# Yellow Card

**Source:** NYC PinPod  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2025-12-15  
**Duration:** 86m 53s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.spreaker.com/episode/yellow-card--69047664

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## Analysis

NYC PinPod episode covering NYC competitive pinball results from early-to-mid December 2024, including tournament outcomes at venues like Buttermilk and Scrapple Land, venue/machine status updates from Pinball Map, and a discussion about Holly Jean Vernon's call to boycott specific IFPA tournaments following the OBX incident. The hosts provide detailed analysis of local league play, team championships, and upcoming events while discussing community dynamics and tournament culture.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] As of December 12, 2025, there are 362 pinball machines in New York City at 80 public locations — _Benjamin Furiga citing Pinball Map data: 'As of December 12th, 2025, there are 362 pinball machines in New York City at 80 public locations. Thanks to the creators and users of Pinball Mat for this data.'_
- [HIGH] Greg Fertel won South Slope Strikes December with only one strike over 12 games — _Benjamin Furiga reporting tournament results: 'Greg Fertel, who got only one strike over the course of 12 games.'_
- [HIGH] Sean Grant won Brooklyn Pinball Open qualifying with 74 points, 10 points ahead of Alberto Santana — _Benjamin Furiga: 'Sean Grant came out on top with a whopping 74 points. I mean, really and truly far ahead of... Alberto Santana and Alex Kelly and Gabriel Chazanov were the next three players. And Sean was 10 fucking points in front of Alberto.'_
- [HIGH] Alex Kelly won Brooklyn Pinball Open finals on Sunday, defeating Sean Grant, Greg Pavarelli, and Alberto Santana — _Benjamin Furiga: 'But Alex Kelly came out in front besting Sean Grant, Greg Pavarelli, and Alberto Santana on Sunday.'_
- [HIGH] NYC FSA won Pinball NYC Left Flipper Division championship over the Mutants 10-6, their third consecutive title against the Mutants — _Benjamin Furiga: 'NYC FSA took the title with a score of 10-6... Three. Big night. Three. Three seasons in a row, each time against the Mutants in the championship match.'_
- [HIGH] No Quarters for Laundry won Right Orbit playoffs at Sunshine Laundromat with a tie-break victory 8-8 — _Benjamin Furiga: 'No Quarters for Laundry went to Sunshine Laundromat, where they won in a tiebreaker 8-8.'_
- [HIGH] Cactus Canyon at Scrapple Land has multiple mechanical issues including a stuck lasso ramp rolling skillshot switch — _User Baxman343 reporting venue conditions: 'Lasso Ramp Rolling Skillshot Switch is Broken Slash Stuck Closed'_
- [HIGH] Randolph Beer in Dumbo has re-appeared on Pinball Map with new machines including Metallica Remastered Premium — _Benjamin Furiga: 'A Metallica Remastered Premium. That's new. That must be.'_
- [HIGH] Benjamin Furiga received a yellow card at South Slope Strikes for sliding his Ghostbusters machine into the cup holder of Attack from Mars, tilting Tom Milburn's ball — _Benjamin Furiga self-reporting: 'I got a yellow card. Jess, to her credit, had an actual yellow card... I slid it I saved it I took another shot and played but as soon as I could trap I put my hand up because I tilted attack from mars to my left'_
- [HIGH] The Nike Pinball reference at Jack Bar references Nike's 100-pair minimum order requirement that destroyed independent skate shops, including John's former Reciprocal Skateboards — _Benjamin Furiga explaining the in-joke: 'the way that they released them to stores is was requiring stores to buy at least 100 pairs that was the minimum order which cut out lots of your smaller or mom-and-pop shoe stores'_

### Notable Quotes

> "As of December 12th, 2025, there are 362 pinball machines in New York City at 80 public locations."
> — **Benjamin Furiga**, ~32:30
> _Key metric showing NYC pinball infrastructure growth; establishes baseline for recurring tracking_

> "Greg Fertel got only one strike over the course of 12 games."
> — **Benjamin Furiga**, ~2:15
> _Demonstrates exceptional tournament performance; only one penalty across entire match_

> "I got a yellow card... I heard the WOOOOW! And I got a yellow card."
> — **Benjamin Furiga**, ~36:45
> _Humorous self-deprecating moment about violating tournament conduct by tilting adjacent machine; illustrates enforcement mechanisms_

> "Three. Big night. Three. Three seasons in a row, each time against the Mutants in the championship match."
> — **Benjamin Furiga (with Eric Sweet)**, ~13:30
> _Highlights dominant performance by NYC FSA and emerging competitive rivalry; establishes seasonal narrative arc_

> "Jess makes cookies or some other treats and this time Vietnamese coffee swirl brownies were scrumptious"
> — **Benjamin Furiga**, ~38:00
> _Shows tournament culture extends beyond competition to community social elements and organizer care_

> "the pin pals not only went uptown but they won beating a Manhattan team in Manhattan"
> — **Benjamin Furiga**, ~15:45
> _Notes competitive achievement of winning in opponent's home venue_

> "Sam Hall scored 31 points this week if she had scored a very respectable 20 she would have had to have played a tiebreaker to get into B."
> — **Benjamin Furiga**, ~21:30
> _Illustrates how close qualifying cutlines are and how single week performance can dramatically alter finals seeding_

> "This will continue for the rest of the ball time as the right cannon continuously tries to fire the ball and stays stuck in a limited function of the game."
> — **User Baxman343 (via Benjamin Furiga reading)**, ~35:15
> _Detailed technical troubleshooting report showing community engagement in venue maintenance and machine diagnostics_

> "I felt a little bit bad that Jess had a shitty game of Ghostbusters... I felt really villainous."
> — **Benjamin Furiga**, ~39:00
> _Reflects on tournament etiquette and personal responsibility for disrupting opponent's match; shows community values fairness_

