POLARIS ★

The Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City is a massive transportation hub, comprised of brutalist architecture, homeless people sleeping in the corners, rows of fast-food places, and questionable bathrooms. Classical music is piped through the building's speakers in an attempt to calm its stressed-out commuters, though I've always had my doubts on the efficacy of that practice. It's loud, dirty, messy, and NYC wouldn't be complete without its hulking form on eighth avenue. More than one runaway has washed up there, desperately trying to buy a bus ticket at midnight; myself included.

In the 2000s, there used to be a DDR machine here.

News articles on the "lost golden age" of DDR almost always mention the Port Authority DDR machine with equal parts reverence and amazement. To us at the time, it didn't seem so special. Port Authority has a lot of dining options and trinket stores, a collection of things that appear in any liminal space to entertain people waiting to go somewhere else. DDR was everywhere back then. Why wouldn't there be one in Port Authority too, enjoying pride of place against the front window of the shabby bowling alley tucked away on the second floor? It's the same spot where the Time Square D&B places their DDR machine, and I want to believe that's not a coincidence.

I remember the excitement, though, when someone in our friends group found it. There were seven of us who would play DDR at every available chance after school, and compared to Chinatown Fair, Port Authority made it easier for a lot of us to get home afterwards. Port Authority quickly became our local haunt, and we'd go several times a week to play.

It was a very dark arcade, cave-like, and the bright fluorescent light of the station was washed-out and watery by the time it came in through the windows. The air was stale, occasionally tinged with the scent of popcorn wafting over from the bowling alley area, and everything about it exuded shabbiness, from the threadbare rug that covered unforgiving concrete, to the walls and ceiling that had seen better days. Pinball machines lined the far wall, flashing and playing their songs on loop, mostly untended. There were a few other machines there, shooting games and racing games, but I don't think we ever played anything but DDR.

The 10K commotion came out around this time, and its opening chapters document how crews of DDR players would roll up into arcades to take over the machine for hours at a time. This was the seven of us, walking into the arcade like we owned it, talking too loud, laughing as we stripped off our winter jackets and overstuffed backpacks and piled them haphazardly beside the machine's flickering light-up speakers. It's the place that taught me arcade etiquette; it's the place where I learned every bad habit that DDR players today try to tell me to unlearn. The pads sucked and I was 110 pounds soaking wet, so I would lower my center of gravity on freeze arrows, howling in rage when the pads inevitably let go halfway through. I had taken spanish dance lessons as a child and sometimes had to use flamenco-style stomps on the pad to get them to register, rising up onto my toes to exert the most force; I still play on my toes today (without the stomping), though modern DDR practice favors a flatfoot approach. In the 2000s, we still called it bar-raping; in the 2000s, we used to swap rumors of Matrix Walking and videos of grainy freestyle routines that we'd found in the depths of the internet, and I still predominantly play without the bar and with a flashy, freestyle-inspired style.

Sometimes other people would come, individuals or entire crews. We never did anything so cool and retro as a throw-down dance battle with any of those other crews, but we got a little close once; we split the machine and went up, one of them, one of us, and every round their scores trounced ours but did it matter? We had more fun, I think. They frowned and postured and tried to get us to leave, but when we wouldn't, when we stayed laughing and joking and trying songs that were too hard for us and yelling as we failed, they eventually left. Is it better to care too much about perfect attack, or to have too much fun? I think there's a place for both, but that it's better to err on the side of laughter.

One story from one of those face-offs: there was only one girl in a rival crew that showed up, and she had a chip on her shoulder like a lot of female players have, since they have to work twice as hard to earn their respect. As the best female player in my own group, I went up to play with her. She picked Can't Stop Falling in Love Speed Mix (a fairly hard song at the time), I think trying to scare me off. But I played with her and passed it without the bar, which no one expected, least of all either of us who were playing. I couldn't believe it, but I was just so pissed off by how she looked down on me that I passed it out of sheer spite. I still feel a kind of determined pride when I remember it. Don't let any person tell you what you can or can't do, okay.

Anyway, then I made her play Air by DJ Simon, an chill and comparatively easy song that I adore. She made me play what she felt was important, harder difficulty and higher skill; and in return I made her play what I felt was important, a beautiful song with a fun stepchart. Maybe neither of us taught the other anything, but I still think it was a fair trade.

It was DDR Extreme machine, of course. They all were back then. It's still the mix of my heart, and I remember the dread and excitement we'd feel whenever we got to the extra stage and we'd be forced to play MAX 300 with no health meter regeneration. None of us ever passed it once. We were always play-to-clear; I was the second or third best player in our crew, though perhaps that wasn't saying much. In the old rating system, I was a cata player, meaning I could play up to 9 footers, but best enjoyed 7s and 8s (in modern vernacular that's about 10s-12s). When I passed Sakura this year, after years and years of built-up fear, it felt like a revelation. I couldn't believe I was still standing when the song was over. Looking back on it, though, how much of my comparative lack of skill was me being bad at the game, and how much of it was terrible pads and that I didn't understand the importance of timing? Like a lot of women players, I developed an inferiority complex where a part of me always thought I would never get better, and that my slightly-better-than-average state was "good enough" even though I also never stopped trying to improve. That lack of confidence is something I'm still working to unlearn (though things like Valkyrie Dimension and LIFE4 have helped). We'd play versus until we ran out of money and then we'd spend the rest of the time shadowing, one person picking songs and the other mimicking their steps on the other pad without paying.

There are songs in DDR Extreme that I've never conquered and still try to clear; Irrisistiblement. So Deep. Fantasy by Melissa (not the one by Lockout). And my old nemesis, Max 300.

That arcade taught me that male gamers could be jerks, too; I learned to refuse playing Cowgirl with boys because they often asked for it just to make the girls' tits bounce. I learned to use cheerfulness as armor, to counter slimy behavior with iron goodwill, and the bravery required to step on the pad with a stranger. Rhythm gamers take care of their own because of experiences like those.

I almost always stayed past my curfew, hobbling home with legs turned to jelly, praying for a seat on the long ride home on the subway. In high school, my home life was shit and the seven of us went to one of the most competitive and demanding schools in the country. DDR was an escape from the rest of my life that my parents wouldn't yell at me for, because it was exercise. Even today I still live for the way rhythm games force you to narrow your focus and forget about everything. Nothing else mattered once I stepped into the dark, run-down arcade. All I had to do was dance. (Someone should do a study on rhythm games as a potential way to manage anxiety/PTSD symptoms.)

Eventually the DDR machine was moved from its place near the window and hidden in a small side room. Half our crew graduated in 2004, and the arcade trips became less frequent. The rest of us graduated high school in 2005, and when I returned from college on winter break and returned to the arcade the machine was gone. I remember wandering all the way to the back, into the brightly-lit bowling alley area where we almost never went, and realizing that a chapter of my life had ended.

There was one last gift that this corner of Port Authority gave me, though. Next door to the bowling alley/arcade is an old Irish pub, and in 2008 I met my now-fiance for there first time there. So I think that this small piece of New York City is very lucky for me after all.