Arcade Spotlight: Musée Mécanique in San Francisco, CA.

The Arcade Spotlight feature we run every week doesn't just focus on the big arcades or the smaller mom and pop ones. Sometimes we go outside the norm and check out places like Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum, and this week spotlight -- the Musée Mécanique in San Francisco, CA.

The Musée Mécanique is the brainchild of Edward Galland Zelinsky (1922-2004) who started collecting amusement machines and coin operated pianos every since he was 11 years old. His collection grew and grew and he decided what better way to share all of this cool stuff than by opening a museum?

Located at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco (the clam chowder is awesome), Musée Mécanique has some of the oldest, and coolest arcade and amusement contraptions you'll ever see. This stuff is rare, so to be able to actually operate and use it is something every kid and adult should check out if they're into arcade gaming. These are the things that entertained people way before video games ever came into existence.

Musée Mécanique has a "Laffing Sal," (there's also one at Santa Cruz's Beach & Boardwalk which cost them $50,000 to acquire), a few automated pianos, an old arm wrestling machine, fortune tellers, love testers, peep shows, dioramas and machines made out of toothpicks. They also have a collection of classic and modern arcade games and pinball machines. In total, they have about over 300 mechanical games, and there's no admission fee.

Check out some pics below of this fantastic find at Fisherman's Wharf!

Musée Mécanique is located at:

Pier 45 at the end of Taylor Street
Fisherman's Wharf
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 346-2000

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a Facebook page for them. But you can follow them on Twitter. If you’ve visited Musée Mécanique, let us know how it is in the comments below!

Want your arcade in the spotlight? Send an email to: george@arcadesushi.com