> "Two dudes who shows up in a blazer on the scene."
> — **Benjamin Furiga**, ~39:30
> _Self-aware humor about tournament formality; references Chris Dooley as fellow 'overdressed' competitor_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Benjamin Furiga | person | Host of NYC PinPod, competitive pinball player, tournament participant at South Slope Strikes and other NYC venues; known for wearing blazers |
| Eric Sweet | person | Co-host of NYC PinPod, pinball tournament director in NYC, co-organizer of league events |
| Poly Jean Vernon | person | Co-host of NYC PinPod, IFPA Ontario women's representative, founder and director of Bells and Times Toronto and Signed Pinball at Birth Toronto |
| Holly Jean Vernon | person | Topic of discussion regarding boycott call against specific IFPA tournaments following OBX incident |
| Greg Fertel | person | Winner of South Slope Strikes December with only 1 strike over 12 games; competitive player with strong performance |
| Sean Grant | person | Winner of Brooklyn Pinball Open qualifying with 74 points; also won Barcade Brooklyn Pinball League season 7; triple championship contender this season |
| Alex Kelly | person | Winner of Brooklyn Pinball Open finals on Sunday; strong player on X-Men; member of NYC FSA |
| Greg Pavarelli | person | Tournament director at Scrapple League and Brooklyn Pinball Open; player with 118 points in Scrapple League standings; assistant TD for South Slope events |
| Jess Warren | person | Tournament director for South Slope Strikes and South Slope Pinball League; organizer who includes catered treats at events; gave Benjamin Furiga yellow card |
| NYC FSA | organization | New York City Flipper Sport Association - competitive pinball team; won Pinball NYC Left Flipper Division championship for third consecutive season against the Mutants |
| Buttermilk | organization | Pinball venue in South Slope, Brooklyn hosting South Slope Strikes and Barcade Brooklyn Pinball League finals |
| Scrapple Land | organization | Pinball venue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn with 60 machines; hosts Brooklyn Pinball Open, Scrapple League, Pinball NYC team matches, and Midnight Madness tournaments |
| Jess Warren | person | South Slope Strikes organizer; uses actual yellow/red cards for tournament enforcement |
| Metallica Remastered | game | Stern pinball game; newly added to Randolph Beer in Dumbo (Premium model); featured prominently in NYC FSA vs Mutants championship match |
| Scrapple League | organization | Competitive pinball league at Scrapple Land directed by Greg Pavarelli; 24 players in final qualifying week; features A, B, C finals |
| Red Hook Pinball Museum | organization | Venue hosting Bells and Chimes event (Winner Wonderland) and Holiday Hullabaloo tournament; located in Red Hook, Brooklyn |
| Pinball Map | organization | Community-driven database of public pinball machines providing location and machine data for NYC and beyond |
| OBX | event | Pinball tournament where serious bias-related incident occurred in November, triggering Holly Jean Vernon's boycott call against specific IFPA tournaments |
| Bells and Chimes NYC | organization | Women's pinball league/community organization; organizing Winner Wonderland event at Red Hook Pinball Museum |
| Jack Bar | organization | Pinball venue in Williamsburg, NYC; hosts Thursday Night Strikes and Right Orbit playoffs; owned by John who previously ran Reciprocal Skateboards |
| Pinball NYC | organization | Team-based pinball league in NYC with Left and Right Flipper Divisions; holds end-of-season party and awards ceremony |
| Sunshine Laundromat | organization | Pinball venue in Brooklyn; hosted No Quarters for Laundry's Right Orbit playoff victory in tiebreaker |
| IFPA | organization | International Flipper Pinball Association; mentioned in context of OBX incident and boycott discussion; manages tournament sanctioning and rankings |
| Randolph Beer | organization | Venue in Dumbo that recently re-appeared on Pinball Map with new machine lineup including Metallica Remastered Premium |
| The Mutants | organization | Competitive pinball team; lost Pinball NYC Left Flipper Division championship to NYC FSA for third consecutive season; chose Star Trek TNG and X-Men in championship matches |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Tournament Results and League Play, NYC Pinball Venue Infrastructure, Machine Maintenance and Technical Issues, Team Competition and Competitive Meta, Upcoming Tournament Events
- **Secondary:** Tournament Conduct and Enforcement, IFPA Boycott and Community Politics, Women's Pinball Community

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.78) — Episode maintains celebratory tone toward competitive achievements and community participation. Humor and self-deprecation (yellow card incident) add levity. Serious note introduced by Holly Jean Vernon boycott discussion adds weight but does not dominate. Overall enthusiasm for pinball competition and NYC scene is evident throughout.

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** IFPA boycott discussion raised by Holly Jean Vernon in response to OBX incident; indicates emerging governance and conduct concerns within competitive pinball community (confidence: high) — Episode advertises discussion of 'Holly Jean Vernon about her call to boycott specific ifpa tournaments in the wake of obx'; IFPA Ontario women's representative raising concerns
- **[community_signal]** Pinball Map user reporting creating systematic venue condition documentation; Baxman343 providing detailed technical diagnostics of multiple machines at Scrapple Land and other venues (confidence: high) — Multiple detailed condition reports from Baxman343 and other users documenting mechanical issues, switch problems, and maintenance needs across venues
- **[community_signal]** NYC pinball venue history reveals connection between current operators and previous skateboard shop era; Jack Bar owner John previously operated Reciprocal Skateboards on East 11th Street (confidence: medium) — Benjamin Furiga explaining Nike Pinball reference: 'which is a previous business owned by John, or at least run by John of Jack Bar, where some of the machines sitting at Jack Bar now almost surely like that fish tails almost surely sat at reciprocal'
- **[community_signal]** Pinball NYC leadership demonstrated through triple championship wins: Sean Grant (Barcade Brooklyn finals), Sean Grant and Sonny (double winners), establishing organizational competitive dominance (confidence: high) — Benjamin Furiga: 'Eric will figure prominently in the ceremonies as a double recipient of the Three Times a Lady Award. Sonny will also be a double winner this season.' Indicates NYC FSA strategic superiority
- **[competitive_signal]** X-Men and Metallica Remastered emerging as high-value strategic picks in team competition; X-Men favored for Alex Kelly's proficiency, Metallica for skill shot and multiball depth (confidence: high) — NYC FSA called X-Men three times and Metallica once in championship matches; Benjamin Furiga notes Alex Kelly 'likes that game' and discusses Metallica strategy involving electric chair multiball
- **[event_signal]** Midnight Madness at Scrapple Land scheduled for December 31st/January 1st with Ali Basset as TD; likely first tournament opportunity of 2026 season (confidence: high) — Benjamin Furiga: 'Midnight Madness will be very probably the first Woportunity of 2026... five rounds of group match play cutting to a four or eight player finals. There's a $20 entry fee'
- **[market_signal]** Metallica Remastered Premium newly added to Randolph Beer, indicating continued distribution and venue adoption of recent Stern premium-tier releases (confidence: high) — Benjamin Furiga: 'A Metallica Remastered Premium. That's new. That must be.' Added to Randolph Beer venue lineup in early December
- **[product_concern]** Multiple mechanical failures documented at Scrapple Land including stuck switches, ball wedges, and compounding cannon issues on Star Trek TNG making game 'practically unplayable' (confidence: high) — User Baxman343 reporting on Star Trek TNG: 'machine practically unplayable as it's almost always in launch probe mode'; multiple other machines with switch and ramp issues
- **[competitive_signal]** Scrapple League qualifying cutlines extremely tight; Sam Hall's 31-point week versus 20-point week was difference between A/B finals qualification and tiebreaker consideration (confidence: high) — Benjamin Furiga: 'If she had scored a very respectable 20 she would have had to have played a tiebreaker to get into B'
- **[venue_signal]** Tournament director dual roles creating operational stress; Jess Warren had to issue penalty to opponent while also competing against that opponent in same match (confidence: high) — Benjamin Furiga reflects: 'It's hard to tournament direct and play at the same time. And she had to give me a fucking yellow card in a game that she was playing against me'

