Monthly Archives: October 2008

Tour the Hammargren House of History

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From the Classic Las Vegas Blog, the fine folks committed to making sure they don’t implode every old building locally, comes the reminder that this Sunday is Hammargren tour day. I lived a block away from Lonnie for a couple of years, and always viewed the treasures looming over his back wall with awe and reverence.

You’ve seen the back of the house as you pass by on Sandhill in the Paradise Crest neighborhood. The Space Capsule that peeps over the fence along with the observatory and more! Well, to long-time residents it is known as the home of Dr. Lonnie Hammargren.

Our pal Uncle Jack LeVine calls Dr. Lonnie the Godfather of Preservation in Las Vegas. Dr. Lonnie has been collecting pieces of Las Vegas and Nevada history for years. In addition, he has been an avid collector of American history as well as Internationally. He also collects the arcane and little known artifacts as well. Over the years, Dr. Lonnie’s collection has grown so much that it now fills up two houses and spills out over the yards.

For 364 days a year, a tour of the house is only available by invitation only. But once a year, on the Sunday following Nevada Day, Dr. Lonnie and his wife, Sandy, open the doors and invite everyone to join them in the celebration.

The Annual Hammargren House of History’s Celebration of Nevada Day will be on Sunday, Nov. 2nd from 1:00 – 5:00 pm. This year, to help cover costs of organizing and putting on this wonderful event, the charge will be $5.

Craft Day for the arcade cabinet owner.

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1) Buy a handful of acrylic photo keychains. I went with the Lifestyles Photo Keytags that Walgreens sells, two for three bucks.

2) Download flyers for your cabinet. The Arcade Flyer Archive is a perfect resource, and you’ll want to find two good pages, for both the front and back sides of the keychain.

3) Clean up and resize the artwork. Some of the scans can be pretty rough, so if you’ve got the knowhow, now is the part where you’ll want to do any color correction and blemish removal from the flyer artwork, otherwise don’t worry about it, they’ll turn out fine enough. Once everything looks good, size ’em down. If you’re using the Walgreens keytags, you’ll want the print size to be 2×2.875 inches.

4) Create a printing template. If you have Photoshop, feel free to use the one I made, formatted roughly to size and for 4×6 glossy photo paper.

5) Print your artwork. Let your printouts dry for a bit, then trim as needed. Place the front and back flyer images in the keytag, snap in the acrylic cover, loop in your cabinet keys and you’re good to go!

Arcade flyer keychains

Neo-Geo MVS-2-13 restoration

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The lack of free space in the garage aside, I’m really enjoying the whole arcade restoration thing. This hobby strikes so many of the right nerves for me: the strong nostalgia kick, the tinkering, the collectibility, and the research and skill acquisition required to go from start to completion.

If you were a gamer in the 80s and if you’ve got the room, I recommend taking on your own project — thanks to the current state of our economy, cabinets are selling for cheap, and with a bit of exploration and patience you could easily wind up with your own personal gaming holy grail sitting in your workspace. There are plenty of small shops out there selling parts and reproduction artwork, and many active online communities to help with the hunt for specific pieces and technical questions.

Anyway, on to the latest.

A Neo-Geo MVS-2-13 – more commonly known as a Neo Mini or Cabaret – was one of my personal picks from the warehouse raid a few weeks back, and my first project from the lot.

Neo mini

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