SAVE TILLIE RETURNS PALACE PHOTO BOOTH
TO ASBURY PARK
One of the most popular coin-operated attractions at Palace Amusements
has returned to Asbury Park, 15 years after it was sold to shop keepers in Vermont, and is now a major attraction at a Cookman Avenue store.
For over three decades, the Palace's photo booth produced strips of four black and white wallet sized photos of visitors to the Shore side amusement park. Now refurbished by Save Tillie, the booth is back in service on the lower level of The Shoppes At the Arcade, 685 Cookman Ave.
The booth entered the Palace in the late 1950s and remained in operation there until the Palace closed in late 1988. For a time thereafter, it operated at Sandy's Arcade on the Boardwalk, and eventually was sold to Slim and Pamela Smith, a Jersey Shore couple who had moved to Burlington, Vermont where they operated a clothing store. The Smiths operated the booth in stores in Burlington and Bristol, before donating it to Save Tillie last winter.
Save Tillie member Dan Toskaner refurbished the operating mechanisms of the booth over the winter and s pring, giving it a new strobe light and making other mechanical improvements. In appearance, however, Toskaner said the booth will be completely familiar to those who used it at the Palace, down to a collage of very old photo strips including pictures of employes of the Palace and Sandy's Arcade.
A special thanks to Toskaner and Frank Saragnese, also a Save Tillie member, for installing the photo booth at the Arcade.