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## Transcript

 Happy Sunday! day pin folk or whatever day you're listening this is nyc pin pod in which a panel talks location pinball in new york city and in this instance in much farther flung areas my name is benjamin furiga my initials are bcf and i am a dinosaur i can't live in this ai world man my name is eric sweet my initials are hyp and i'm a pinball tournament director in new york city i'm poly jean bernan my pinball initials are pjv i'm the ifpa ontario women's representative i'm a founder and permanent director of bells and times toronto and i'm also a founder and td of a signed pinball at birth toronto and i'm proud mom of wayne the cats oh on this week's pod we'll run down local competition results in ball one as we always do in ball two we'll do what we always do and have venue updates with eric courtesy of pinball map and its users and then we'll talk about the pinball we played this past week and in ball three we will talk with holly jean vernon about her call to boycott specific ifpa tournaments in the wake of obx let's get started let's talk competitive pinball results in New York City in the past week. On Saturday, December 6th, Jess Warren gathered 23 players at Buttermilk for South Slope Strikes December. This four-strike affair was won by Greg Fertel, who got only one strike over the course of 12 games. A.J. Gould came in second, Kate Martin came in third, and both Paul McHugh and Tom Milburn tied for fourth place. Greg Fertel picked up 6.83 Whoppers. Also on Saturday, and also on Sunday, the Brooklyn Pinball Open was convened at Scrapple Land in Greenpoint. Greg Pavarelli led the way. I'm going to read the match play description. Day one, six rounds of group tiered match play in which each round your group gets assigned a bank of two games, one Williams era or earlier, one modern era. IFBA scoring for 12 total four player games that everybody plays. So six rounds, two games in each one. This is not unlike the qualifying that we talked about at the beginning of the season with David Potluck. in pin mania and then it cuts to either 8 16 24 40 whatever for however many people are there the the top half and then day two is papa finals a and b using banks as such you're listed as a td although you were at south slope strikes on saturday and i have a feeling that maybe you didn't go on Sunday just to TD. That's right, yeah. Greg had asked me to help out with both this and the fight I won this coming weekend, but I have a standing commitment to assistant TD for Jess's tournaments. Of course, and also I'm pretty sure that he has a standing commitment to press paste on the TDs from Scrapple League. which would be a really easy way for your name to show up there. After all the qualifying was done, Sean Grant came out on top with a whopping 74 points. I mean, really and truly far ahead of... Alberto Santana and Alex Kelly and Gabriel Chazanov were the next three players. And Sean was 10 fucking points in front of Alberto. And then those three were in a pack. and then there was another pack that included names you know. There were 16 people who went to A and I don't know if B receded, but there were B finals. The A finals happened on Sunday. Both of them happened on Sunday. But Alex Kelly came out in front besting Sean Grant, Greg Pavarelli, and Alberto Santana on Sunday. We'll talk about this. Alex Kelly got first place in a very big tournament. In the B-finals, Jeremy Dorling bested Harlan Aida-Linda, Luis Veras, and Zach Till. We just said Alex had a big win on Sunday. We're now talking about how Harlan had a nice finish on Sunday. I just want to mention those names right there, because we might be talking about teams that have those people on them. Also, on Sunday, it was Silver Ball Sunday at Single Cut 32, a Project Pinball fundraiser directed by Tommy Ortega. 18 players showed up for five rounds of group match play, cutting to a top four finals. After those three games of finals, Dante Oliva was the winner. Kate Smith and Matt Grady played a tie break for second place. Matt Grady gets second, Kate third. and Freddie Asher got fourth place. Dante got 5.86 whoppers on the day. On Monday at Barcade Brooklyn, there were A and B division finals for season seven of Barcade Brooklyn Pinball League. They met for six previous meetings that alternated and planned around Pinball NYC to get here. So this was a journey. for these folks. And after all was said and done, Sean Grant bested the field. Matt Grady came in second. Jose Garcia, who announced here just earlier this season that he was going to take some time away from competitive pinball, got third in this pretty whopper heavy league right here. And Jonah Shlaes, fourth. Jonah was unfortunately shut out in the finals. They played five rounds of group match play with IFPA scoring, and I can't help but notice the number 35 as the number of points that Bernie Birnbaum scored, which is to say nobody beat Bernie Birnbaum in five games of pinball against three other players in each of those games. That's great work. Eric Rubinsky and Michael Fokas tied for second with 23 points apiece, and Christian May and Till Latke came in fourth with 19 points each. Also on Monday, December 8th, Pinball NYC's left flipper division had its championship matches in the left orbit playoffs. Number three seed the Mutants squared off against our number one seed New York City Flipper Sport Association at Scrapple Land and NYC FSA took the title with a score of 10-6. My goodness. Three. Big night. Three. Three seasons in a row, each time against the Mutants in the championship match. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. How did you find it playing at Scrapple Land in the championship? It's a big lineup for a team match. So many different machines. And, in fact, what happened, both teams pretty much stuck to just a couple picks between their two rounds each. We called X-Men three times, scared stiff twice. X-Men, Uncanny X-Men? Yeah. Gross. Alex Kelly's an advantage. Okay. He likes that game. Okay. It's gross. The Mutants chose Star Trek Next Generation three times. in the left in lane playoffs that same night the two for oners went to Gebhard's beer culture where the pin pals were their virtual hosts and the pin pals not only went uptown but they won beating a Manhattan team in Manhattan I also want to point out that these are identical scores 10-6 and 10-6 on Monday night And speaking of identical scores, on Tuesday, December 9th, in the championship match of the Right Orbit playoffs, No Quarters for Laundry went to Sunshine Laundromat, where they won in a tiebreaker 8-8. Even a contested venue change could not stop No Quarters for Laundry. They played that tie break split foot game of Jurassic Park. We Butterballers were the home team against the Trolls at Jack Bar. It came down to a tie break. It was 1-2-3 on Jurassic Park. And the Butterballers won. Butterballer Tom was player one. and he spelled C-H-A-O. I was the second ball for the Butterballers team. I hit the S and got a lucky bounce into the Chaos multiball Start Target and that proved to be the difference. You spelled Chow and you made Chaos out of it. the score on the split flip for no quarters for laundry danger, danger is I, I, Tommy sent us a screenshot of it right after it happened. And it was Tommy and Greg for no quarters. Yeah. And, they won 58 million ish to 22 million ish on that Jurassic park. Those are good split flip. Yeah. That seems pretty good for split flip. It was a really great night. And wow, it was so much fun playing trolls in that match. I mentioned to a troll, I can't remember off the top of my head, in the conversation there that night that this season, you know, they played as far as you can play in a pinnacle NYC season. Yeah. Down to a tie-break game. Yes. As far as you can get. Yeah. 13 weeks and one tie-break game decides it all. It's a lot. It's a lot. Also, personally delighted to be pictured in the troll story this week. At the handle pinballtrolls on Instagram, you can see some pictures from the match and a recap from the captain. Is there only one captain? Is that Monica? I believe that's so, but I don't know. Okay. I thought there might have been multiple captains. Right. Well, in any case... I think there's only one broom. There is a broom that gets passed around among captains, I think. There might only be one of those. So maybe it's the person who holds the broom who gets to make the official press statements. On Wednesday, December 10th, 24 players came out to Scrapple Land in Greenpoint for Scrapple League's final qualifying week of Season 5. Directed by Greg Pavarelli with assistance from myself and Woody Richman. After five rounds of match play with IFPA scoring, Sam Hall added a great 31 points to her series total, vaulting her into the B finals. Oh, my. Both Chris Caffaro and myself picked up 27 points. That's my best result in an IFPA scored league ever. Ali Bissett, Luis Veras, and Adam Kane picked up 25 points on the night. All the qualifying weeks are in. The standings are set as we look at an A, B, and C finals next Wednesday. In the top eight, Greg Pavarelli got 118 points over the course of the season. Sean Grant picked up 114. They'll both be driving buses. And in the A finals, they'll be joined by Adam Kane, Dan Merrill, Chris Caffaro, myself, Mike Pantino, and Ali Bassett. In the B finals, both Peter Larson and Luis Feroz scored 92 points. They'll have a tie break just to determine which bus each of them will drive. they'll be joined in the B-finals by Nitsan Gabai Sam Hall, Nick Berry Matt Rudolph Susie Zalewski and Pat Carawan Sam Hall scored 31 points this week if she had scored a very respectable 20 she would have had to have played a tiebreaker to get into B. She would have been down here where we're talking about Susie Zalewski and Pat Carawan whose name's Eric just said, but because she scored 31, she has the right effectively to be player four in every game that she plays, or if not that, then at least to maybe choose the game that she plays in a lineup of 60 games. That might be the biggest advantage. I said before that I don't think that it's a great home bar advantage because of the number of games. But choosing one game to play against three people there seems like a pretty big advantage. Is it in banks? It'll be in banks. Okay. So, yeah, unlikely that that gets deferred. