Closing Time: Dandy Bear is a visual ode to Dandy Bear, a strip mall indoor amusement center in Miami, Florida, that closed in March 2022. Wherever you’re from, you probably had a version of Dandy Bear—a safe escape where roughhousing and winning plastic knickknacks at the arcade were the day’s highlights.
The 30-year-old establishment and iconic kid birthday party hub was beloved for its primary-colored interior, Cuban pizza with perfect cheese scabs and haunting animatronics. Frequenting these air-conditioned funhouses was a pastime of mine growing up in South Florida in the 1990s, but sadly, many spots shuttered over the years, replaced with trampoline mega-parks and axe-throwing centers. One outlived them: Dandy Bear.
Kitschy and unpretentious, Dandy was one of the last of its kind in Miami, and its closure felt like another childhood treasure lost. This zine is a mix of now and then. Film photos taken by Shane Sumbu on Dandy Bear’s last day of operation capture the frenetic energy and bittersweetness of those final hours. Interspersed are memories and photos from Dandy Bear’s heyday that I sourced from Miami friends. While it’s a visual ode to this specific play center, my intention for the project is for anyone to see themselves on the pages. It’s a portal to relive simpler days and our youth.