Here, in an inconspicuous video arcade, crammed between future-wave coin-ops like MK4 and Gem Fighters, is where one might seek solace from the slick corporate co-branding of popular culture that covers the rest of the city like an X-ray blanket. Because it is here, in this sardine can of a game room, that you can still challenge a live chicken to a friendly game of tic tac toe.

The sign above the Chinatown Video Arcade on Mott Street promises a "live, tic tac toe playing, dancing chicken" and, if you step inside the buzzing little building and are careful not to walk right by him, you can check out Birdbrain, the most manically depressed chicken on the planet. Birdbrain (probably the fifth or sixth in a long line of Birdbrains) is resting on what must be an electrified floor — hence the "dancing" routine performed after each victory — although the arcade manager would not confirm this suspicion. His feed bowl is close at hand, as is an illuminated, touch-sensitive tic tac toe board. His cage promises one "large bag of fortune cookies" if you can beat Birdbrain in a game of tic tac toe, but today there are no takers. In fact, Birdbrain has a sign taped to the glass face of his "home" which reads "OUT OF ORDER." Yes, it seems this chicken is out of order. When I ask the manager why Birdbrain isn't game, he replies that "at a certain time in the day, the chicken get tired and game get sloppy." Ah.

Birdbrain is a maudlin symbol of America's history, something slightly out of place.

Birdbrain is a maudlin symbol of America's history, something slightly out of place. Now reserved simply for tourists (the Chinatown Video Arcade draws in visitors who merely want to get a gander at the brilliant fowl), the tic tac toe playing chicken was once something freaky that everyone enjoyed (sort of). America has a long history of tic tac toe playing chickens, traveling around the country in fairs, or simply stationed outside of dry goods stores to attract customers. Tic tac toe playing chickens were once celebrated, treated like royalty, enlightened beings from whom we might learn how to better our own enfeebled race of inferior-witted humans. (Well, this may be a bit of an exaggeration. I think they were actually treated like tic tac toe playing chickens and, after about 6 months, were probably treated like dinner.) Today, a mere photograph of one is enough to send PETA around with a 300-member volunteer protest.

A vital part of America is dying slowly. Well, not dying the way well-researched movies like Amerika and Escape from L.A. might suggest. But it is molting, losing its rough, textured skin and replacing it with a shiny neon, bullet-resistant skin, complete with a jumbo-sized parking lot and food court. America's rich kitsch folk tradition, marked by roller-skating hamburger waitresses, demolition derbies, and felonious circus carnies, has come and gone in less than a century. Many of the greatest cultural quirks written across our country's mottled face have been driven to extinction by humorless activist groups — anyone attend a midget-tossing championship lately? I didn't think so — and corporate-sponsored safeguarding. We have lost trust in our ability to protect ourselves from the unknown — to see the freaky as freaky and dismiss it as such. Playground equipment has gone all Nerf on us and trick-or-treating, particularly in urban areas, has been all but eliminated or relocated to brightly lit shopping malls. ("This year for Halloween I got a melon baller from Lechter's, a key chain from NAPA, and a job application from The Gap!")

We have lost trust in our ability to see the freaky as freaky and dismiss it as such.

And where does Birdbrain, the tic tac toe playing, dancing (and cheating, as I have been told) chicken fit into this picture? Soon, it seems, nowhere. After a disappointing visit with Birdbrain, I returned a second, third, and fourth time. Each time the same "OUT OF ORDER" sign obscured Birdbrain's view from behind the filthy glass and each time the manager offered a different but equally lame excuse for Birdbrain's inability to meet my challenge. The last time I entered the Chinatown Video Arcade, Birdbrain was pecking frantically at the glass, holding a hand-carved rook in one claw and a completed Rubik's cube in the other, trying desperately to stay relevant. But with the "OUT OF ORDER" sign still looming as a menacing harbinger for the inevitable, it might have been more appropriate if Birdbrain were holding some soy sauce and a head of bok choy.

And what of all the other super-intelligent, sporting chickens dotting the countryside, tucked away in questionable back alleys and traveling bazaars? Will their fate be the same as that of drive-in theaters, sideshows by the seashore, and cockfights — more roadkill on America's six-lane highway to cultural sanitization? Perhaps. But I have seen the future, and I can assure you that it may be much, much worse.

Illustration by Federico Jordan

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