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, but being player four then in the whole bank seems like a thing. That's nice. That seems like a nice advantage. that's 31's big there that's a big deal just outside the cut line woody richmond had 76 points on the season one more point and he would have been tied at the b cut line right and had a shot at b finals interestingly this week in the sixth qualifying woody had a couple of friends visiting who we waived the the league fee for since they were only going to be playing the one week in the final rounds he was playing against his friend and lost to him right his homie knocked him out by one spot yeah and if he had gotten those two more two more points he would have been in be clean clean yeah not even have a tiebreaker yeah just would have two more points he would have been in that's it oh poor guy i mean you know this is the that's pinball is what the big day in the sky say. On Thursday, December 11th, at 8 o'clock sharp at Jack Bar, they once again cursed Nike pinball. Fuck Nike pinball, say the notes on the match play listing. I got the scoop on that. Okay, what is it? Right, because we talked about this last week. That's right. Here's what it is. I spoke with Ida at Scrapple League on Wednesday and she says it's a reference to the time when nike started having a line of skateboarding shoes okay but the the way that they released them to stores is was requiring stores to buy at least 100 pairs that was the minimum order which cut out lots of your smaller or mom-and-pop shoe stores, and apparently led to the downfall of the independent industry. I see. And to be fair, if you want even a little bit more history here, you might say and skate stores, which would include Reciprocal Skateboards, which is a previous business owned by John, or at least run by John of Jack Bar, where some of the machines sitting at Jack Bar now almost surely like that fish tails almost surely sat at reciprocal it was on east 11th street if memory serves uh it's been a minute but if if it ran that kind of business out of business then fuck nike pinball as the note on this might be the same as i wish i could give this place zero stars on the back of the t-shirts which by the way is brilliant marketing mike pantino won the night besting nitsan goodbye and wes olfig and travis rosenberg who tied for third also on thursday south slope pinball league had finals night for its fifth season of 2025 at buttermilk bar directed by Kate Martin. Fifth and final, I might add, season necessarily, just based on when it is in the year. You can't have six more weeks of pinball this year. Can't do it after this week. In the A finals, Rob Wong won the night and this season of league. Matthew Carlson came in second after a tie-break game with Janos Kiss Gonzalez, who received third place, and Billy Vazine fourth. That tie-break game was on The Walking Dead, and I love the fact that it took 12 minutes and 37 seconds for Matthew Carlson to win. He was the top seed, so he probably played second. But five balls of that game by two dudes who are fucking killers at this venue took 12 minutes and 37 seconds. That's not enough. That's a hard game, man. That's a hard game. In the B finals, Stephen Christopher got first place, with second going to Paul McHugh, and third place myself, and Caitlin James Rees fourth. And there's not a reseeding, is that right, for the B in this league, we think, because of the participation, right? That's what I think. Yeah, so we think that whoever was the top seed in the B tournament actually gets ninth, and that this did not change it. But I bet you had fun. Yeah, I wasn't even supposed to be in B. I didn't qualify. Be in B. But as you had guessed last week, David Barber was not there. also it turns out that John Chase had Broadway tickets and was off seeing a show and that opened up two spots that I moved up into the bottom of B also Franklin decided not to come by he was below the cut line and didn't believe he'd move up if he showed up so three people not being there gave me the chance to play in B finals and that was a heck of a lot of fun cool I mean you played six games of pinball yeah some good ones and I don't usually add weekend results while I'm editing on this final episode of this season I woke this morning Sunday December 14th the day that this episode will be released to a text message from Zen Sochniak who was playing in the Barcade Fi-Di Winter Pinball Open. Qualifying happened yesterday, and I made a statement that at the Harvest, when Zen qualified at the top of B for the Harvest, that somehow he always qualifies at the top of B. He sent me a screenshot of the standings, wherein he is 17th, which is to say first in B, with the message that only said, Damn it Since we not going to talk about these results next week I will probably forget that in a couple of months when we start back up But I wanted to call that out I see you Zen I see you at the top of B again with 669 points and I see Peter Larson right below you with the devil's number at 666. Have fun driving those B buses today. Dante Oliva and Sean Grant will be driving the A buses, and I'm sure we'll tell you how that all turned out when we come back next season. This coming week and, you know what, the rest of this year. On Monday, the Pinball NYC. That's Monday, December 15th. The Pinball NYC end-of-season party and awards ceremony will be convened at Solid State. I assume that Eric will figure prominently in the ceremonies as a double recipient of the Three Times a Lady Award. Sonny will also be a double winner this season. Oh, right. Oh, how about that? I did not connect those dots. Yes. And Sean Ford. Oh, Sean is on the Butterballers? Or Sean, what's Sean's Monday? Sean's Monday is NYC FSA Tuesday is no quarters Oh cool Three double night champs These folks are good at pinball I just want to mention it because it's kind of cool On Wednesday December 17th at the Silver Ball Museum in Asbury Park they will have an ugly sweater party mini tournament it's at 6.30pm so like if you're working in New York City on Wednesday you're not getting there I don't think but if you have you know one too many vacation days this year and need something to do sometime the rest of the year maybe you could find yourself in Asbury Park at 6.30pm on Wednesday night to play in the Ugly Sweater mini tournament there's presumably or based on what Match Play says, there's a free giveaway to all participants. There's a prize for the ugliest sweater and the winner will have a silver ball pint glass. It is BYOB. It says casual tournament, no skills needed. And $18 admission, $15 for VIP members. On Thursday, December 18th, Thursday Night Strikes will be convened at Jack Bar in Williamsburg at precisely 8 o'clock. And Jose Garcia Negron is running things. On Friday, December 19th, Winner Wonderland by Bells and Chimes NYC will be held at the Red Hook Pinball Museum at 7 p.m. featuring 10 cozy rounds of max match play. $10 buy-in, no more than $32 will play. It's bells and chimes event. And it makes a very specific point of saying that they welcome all cis and trans women as well as non-binary players who are comfortable in a group that centers women. On Saturday, the 20th, Brooklyn's last Woportunity will be convened at a private location. There is a registration. If you're registered, I'm sure you will get an email about it. it's got a food tournament, which is the thing that I love about these. And the theme on it is the food you're going to give up this year. And I promise you that I'm not going to give up any food this year, but I will cook something that will be just devious to your insides. If that's what, not like in an immediate sense in the, like your doctor is later going to tell you that you have gout sense. also at a private location on Sunday December 21st the Triborough series will hold its finals a double elimination group match play bracket brought to you by Jose Garcia we've talked to Jose about that that is the culmination I think we talked to him last season and this season both about it but that's the culmination of a lot of work and something that he ideated without having, he created an organized thing without having to organize a lot of people by the time he had created it. It was a very clever way to organize something long-term like that. On Thursday, December 25th, Christmas, there is a No Bro Presents Thursday Night Strikes on the IFPA calendar. As of now, I don't believe anyone in the TD group has volunteered to take that date, so that one's up in the air. Also, the following week on January 1st, up in the air, whether those Thursday