Is it the grainy texture? The spontaneous poses? The analog nostalgia? Whatever the reason, people love photo booth portraits—and no, we don’t mean digital printouts, but the old-school ones that are still shot on film.
Our videographer Danny Carranza counts himself among those folks. After spotting film photo booths in Berlin and London last summer, Danny’s childhood fondness for the kiosks and professional preference for film rekindled his interest in them. When he stumbled upon one at Silver Lake’s Cha Cha Lounge, he knew there had to be more.
So Danny set out to try to track down the best of L.A.’s remaining and replica vintage photo booths. First, he and a friend found Photobooth.net, a remarkably helpful site that sources submissions for photo booth locations. And then Danny put in the miles himself—darting between Long Beach, Eagle Rock, Culver City and Silver Lake—to test out which of these machines are just smeary messes and which still develop standout snapshots. (Alex’s Bar and Vidiots? Top of the class. Cha Cha Lounge and the Short Stop? Not quite.)
Photo booths are having a bit of a moment. When Chrissy Teigen ordered one for herself in 2020, Bay Area company Photomatica’s orders spiked. But the real boom arguably arrived after go-to influencer photographer Bryant Eslava (better known simply as @bryant) set one up in 2022. His living room photo booth quickly became an essential stop for his buzzworthy clients—and the envy of his millions of social media followers, who would soon enough get to pose for themselves in his public-facing ones in West Hollywood and Costa Mesa.
“Aside from influencer posts, I started noticing film photo booth shots on profile pictures,” Danny elaborates. “But these weren’t influencers showily posting something ‘vintage,’ it was my cool artsy and creative friends nonchalantly switching to a moody profile pic. So I figured it’s about time I just do one myself, too.”
That’s how Danny found himself posing for sepia tone Wild West-like portraits at Backstage in Culver City, washed-out vintage shots at the Blind Donkey in Long Beach and rich black-and-white ones at Silver Lake’s 4100 Bar. Most of these photo booth sessions range between $5 and $7—though Danny lucked out at Alex’s Bar in Long Beach where, despite that posted price, he was only charged $1.50 for some pretty pristine prints.
Cha Cha Lounge in Silver Lake and the Short Stop in Echo Park are both known locally for their photo booths, but Danny didn’t have great luck at either. At the Short Stop, the person before him warned that the photos probably weren’t going to be legible—and that’s exactly what happened. At Cha Cha Lounge, there was a smudge running down the strip. But Danny, as well as his brother who was tagging along, decided to keep at it; after about seven or eight attempts, the booth finally began to spit out clean photos.
“It’s kind of cool and kind of not at the same time,” Danny says. “Because if you’re into that film leak, defects-in-your-pics kind of look, it could be what you’re going for.”
That at-your-own-risk uncertainty is part of the excitement. Without the digital handholding you’d find in modern machines, these throwback ones feel more abrupt when snapping your portrait. And once you’ve finished sitting, it may take up to eight minutes for the booth to develop your photos. If they turn out lousy? Oh well—don’t expect the bartender to start tinkering with the equipment. But there’s clearly demand for that sort of imperfect aesthetic among some folks (“dare I say ex-Tumblr people,” as Danny puts it), and plenty of viral interest in the booths generally (Danny encountered one person who specifically credited @bryant, as well as an out-of-town couple who searched TikTok to find one).
All of the spots we’ve mentioned so far are at bars, but thankfully for the under-21 crowd, there’s Vidiots. The Eagle Rock movie theater maintains one in its video rental area that’s in pretty pristine condition—and plenty must know that, as an employee at Vidiots said a lot of people come in just to take a photo there, not to rent videos or see a movie. And really, what better testament to the hold that ’80s and ’90s nostalgia have on us right now than sitting inside a photo booth at a video store?