppers remained in the prize cases, but little else.

Cash Murdoch did his part toward cleaning out the goodies. Cash, 10, and his dad, Todd, buzzed over to the arcade three times over the weekend on their Duffy boat from their Balboa Island home. The Big Bass Wheel hit the 1,000-ticket jackpot on their final trip Sunday night, allowing Cash to fill up a shopping bag with loot: a stuffed Teen Titans Cyborg doll, a plush Slimer from “Ghostbusters,” a handful of poppers and four whistles.

“It’s my best run,” Cash said.

The arcade was about family for June Licata, who grew up in Newport Beach and would come to the arcade with relatives during visits. A few bamboo finger traps probably still lurk in a drawer at her mother’s house, she said.

Licata brought her 10-year-old son Daniel Evans and a couple of his friends from Lincoln Elementary School for one last round. Some of the games that the young boys played Licata also played at their age.

“It’s a time capsule,” she said. “When ‘Star Wars’ came out, these games were here.”

Stan Frome was having dinner in the area with friends when they strolled by and became some of the very last to play Skee-Ball.

Frome also grew up in Newport and knew the arcade as “a zoo” back in the day.

“I spent a lot of hours in this place,” he said. “Back in the ‘Asteroid’ days.”

It wasn’t the only haunt in the area. There was Mutt Lynch’s pub, which used to be by the ferry dock before it relocated near the Newport Pier. There was Gary’s Diner.

He said it’s hard to get nostalgic now.

Jim Lamb was trying, although as a fellow Newport long-timer, he also lamented the further loss of Fun Zone vintage kitsch.

He took photos of the games on his phone to send to family and friends across the country.

“Been coming here for 40 years,” Lamb said. “The kids grew up here.”

He remembered his godson, at about age 4, winning a stuffed lion as big as he was.

The boy is now a father. He still has the lion.

Lamb bought a pinball machine from a different Fun Zone arcade that shut down in the 1990s, but he missed out on one of the Bay Arcade’s Skee-Ball machines.

Another Fun Zone game room is still open, a few yards from the Ferris wheel that displays a banner proclaiming that its lease is valid through 2036. A couple of other carnival rides, a climbing wall and an old-fashioned snack shack form a midway spine along the row of harborfront souvenir shops and casual eateries.

But the Scary Dark Ride, bumper cars and carousel are all gone, closed within the last decade. Ocean Quest, a marine science educational center and satellite of the Santa Ana-based Discovery Cube, now occupies that space.

“It’s not the Fun Zone anymore,” Lamb said. “You can’t say that anymore. It’s so sad to see, so sad to see.”

hillary.davis@latimes.com

Twitter: @Daily_PilotHD

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