night strikes will be happening, keep an eye out. You might take a long winter's nap. On Friday, December 26th. Boxing day. Boxing day it is. you can make it pinning day if you go to Red Hook's own holiday hullabaloo where nine arenas will host your max match play. No, your best game entries. We talked about they added something awesome last week. A Spanish Eyes or something. A Sagasa Spanish Eyes. Right, right. The DC bumpers, they were jazzed about how the current was coming into the bumpers, which I am ignorant about but appreciate that someone is looking out for me that way. At 4.30 on Friday the 26th, 4.30 p.m., you can go to the Red Hook Pinball Museum in Red Hook and play all electromechanical pinball machines in this best game tournament. And it'll be awesome. I mean, how could it not be? And technically, on Friday, January 1st, 2026, but you're going to want to get there on Friday night, December 31st, 2025, Midnight Madness at Scrapple Land will be convened in Greenpoint with Ali Bassett as the tournament director. This will be five rounds of group match play cutting to a four or eight player finals. There's a $20 entry fee that includes your coin drop and a midnight toast because the sign-ups are at 10pm to midnight with the first round kicking off at 12.15am. Midnight Madness will be very probably the first Woportunity of 2026. As of December 12th, 2025, there are 362 pinball machines in New York City at 80 public locations. Thanks to the creators and users of Pinball Mat for this data. Here are machine updates from the past week. Last week, I pointed out that 60 of 360 at Scrapple Land was, you know, about a sixth. It was 60 of 358, I think, and now we're at 362. But it's interesting to me that 80 locations and 60 machines at Scrapple Land, there are 20 more locations in New York City than there are games at Scrapple Land. That's an interesting metric to me, too. On Saturday, December 6th, user Baxman343 went by Scrapple Land and had a lot to say. For Cactus Canyon, a remake LE, Baxman343 said, Lasso Ramp Rolling Skillshot Switch is Broken Slash Stuck Closed Selects Lassoed Skillshot Award As soon as Ball is off the launch switch And also on that Cactus Canyon Ball Wedged in the Armpit Of the River Ramp behind Beer Mug I got a couple of movies like That at home where there's a ball wedged In the armpit They said of the Uncanny X-Men Packing material is still wrapped around Wolverine's claws. The playfield could use a good wipe down with Novus 2. Of Godzilla, they said, ball stuck behind Mechagodzilla. And of Pirates of the Caribbean, they said, upper switch on right slingshot is in front of the rubber. On Monday, December 8th, Baxman343 left some more comments for Scrapple Land. Oh. Of Star Trek The Next Generation, they wrote, Machine has two issues that compound on each other. Oh. There is a ball wedged under the left cannon just at the hoop end of the wire form. This catches the ball in play, causing a ball search. The left cannon moves for its ball search, so this frees up the ball in play. However, the ball search also fires the right cannon. The right cannon must have a switch stuck closed because after it fires during ball search, it believes there to be a ball in the cannon. This puts the game into a state of continuously trying to launch a probe despite active ball on the field. This will continue for the rest of the ball time as the right cannon continuously tries to fire the ball and stays stuck in a limited function of the game. each time a shot is made that terminates at the left wire form this process begins again making the game practically unplayable as it's almost always in launch probe mode and of uncanny x-men they said nightcrawler leaf switch target to the immediate left of the uptown ramp askew bashed too many times user mini flipper also left a comment at scrappeland on monday They said the Bond women's shot is not registering on the James Bond 007. That's that same shot as the gem shot on Tron, right? Yeah. Yeah. Just up play field of the upper ramp. Also on Monday, user Toenuff stopped in at the Hop Shop in Staten Island and played the stern kiss that they have there. Okay. They said, left flipper is a bit dead, but I could make every shot from it fine. Just be prepared for less on dead bounce. real problem is both the demon lock and the mode scoop don't register fun to chase arrows but that's about all you can do to get points i love the idea that there are degrees of dead on tuesday december 9th user trow commented on the godzilla at arcade chelsea flippers are very weak i don't think it's possible to shoot the left ramp. On Wednesday, a small mystery was solved as a whole bunch of machines were added to the lineup of a new venue on the map called the Randolph, which is, in fact, just Randolph Beer Dumbo, reappearing on the map with these machines again in the lineup. A Metallica Remastered Premium. That's new. That must be. A Mandalorian Pro. A Godzilla Pro. An Avengers Infinity Quest Pro. A Jurassic Park Pro. A Cactus Canyon Remake. And an Elvira's House of Horrors Premium. I wonder if my tokens still work. That's a good question. The games are one token to play, and the tokens cost $2 a piece. Interesting. I didn't pay that for my tokens. On Thursday, December 11th, user Toneuff was at Arcade Fight Eye and left this comment on TX Sector. Flipper was fine yesterday. I could hit everything perfectly. My first time playing this game ever, and this is an amazing game. What is best in life? Ripping those spinners, hitting the pops, and generating intense sound effects. And on Friday, December 12th, a Foo Fighters, a Demolition Man, and Hot Wheels were taken out of the quarter club. Frowny. Foo. Yeah. I mean, that's what happened to pinball machines. We're pinball players. I mean, look, we saw each other on Saturday. did you play on Friday night? No, we talked on Saturday and then we saw each other on Saturday. That's right, yeah. It almost has to have been that the next time that you played pinball after I spoke to you for this was there. What about South Slope Strikes? I posted this on my Blue Sky too saying one of the great perks of the couple of series of tournaments that Jess Warren's running at RWI, Bart is making a tasty spread but every month at South Slope Strikes, Jess makes cookies or some other treats and this time Vietnamese coffee swirl brownies were scrumptious I must have missed that somehow how dare I I wrote down in the script that South Slope Strikes was uneventful but then when we were recording the results segment before i uh pointed this out i had a first i got a yellow card oh yeah oh yeah uh because i was playing ghostbusters against jess warren the tournament director uh and i while i was playing ghostbusters i slid the machine and the slide was okay and then i lost it after i like i actually i slid it i saved it i took another shot and played but as soon as i could trap i put my hand up because i tilted attack from mars to my left because i moved my machine against the cup holder of attack from mars and it tilted Tom Milburn's ball. Tom Milburn, who tied for fourth there in those standings. It tilted his ball. He put his hands up immediately. I knew what happened. I heard, I had noise canceling headphones on and I still heard his ball tilt. I heard the WOOOOW! And I got a yellow card. Jess, to her credit, had an actual yellow card. She like went to fucking Models at some point. I gave that to her, actually. Is that right? Yeah, I bought them off an online retailer. They come in two pairs. You can't buy just a single red and yellow. It's like, you know, they're for soccer, if it's you. Yeah, for soccer. You put them in a little box. For some reason, they're so cheap, so they sell them in a pair. So I got a pair to use, and then I gave the extra set to Jess. Nice. Well, I got a yellow card. It seemed like it pained her, and everybody got a kick out of making fun of me being a bad boy, the dude who shows up in a blazer. One of two, I see you, Chris Dooley, dudes who shows up in a blazer on the scene. You know, like, it was kind of funny. It was a little bit sad that Jess had to lose in this. Like, I didn't lose my game. I got a yellow card for tilting an adjacent player's game, but it did not stop anything about what was happening in my game. I did not get a strike automatically for it. And unfortunately, Jess had a shitty game of Ghostbusters. And frankly, this is one of those things. It's hard to tournament direct and play at the same time. And she had to give me a fucking yellow card in a game that she was playing against me and then still play against me and then have Eric move the game over. