An Atari arcade on BART? In the 1970s in SF, it was game on

The history of BART is filled with hard-to-fathom, random moments. Both Richard Nixon and Prince Charles rode the rails in the 1970s. Early concept drawings had trains traveling on a lower deck of the Golden Gate Bridge.

But for pure “did that really happen?” strangeness, it’s hard to beat Dec. 1, 1976. That was the day BART officials, facing serious money problems, installed an arcade on the platform of the Powell Street Station.

“A bank of video games for BART passengers, the latest gimmick to help the financially embattled transit system, was plugged in for the first time at the Powell Street station yesterday,” reporter Michael Grieg wrote in The Chronicle. “BART will share evenly with Atari the proceeds from the machine.”

The official name was the Atari Arcade Theatre Kiosk, a six-sided behemoth, 7 feet in diameter, that played Atari games including “Pong,” “LeMans” and “Space Race.” It had large black signs on top that could project advertising — the agency’s “BART keeps your nightlife moving” slogan was visible on all sides during its debut.

“We think the machines, here at this one station on an experimental basis, will provide some fun for our riders between trains,” an unnamed BART spokesman said. “And the information and the revenue won’t hurt either.”

The revenue was the key.

BART was running out of money in the early 1970s and suffered from a host of technical and public relations problems after. In his book “BART: The Dramatic History of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System,” longtime agency spokesman Mike Healy recounted the time control boxes overheated in summer 1976, creating a fleet of ghost trains on what was then known as the Concord line.

“The nontechnical solution was to rush out and put ice packs on the boxes that house the sensitive electronic boards, a fix that seemed to work,” he wrote.

The Chronicle article about the arcade was filled with what we’d now call trolling.

“Francisco J. Hernandez, a San Francisco optical technician, was one of those who kept feeding the slot for Space Race, a game in which a spaceship tries to avoid a grid full of electronic hazards,” Grieg wrote. “Something like BART.”

Frank Herringer, who had just been named BART’s general manager, was open to creative solutions of all kinds. Earlier that year, the transit agency opened a short-lived store that sold BART postcards and ashtrays.

Diane Hornback, vacationing from the East Coast when the games debuted, told Grieg she wasn’t surprised to see the arcade.

“We got these games all over New Jersey. In bars, movie houses, restaurants, supermarkets,” Hornback said.

Her “Pong” partner chimed in: “They’ll probably install one in the Statue of Liberty one of these days.”

Chronicle photos by Gary Fong show what looks like the happiest BART crowd in history surrounding the machines — young and old, men and women, all smiling and laughing with strangers.

“I like the idea,” Hernandez said. “It’s something to do while you’re waiting and waiting for a train. And if you miss one you can play a game instead of pulling your hair.”

It seemed like a win for everyone. But within months, without explanation, the games were removed. By the early 1980s, arcades’ reputation was even worse than BART’s — San Francisco supervisors passed anti-arcade laws that treated video games like porn theaters, banning them from neighborhoods with schools nearby.

BART made a comeback without the games. According to Healy, patronage slowly increased in 1977 and 1978, and a temporary half-percent sales tax was extended, allowing the system to expand. BART continues to run four decades later, looking pretty much the same as it did in those 1976 photos.

Meanwhile, the BART platform is basically an arcade again in 2018 — with people playing on their phones instead of coffin-size machines. It’s less expensive, but also a far less social experience than riders could enjoy for a few months in the mid-’70s — when a BART platform, of all locations, was the coolest place to be.

Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle’s pop culture critic. Email: phartlaub@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @PeterHartlaub