Kelly was blacklisted from a recent tournament, apparently because he had won so many times that others felt it wouldn’t be a fair fight. Morris’s son, another hard-core gamer named Lincoln (a k a Dragon), is around the corner by the Bowery avoiding his dad. He is talking to a white-haired man in a Harlem Globetrotters jersey, Jake Morris. Kelly is a professional gamer he lives off the earnings of playing (and winning) in tournaments across the country. Like a tortoise, he centers himself and moves on to his next task. At one point a tiny girl rushing toward the dance machines almost knocks him over, without even looking back. Samuel, his thin hair combed over as he leans on a metal cane, is an incongruous sight in a place filled with such youthful energy. He says he has been in the business for almost 30 years but then refuses to talk any further, saying he is too busy. Several employees identified a Pakistani man in his 70s named Samuel as the owner. “Usually, you run out of money by then anyway,” he adds. Benjamin Valle, 19, a college student from the Bronx, explains that rather than the usual arcade policy where the winner keeps playing, most players at Chinatown Fair stay on for a maximum of three or four games. The players take the games seriously, but the mood is usually more about camaraderie than cut-throat competition. One person is recording video of the fights in the games to post on YouTube.

A sign above the game says: “Play at your own risk no refunds.” Yipes says he is going to a games tournament in New Jersey the next day and can’t stay long, but a few minutes later, he’s furiously playing Marvel vs.

“Friday is the night, it’s packed,” says Travis (“Just Travis”), 30, a dreadlocked paralegal who lives in Harlem and said he has been a regular at Chinatown Fair for seven years. Amid the kids and the trash-talking and chaos, an older Chinese man stands quietly in the corner playing Jr. Inside, it’s hot and sweaty and the walls are blood-red. It is Friday night at the Chinatown Fair video arcade, one of the last of the traditional arcades left in the city. The biggest of the group turns to his friend and says, “He literally picks up his own life bar and beats you to death with it, son!” Around here, the talk inevitably turns to games. The tourists who make it this far almost to Chatham Square will find themselves tiptoeing around the pierced and the eyelinered, around the goths and the hip-hoppers.

WALKING down the southern end of Mott Street a stretch lined with cheap-toy traps and Chinese restaurants of varying quality is a fairly unremarkable experience until the sidewalk is suddenly packed with grungy and very loud teenagers and young adults loitering in front of a prominent “No Loitering” sign.

Blood kisses 2005 online