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I did the slide. That game slides very easily. I think so. I think so, but I put her in a really stressful, terrible situation that was really hard to win in, and I felt a little bit bad that in addition to being a bad actor in the tournament in general, I then also won a game. I felt really villainous. I opted out of IFPA participation. I really wanted to win and have a podium photo. Then the next pinball I played was on Monday night at Scrapple Lands. The NYC FSA versus Mutants championship match. Did you play Jurassic Park? Ha. No, but this began a several night saga of Metallica Remastered. Great. For me. Sounds good for you. I believe that it may be true that the last March Madness Tournament of Pinball Machines that this podcast did, that that won entirely because you were certain that it needed it. Yeah. In the way that I was certain that Dolly Parton needed to, and we ended up right there. That's right. I do like the game. I called it in round two of the championship match. I put myself on it. The Mutants put up Nint against me. After two balls of play Nint had 15 million and I had 16 million. Nint played his ball three and finished at 17 million. he could not get a second electric chair multiball is the way that I'm going to extrapolate the information here Nint is awesome he had two so he couldn't get a third and a tilt well okay Nint and I play a lot the same way and yeah I'm with that I'm only talking about the way Nint plays by hitting I can bang on a center shot all day and I can put the machine where I want to that's all I was doing too that's the early game on Metallica but yeah it was sufficient to take the regular top lane skill shot for half a mil and then you know get some pops and a couple flops around the lower playfield to pass him and pick up one point for NYC FSA there yeah Alex likes X-Men and Connor was also excited about X-Men so it It made, I think, strategic sense in our first picks in the second round to double up on X-Men with those two. Also, Gabe was excited about Scared Stiff. Sure, Scared Stiff, yeah, sure. Yeah, and then I wanted to get myself in one slot and took the second round singles on Metallica for that. That's the only one you played? that's the only one I played and then in the fourth round when we had the choice again we chose X-Men with Alex and Connor yeah as I would have imagined based on the arc of the story so far and then Scared Stiff again with Gabe and Adam Robinson uh huh there was that Scared Stiff that in the fourth round we got to 10 points off the bat gotcha gotcha and you lost the other, obviously. Yes. You had eight walking in. Yeah, we split rounds one, three, and four, and we picked up the four points in our round two. Right. Was the difference. Right. Nice. Great. That was obviously a momentous night against the mutants, who are both really tough and also really good friends. Yeah, of course. We stayed out quite late. We were talking about a headache just about this time last week Yeah It has extended another week Yeah sometimes it be like that And then on Tuesday night I went with the Butterballers to Jack Bar to face off against the Trolls in another championship match And that was a lovely time. And that was another tough team to play against. They took us to the tiebreak. Yeah, yeah. Both Mondays were 10-6, both Tuesdays were 8-8. Both Tuesday tie breaks were Jurassic Park. And prior to me playing the ball two on Jurassic Park in the tie break, I played twice and both times were on Metallica Remastered. Uh-huh. trolls called it right away in round one. I wasn't sure if they would because during the warmups, I had noticed a couple times the ball was getting stuck on the snake's lip. Yeah. And it would go through a ball search, but moving the snake jaw up and down wasn't knocking the ball off of it. And if you let it go long enough, I think it's five ball search cycles. It will just end the ball in play. Right. Count bonus, go to the next ball. But then there's still the ball out there, and you've got a ball in the shooter lane, and it's all messed up. Right. It doesn't make it very playable. Alf, who's on trolls, this happens a couple times to them during the warm-up. And they try to shake it off, but it wouldn't roll off. It would just sort of roll back and forth and stay in the little groove. And Alf tilted a couple times in practice. trying to shake the darn thing off, I surmised that the right kind of shake could make it come off. Right. And it was at best a double danger shake. Okay. So, so you get one snake shot per ball. At one point during the warmup, Alf had gotten one stuck on there and shook the machine a bit, picked up two dangers and I said hey could I try giving it a shake I think there's a move I could make to get it off but it's going to tilt the ball and Al said okay so I did it and it worked and the ball came so I thought it was like you know questionable if we'd be playing it considering that condition they called it then in round three they called Metallica again with Alf playing it again and I took that match up at one point during that singles match Alf got a ball stuck on the snake's lip but it was during a multiball and under consultation with the captains agreed okay go ahead and just knock it off of there and that worked then shortly thereafter, I got a ball stuck on the snake slip. Ah. And there was another consultation. And I said... You were not in a multiball. I was not in a multiball. And I said to my captain, Courtney, I want to try to shake it off. I think I can do it with two dangers and keep playing. And she said, okay, go for it. And the other team agreed. and I shook it off and I got two dangers and then went on to blow up the rest of that ball and win that point well and that was pretty great that is pretty cool I I presume you also at that point would have you know simply given up the point by having tilted right I mean that's that's what asking that permission was right I think at that point it had having had come up for the second time in the same game, like the captains were sort of saying, oh, maybe we should just scratch Metallica and call something new. That was part of the conversation. And I said, please let me continue this. Okay, let's also talk about this because there's something, I know what you did, but there's something really specific that you did to stop it. You said it takes X number of ball save or ball search chances. There's something that you did to stop it from searching for the ball, despite the fact that the ball was stuck somewhere on the machine. Can you please tell me what it was? Yeah, I held up a flipper. That's right. You held up a flipper. By holding up a flipper, when you're in that situation, and you're like, oh my God, it's going to search for the ball enough times, and it's going to drain, you just press a flipper button and hold up a flipper, and the ball search will never happen. It thinks you've got it trapped there. it like you this is this is one of the when when you're in a tournament and you're playing a modern game and there's a ball stuck somewhere the first thing you do is press a flipper button and hold it the next thing you do is put your hand up if you're playing an old game that doesn't work but in a modern game just pressing that button turns off the idea that you don't know where the ball is it assumes that you know where the ball is and it's under your flipper and i've just realized i did it so reflexively that i hadn't even it didn't consider that i considered that i just asked you was a question to be asked this is why i asked it i didn't even realize i had done it i'm not 100 certain everyone who might listen to this would immediately know that i i imagine that better than 50% would, but I'm not sure that 100% would. And I think that's something that 100% of us should know. Super cool that you had the two, that you predicted how many it would take. And then also delighted to get a call out in the troll story in the caption about that. Amongst all the lovely moments from that evening that were recapped in here, one of them was the players who were so in love with the Metallica game that they opted to make the stuck ball on the Metallica snakes lip work. I commented on that post I did really want to keep playing Metallica. Quite so. Yeah and then to top off with that chaos multiball on the Jurassic Park and the tie break. Yeah. That was some you know uh a part of what has turned into a fantastic week of competitive pinball for me yeah just some giant milestones in it while we were at jack bar i alerted sunny or we had talked before maybe we were both double winners right for the two teams and said let's let's do a double winning captain photo shoot. Yeah. So we took a couple of cute photos. Did one of them back to back with finger guns like Charlie's Angels style. Yeah, of course you did. Posted those up on my blue sky. Nice. There's one other two night winner we think. Is that right? Yeah, I believe then Sean Ford is also a two night winner. Right. One NYC FSA on Monday and no quarters on Tuesday. It's cool that that many people got to have that much joy in one week despite the headache that it cost Eric and presumably Sonny and Sean. This is aspirational. I'm not going to play two nights a week, but it's aspirational for me to have a headache on Tuesday morning, for God's sake, the 13th week after I've started this, the 13th week of regular time, the regular pinball time. So as I'm scrolling through my blue sky here to remind myself of some of the pinball evenings, and if you want to follow me, I'm hipsmart.bsky.social. It's largely pinball content. I found an article about accessibility in pinball and some of the various different controllers that are being developed out there, written by a disabled person who noted that the article pictures the first time they've been able to play pinball in 40 years. And they tried it out at the Project Pinball booth at Pinball Expo, is where the source of the article is. It's a really good article. You can, if you search, it's called Flipping Accessible, colon, The People and Devices Tilting Pinball Toward Access. New Mobility is the source, is the overall source. New Mobility is the outlet. Newmobility.com, yeah. Yeah, newmobility.com. Cool. That is cool. I appreciated when Jose talked about that before. I just generally like the idea, and