Very excited to share this next shoot. Ground Kontrol is one of our all time favorite places to go in Portland. It’s an arcade filled with old school classics and also has the biggest pinball gameroom in the Pacific Northwest. Every time we go, it’s like a fountain of youth and makes us feel like a kid again; stoked to have pocket full of quarters and plenty of time to kill. After 5pm, the arcade turns into a bar and then you can rack up some high scores while sipping on some tasty microbrews. Oh yes, it’s a lot of fun.
If you’d been to the old Ground Kontrol, you may have remembered it as a little divey and very blue. There was no place to sit and hang out once you ran out of quarters. And we won’t even mention the old bathrooms. In addition to making the whole space cooler, the remodel also added a whole new seating area without losing any of the games. Win Win!
So many talented people went into making this Tron inspired remodel happen. Led by Emily Knudsen and Jessica Helgerson of Jessica Helgerson Interior Design, the “concept for the space was to try to blur reality a bit and turn the space into something that felt a little less real, almost like stepping into a wireframe drawing in a video game.” The Pac-Man / Mrs. Pac Man tile work in the bathrooms was laid out by Erik Trexel of Level Plane Tile & Stone. Brad Lackey of Lackey Construction was the general contractor. A lot of the work was also done by Ground Kontrol owners and staff.
With so much creativity and energy, we were really excited to photograph this project and we are proud of how these shots came out.