This Startup Is Building Tiny Amusement Parks for Grown-Ups

Two Bit Circus Inc. co-founder and onetime clown Brent Bushnell spends his days playing games. In a converted warehouse in East Los Angeles, the 38-year-old races around a 10-foot-tall hexagonal tower, frantically pressing buttons in an attempt to beat the clock. He scores, high-fiving a guest who guesses, correctly, that it’s a giant, multiplayer version of Bop It!, the popular 1990s game that prompts players to twist, crank, spin, and pull knobs and levers.

“Most people are antisocial,” Bushnell says. “If you were brought together around games and entertainment, instantly the barriers blast away.” He and co-founder Eric Gradman are betting they can lure people away from TVs and phones and into tech-enhanced versions of the Fascination parlors that sprung up at every seaside resort from California to New Jersey in the 1920s. Their investors agree. In January, Two Bit closed a $15 million funding round to build a chain of “micro amusement parks,” with the first one scheduled to open in L.A. in early 2018.