June 14, 2012--The Chinatown Chicken

Years and years ago, when I was trying to impress certain people (mainly girls I was interested in) in certain ways (that I was "cool" and knew about all sorts of unusual things to do in New York City), depending on how any given evening was going (if things appeared to be working out), one of my favorite stops was the Chinatown Arcade on Mott Street.

This was pre-video-games time and in the arcade there were mainly pinball machines and a mechanical gypsy fortune teller who for a quarter would pivot in her chair in her glass booth, and with eyes rolling exaggeratedly raise her twitching right hand in which there was a card that she would then pass to you through a slot in her cabinet. On it was printed your fortune--English on one side and Chinese on the other. Fortunes such as, "You will be lucky in love." Just what I was hoping for.

If, on the other hand, the fortune was more Confucian ("A superior man is modest in speech, but exceeds in his actions"), though 'action' it was that interested me, Confucius is not much of a turn on and so I would play my trump card--take my date to try her luck at playing tic-tac-toe with the Chinatown Chicken.

With a live chicken, which was set up in its own glass-enclosed booth, not unlike the mechanical gypsy's.

I am not making this up. Check the linked article from the New York Times that will vouch for my veracity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/nyregion/chinatown-fair-returns-but-without-chicken-playing-tick-tack-toe.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Back to my date in a minute, but first about the tic-tac-toe playing chicken.

On one wall in its booth was an electrified tic-tac-toe board on which it made its moves and outside was another one on which, again for a quarter, humans punched in their X's and O's. If you beat the chicken, out would pour a handful of fortune cookies. If the chicken won, a couple of food pellets would drop into its food cup.

One would think that the arcade owner would have to buy fortune cookies by the gross--after all, how could a lowly chicken do against a brainy Barnard sophomore?

Well, to quote 82-year-old Bunky Boger, a chicken trainer who works out of Lowell, Arkansas, "We go a week sometimes and nobody beats a chicken."

I can attest to that. I must have taken a dozen dates to the Chinatown Arcade and none ever won. Feeling, well, humiliated, after losing they invariably challenged me to see if I could do better. Though I eventually graduated with honors from Columbia, I too never was able to get three O's in a row.

I thought it only fair for the chicken to go first. I was a good sport; and after all, it's only a chicken so it deserved that advantage. But in every instance either the chicken triumphed or, at best, I, like some of my dates, was able to force a draw.

The worst of my dates thought I was making fun of them by schlepping them to Chinatown only to be humbled by a chicken. They insisted that I take them right back to their dormitory. On the other hand, my favorite dates in thought the chicken and I were pretty cool. Their more conventual dates tried to impress them by taking them to a concert at Carnegie Hall or dinner at a French restaurant. The Chinatown Arcade, they felt, was much more "authentic" and fun. However, they too needed to get back to the dorm before curfew.

Now I learn, through revisionist journalism, that the whole set up was bunk. Thank you Bunky.

He didn't train his chickens to think through all the possible tic-tac-toe moves but rather to respond to flashing lights. Chickens are good at that, especially if food pellets are involved. The machine itself figured out what moves to make and signaled the chicken to place its X's in just the right spots to blunt its human opponents' O moves.

Clearly those were more innocent times.

The Arcade now is full of thumping video games and no longer has a gypsy or a chicken. Maybe the PETA people had their way and the caged tic-tac-toe playing chicken has been banished. The rodeo no longer comes annually to Madison Square Garden and thanks to friends of animals there are no bucking broncos and now no arcade chickens. Alas, I suspect that Lily, the last Chinatown Chicken, may have wound up sweet and sour.

Or perhaps her retirement is the result of market forces--college students now go out to clubs and not video arcades. In fact, I don't think college kids go out on dates anymore.

Sic transit . . .