A friend asked me about a token found–I presume by a man with a metal detector–that read “Club Poko, San Luis Obispo.” (You can find sometimes on eBay, similar tokens to one of Pete Olohan’s saloons on Branch Street.)

A search revealed no stories or ads on a Club Poko in San Luis Obispo.

However, there was Pismo Poko, an arcade/amusement parlor at 520 Cypress, Pismo Beach, which seems to have operated between 1938 and 1942. More on these places:

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1930s Arcades

Arcade patrons flocked to coin-operated peep show machines, shooting galleries, grip and strength testers, stationary bicycles, slot machines (in some areas), machines that dispensed fortunes or candy, and other mechanical amusements they could play for as little as a penny.

During the 1930s, David Gottlieb’s Baffle Ball

(1931) and Raymond  Moloney’s Ballyhoo

(1932) introduced pinball to arcades. As pinball designers added bumpers, flippers, and thematic artwork, pinball surged in popularity, even as some local legislators banned the game because they associated it with gambling, organized crime, and delinquency. Nevertheless, over the next three decades arcade owners replaced many older mechanical novelty games with pinball machines and electromechanical baseball, target shooting, horse racing, shuffleboard, [foosball] and bowling games. Pinball machines ruled arcades until the late 1960s when new more sophisticated electromechanical games such as Chicago Coin’s Speedway.

–Rochester NY Democrat and Chronicle

Why “Poko?” From an article on arcade games:

Poko-Lite was produced by Glickman Co. in 1937. Glickman Co. released 19 different machines in our database under this trade name, starting in 1937.

Other machines made by Glickman Co. during the time period Poko-Lite was produced include Treasure, Sailorettes \’42, Scandals 1942, Anti-Aircraft, and Archery.

This game appears on a list of games manufactured between 1931-1939 which was published in the January 1940 issue of the Coin Machine Journal.

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Pinball machines had an unsavory reputation in the 1930s-1940s; they were perceived as akin to slot machines, a form of gambling. A dozen were seized by the SLOPD in August 1941 for operating without a city license; in January, there’d been a spirited City Council debate on whether to allow them at all. They voted to license pinball but ban taxi dances. So it goes.

Here’s a display ad for the Pismo place from May 1940:

Another 1940 ad from the Telegram-Tribune:

520 Cypress is today the site of a modern motel, which straddles the corner of Main and Cypress.

Why did Pismo Poko go out of business, evidently in 1942 (there are no newspaper references thereafter, but plenty of both display and classified ads between 1938 and 1942)? The influx of local soldiers would’ve made Henry T. Betsuin, Prop. a fortune.

So I looked him up. “Betsuin” sounded Filipino to me, which made sense, since Pismo had a vibrant Filipino community (almost all men; Filipinas were not allowed to immigrate.)

There wasn’t much on him except for this curious note on a ship arrival in San Francisco from Kobe:

“Tokunosuke” is definitely a Japanese name; but he seems to have gone by “Henry T.” instead. If he was Japanese, that explains why Pismo Poko disappears after 1942. Henry T. would’ve been in an internment camp. 

So, if that didn’t exactly answer the question, it raised several new ones–and it led me down a sad path, to the impact of Executive Order 9066, whose 80th anniversary we’re observing this year.