Caine's Arcade - A 9 Year Old's Dream and the Best Video You Will Watch Today!

Caine Monroy and his famous arcade.

Caine’s Arcade is a short film about a 9 year old boy who spent his summer building an elaborate do-it-yourself cardboard arcade, located in his dad’s used auto parts store in East LA.

Caine dreamed of the day he would have lots of customers visit his arcade, and he spent months preparing everything, perfecting the game design, making displays for the prizes, designing elaborate security systems, and hand labeling paper-lunch-gift-bags. However, his dad’s autoparts store (located in an industrial part of East LA) gets almost zero foot traffic, so Caine’s chances of getting a customer were very small, and the few walk in customers that came through were always in too much of a hurry to get their auto part to play Caine’s Arcade. But Caine never gave up.

One day, by chance, Nirvan Mullick walked into Smart Parts Auto looking for a used door handle for his ’96 Corolla. What he found was an elaborate handmade cardboard arcade manned by a young boy who asked if he would like to play. He asked Caine how it worked and he told Mullick that for $1 he could get two turns, or for $2 he could get a Fun Pass with 500 turns. Mullick got the Fun Pass and created much more as the Fun Pass spawned an idea for him to make a video about Caine's Arcade. Mullick began the project, the flash mob ensued, and Caine's Arcade was forever changed.

This short film tells the story of Caine’s Arcade. It could be the best 11 minutes that you spend today!

Caine's Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.

There are a lot of things you can take from Caine's story such as his imagination, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, his math ability (using square roots to validate the PIN numbers on each Fun Pass), and his sense of business.

What I think I like best about Caine is how he creates what he is passionate about and there are no obstacles for him, just new challenges that he can overcome (the crane game for example). Would you agree that Caine wasn't just creating an arcade, but he was creating his own version of art?

Due to the very nature of social media, the video went viral and Caine has now created a college fund of approximately $164,000+ (and growing) at this time. We should all take a lesson from a 9 year old and follow our passion which is where we will find our greatest success.

To me, it's kind of what education should be about anyway... providing the skills to follow our passion.

Check out Caine's story on his own website by clicking HERE!