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.

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. 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.

It is Friday night at the Chinatown Fair video arcade, one of the last of the traditional arcades left in the city. Inside, it’s hot and sweaty and the walls are blood-red. Amid the kids and the trash-talking and chaos, an older Chinese man stands quietly in the corner playing Jr. Pac-Man.

“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.