I am disturbed by the fact that someone has been or felt excluded for that long, but also inspired by the fact that they got there. And this is what they did last Sunday at Silver Ball, or at Single Cut, rather, you know, Silver Ball Sundays at Single Cut. This is what Tommy and Kate Smith did last weekend. They raised money for that exact organization where this person had the opportunity to play a more accessible pinball, have a more accessible pinball experience. I saw some social media after the events from Tommy. I believe they collected a little over $200 for Project Pinball. That's awesome. That like trucks a pinball machine from where it is to the hospital or whatever. That's great. That's perfect. And also, you know, to be fair, I imagine that a lot of that labor slash gas money slash, you know, time and energy is donated also. but if it weren't that would pay for that that's awesome to just be able to be like here you can just deliver a pinball machine to someone or like here you can just go to an estate sale and buy a pinball machine that needs to be fixed up to later put somewhere that's awesome Wednesday was Scrapple League I stopped by Gian Famous Foods ahead of time for some spicy noodles alright All right. And then I had the best league night I've ever had. Right. With a 27. That's pretty great. And one of the games that I was randomly assigned on was Metallica Remastered. Oh. I did only get a third place on that one. That was my worst result of the night. But keep playing that game. Right. And then on Thursday night, as I said before, I wasn't even supposed to be here. Right. was actually we had I had a long not a long a bit of a conversation with a few people about uh the clerks series of movies and yeah well I mean I wasn't I when you said just now I wasn't even supposed to be here I almost instinctively added today I wasn't even supposed to be here today ma'am this is what Dante I believe says repeatedly throughout the movie so uh the first thing I did when I got into Buttermilk last night was play Metallica. Sure. Not remastered. Not remastered, just the old one. Yeah, just. And then I have a sneaking suspicion the bus drivers of my two groups specifically stayed away from Metallica. Right. What'd you do in that warm-up game? The first one was just about the worst game of Metallica I've ever had. One or two million. And then? I think I hit 28 million on the next game. Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, it's a good warm-up on that one for sure. It's not unassailable. It's not impossible to imagine beating. But it is. It's like a first or second in a league night. It's a number you look at on that one and think, okay, I'd have to work hard to get there. That's all. I went to Fidai for lunch and to play a little bit on Thursday. I had the day off. I am in that position that I imagine a lot of people are in right now that I mentioned before in calendar time. where I have a vacation day or two too many for this year based on how much time is left in this year and how much vacation I have taken previous to now. And so I had a day that I was like, hey, won't be in the office. Don't have any meetings. Won't be in the office. If you don't text me and you don't get my attention, it's your own goddamn fault. and I had the Ruben, the kielbasa Ruben that I talked about earlier this season when I went to Fidei, although I thought about having the Grinderman, which was the thing that I, although I like to call it the Grinderman, but the Grinderman sub, which I always got when it was on the menu at Jersey City. It was a special for the day. It's not always on the menu at Fidei, but it was a special for the day for the, you know, the day that I was standing there. I don't know, maybe it's every Friday for all I know. But it was attached to the menu with a paper clip. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't laminated. So I presume that it's only there sometimes, whatever the sometimes is. But that was one of the things that I often got in Jersey City. I had a sandwich is the point. And I played a lot of Special Force and I still don't understand it the way that I want to understand it. I like the shots on it. I feel so fucking accomplished when I hit a shot on Special Forces, Special Force, whatever it's called. I feel like the king of the fucking world when I complete a shot on it, but I'm not sure that I feel like the requisite award is there for hitting every shot. And I also think that I learned that maybe when you collect the bonus by getting into the bunker, that the multiplier doesn't apply to the bonus that you collect. And that hurts my fucking feelings. like if it's a bonus building game and there's a thing on it that lets me collect the bonus it should be like genie and i should be able to kick your ass by doing that twice or three times in a game if i can do that it should reset the bonus after i've done it to zero maybe without the multiplier resetting but like i i should be able to do that collect it when i've built it up and built up the multiplier and I get something that says collect bonus, it should be multiplied. And I feel like it wasn't multiplied when I was collecting it. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I just was misunderstanding how it was counting up or estimating wrong while I was also focused on real-world physics and not just spreadsheet numbers. So I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. But I feel like when I collected the bonus, it wasn't multiplied. When I did the on-playfield collect bonus bits. You have a much deeper understanding of the game than I do. I've only played it a couple of times. I just find a couple of those shots are real clunkers. They suck. There's some sort of ramp shot that just sort of goes into nowhere. It's so satisfying. That's what it is to me. That's what it is. When you, when you succeed, it's like the Walter ramp on the big Lebowski. When you succeed, it's so good. Here's something I noticed Thursday night at buttermilk. Yeah. Uh, I, I, I took a picture so you could see it. Good job. Oh yes. I did. I did that. Yep. There are NYC pin pod stickers on the bottom of the toilet seat in the one bathroom now right below the two stickers that seemingly say bcf that's right so eric has said to you he got these stickers that were nyc pin pod stickers and uh we have mentioned i think a couple of times or at least i i have seen more than one uh text about you know about my initials on the bottom side of the seat, the toilet seat at Buttermilk. But yes, Eric had those stickers and I grabbed a couple of them to make sure that they went in the right place, which was right under the BCF initials. I was talking with Butterballer Captain Courtney. She's got a meeting early evening on Monday night and asked if I could grab the traveling trophy for the right in-lane division to take to solid state on monday i've already shown shown it to you benjamin i just want to hold up again and reiterate that i'm holding this really cool trophy yeah so um yeah i'll i'll take it up to solid state so that chris can give it back to us yes you will take it from relatively close to buttermilk the whole way through Manhattan to Queens to have a different magnetic sign put on it, presumably, and then bring it back to somewhere in South Brooklyn again, through Manhattan to Brooklyn, from Queens through Manhattan to Brooklyn. It is a noble errand. It's a noble errand. And I'm going to add this in my own personal bullet journal because it doesn't quite fit in with the rest of what we're talking about with Polly, Gene, Vernon in Ball 3. But you may remember last season or two seasons ago when we spoke with Eric Rubinsky that he mentioned having met a cat from Canada who sometimes hangs out at the bar by itself, has a little bit of permission to hang out at a bar by itself sometimes. And that is Polly Jean, whom we're talking to in Ball 3. We asked her about Dwayne. And so for my personal Friday bullet journal, I just want to add, you know, I caught up with an interesting pinball adjacent cat. I just want to say to everybody who's listening that in the middle of our recording this, Dwayne the cat who gets the postcards from the, I forget if he was a tour manager or sound engineer. From Steki. Steki Steki, the sound engineer. There you go. At the bar. that he's allowed to go to from your apartment. Is that right? Or from your house? Well, I have to bring him in the car or on the subway to the bar. Oh, okay. Then I walk him into the bar on his leash or in his Targus, which is his little bag. He gets in and he goes up somewhere else. Who knows? And then he has his privileges, actually, at the bar. He's allowed to go outside of the bar and wander around wherever he wants. he's not allowed to cross Bluer Street but he is allowed to wander in the residential area behind the bar and he goes about three blocks either direction and he'll go for one to three hours and then he'll be back and he'll sit on his machine he's sitting on Paragon usually it's his machine right now he has good taste he's a very special guy honestly I don't know how this guy happened he was going to murder my other cat and I was like I guess I'm taking you to the pinball bar and neither of us ever looked back yeah and a special shout out to Robin Harrison who owns Cabin Fever the place in Toronto for pinheads to gather and play ball and it also the home of Thousand Chimes Toronto and APAB Toronto and frankly without her as the location owner and Dan Beeson as the operator