Eldorado Arcade

Eldorado Arcade is an amusement arcade and bumper-car attraction in Coney Island, Brooklyn. The location sits between Surf Avenue and Bowery Street, with the bumper cars entered from the Surf Avenue side and the arcade entrance on Bowery Street. Eldorado has been part of the Coney Island amusement landscape since the 1970s, and its bright signage, arcade machines, bumper-car floor and slightly rough seaside-amusement atmosphere make it one of the area’s most distinctive surviving attractions. The location is especially recognisable through its connection to Mr. Robot, where it becomes the fictional abandoned arcade used by fsociety.

Eldorado Arcade appears in Mr. Robot (2015–2019), where it is used as the exterior of the fsociety headquarters at Coney Island. The series presents the location as a rundown and largely abandoned arcade, but the real Eldorado Arcade and bumper-car attraction is an operating Coney Island business. The show uses the Bowery Street side of the building for the exterior of the fsociety hideout, while the interior hideout scenes were filmed separately on a set at Silvercup Studios in Queens. To get into the headquarters they use the little blue door next to the entrance to enter.

In Mr. Robot (2015), Eldorado Arcade appears from the first season as the Coney Island base of fsociety, the hacker group led by Mr. Robot. Elliot Alderson is drawn to the arcade as he becomes involved with the group’s plan to attack E Corp and erase global debt. The building’s exterior, with its worn Coney Island look and arcade identity, gives fsociety a public but hidden-in-plain-sight headquarters: an ordinary amusement attraction turned into the nerve centre of a digital revolution. The contrast between the seaside arcade setting and the scale of fsociety’s plans is a key part of the location’s identity in the series. The real exterior belongs to Eldorado Arcade, while the darker interior spaces used by the group were built as a production set.

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