they've both been so supportive I don't know where we would be today so shout out to both of them we have talked for several weeks now about the fallout from OBX. Our guest this week is a friend, is certainly for me an acquaintance whom I felt like was a fast friend when I met her at the Beast. Eric, I think you and Polly have hung out a couple of times as well. Yeah, yeah. My attention was called in my journey journey that we've been talking about in the fallout of OBX, wherein I have sort of ignored the IFBA and been looking for just simply a different way forward. Eric has, I think, to a certain degree, admirably been taking the tack of, let me try to heal it from the inside, but also see what else is out there. Polly Jean has put out a call to boycott the IFBA, but it's not just walk away, the tack that I have taken. It is a proposal that heals it from the inside and has really specific, and I mean even a heading that says specific calls to action, but really specific calls to action that have, I think, consequences that we should consider. Polly Jean, can you please tell us what you are asking people to consider apropos of, I'm going to I'm Benjamin Fuerig and I'm thinking I'm going to go play in this IFPA tournament. What should I be looking for? First of all, thanks Benjamin and Eric for having me on the program. That means a lot to me that you reached out to talk about this. Thanks very much. Yeah, I put out a call to boycott just December 3rd. It was with a heavy heart, I think I said, and that's how it feels. boycotting things is rarely my approach. I really, really, really, really am always trying to find our common ground and try to find where the misunderstanding could have taken place. You know, where do these negative feelings come from? Like, where is this person coming from and where is that person coming from? And we just hear from each other, we'll really, you know, we'll understand each other better and we'll be able to heal and move forward i'm i'm always on that side and this obx flippers event was really challenging for a lot of people to obviously the people who were there but it's reverberated throughout the whole community yeah and internationally obviously like we're in canada and i didn't know what to do after that incident and I felt like there must be some way to heal the the chasm that separates that separates some of us and I've kept doing that and I was so sad to hear when the women's board quit I was so disappointed because I thought this was uh you know yet another pulling back from talking to each other. And I talked to friends who had been there and friends on the advisory board, and I felt so much anger from them. And for me, I wanted to support them. I did something. We wrote a letter. We wrote a statement of solidarity and just a request for the IFPA to do something. Yeah. In the wake of this event, the IFPA didn't take the action that I thought they should have taken. As you know, they doubled down on a decision that I thought was bad very early on. I said, that's a bad decision. You need to, they need to change it. And I thought that things were going to get better. But what it requires is for people in positions of power in the IFPA to make actual changes in the way they run tournaments and make actual changes in their lives to try to make room for people who are feeling like there's no room for them. We need tournament directors who currently run open division tournaments, the vast majority of whom are cis male, to think about that possibly because the only person in the position of power in that community in pinball is a cis male, that may be not welcoming, that may be a barrier to entry, that may be not safe space. and it's certainly not the IFPA saying, hey, we recognize there's a real issue that years of dedicated effort has brought us no further towards solving. Right, right. So let's do something about this. Right, right. You know, that's basically where I came then to having a really terrible time at a huge open tournament in Ontario, our biggest one. So it was after OBX. yeah after obx and just thinking that this had made reverberations throughout the community right that people were taking seriously yeah i arrived to find that things were just the same in fact just as bad no awareness about that event no mention of that this doesn't happen at our tournaments. Anybody who does that is not welcome, etc. And so I realized, maybe it's not going to happen, just leaving it up to others. And I need to see a woman as tournament director for me to be able to be safe at a tournament. And by woman, I mean, a part of your experience or identity is of womanhood. That's great. But those are the people i'm talking about somebody with some experience or identity of womanhood to be in an actual position of power at every actual event and no nothing short of that will do like an actual representative with actual power like sure there was an ifpa board member at that event who incidentally was being actually currently traumatized during that event so to put any sort of decision of this on her is ridiculous and completely unfair. And the tournament director, love this apology, he'll try to do better next time. I believe him. I believe that he'll try to do better next time. And yet years of trying to do better yields nothing. So what I need to see is concrete action. And that's the concrete ask, that a woman be co-TD of every Open Division tournament, that there's space for two TDs, that that woman make the calls for the women and non-binary folks where appropriate, and that that person also do the announcements and roll call at the women division tournaments within major tournaments. tournaments because having a voice that's not a cis male like we go i go to these big women's tournaments and then you know there's a man like yelling for everyone to come here there's another man fixing the machine there's another man yelling at the other man behind me about how he can't fix the machine and needs a part while the other man like runs past the women's division thing it's not inclusive and nothing against cis men some of my best friends are cis men absolutely nothing absolutely against there are some absolutely wonderful men in the world say you're the most wonderful person in the world and you're running a tournament does a young woman who sees that tournament sees you from the outside of that bar do they know that you're one of those safe dudes and they don't and they don't come in and again we've increased barriers to pinball it's not okay and we can't continue like this and I realized I couldn't continue going to Open Division tournaments not like my world ranking is getting anywhere what like I've topped out at 1900 in my life like okay like it's great to go to Open Tournaments it's great to play with everybody you know again some wonderful assessments and like other people who don't feel comfortable playing in the women's division but it's like it's just it was it's too much i can't do it anymore and i really hope that folks who feel comfortable at open division tournaments and think i can't imagine how somebody would not feel comfortable here that's the issue right there an open division tournament is open to everyone right in theory see this button that one of our pal's made, I'll go closer. It says, no fans exclude Terry Wofford. Awesome. Oh my gosh. So, one of the Pinball Women Ottawa, folks makes kick-ass buttons. And this is the one. She actually set up the petition. The petition for IFTA to take concrete action to address these things that has over a thousand signatures. Do you have any idea on the update on the signatures on that? Well over a thousand signatures. I think the last time I saw it was 1,300, but it's been a while since I've looked also. What does concrete action look like? Just putting out more and more not actual changes until everybody forgets. And people already have. People are already just like, oh, well, I'm not going to boycott open division tournaments. Why would I? The tournament director in my town is great. Why would I boycott his tournaments? I'm like, again, you know he's a nice guy. But what about that other person who had a terrible experience with him? What if he's nice to you because he thinks you're attractive? I don't know. This is the world. And it doesn't actually solve everything completely. and there's lots of actual real issues in the IFPA where we could make it much more democratic, much more responsive to communities. But it's a start. You're right. If you are standing outside, to put it in New York City Park Slope people terms, if you're standing outside Buttermilk, even though Kate Martin is the director of this tournament, when you look inside and see who doesn't love Kate. If you look inside and see that there are a bunch of jerks standing around waiting for someone to tell them what pinball machine to go play, if you don't know that Kate is directing that tournament, and Kate is hoarse, and Kate says, round three is up, and what actually happens is Benjamin Furiga, who is not hoarse, screams at the bar at large, round three is up, then the person who's outside and saw that happen does not know that I might be a safe cishet dude. But they do know that I just growled, round three is up. And to your point, I think there's a really, I can put it in our terms right here in New York City and be also the guy who's wrong because he's the guy who's screaming, round three is up. I love having people yell for me when I'm feeling hoarse, for sure. That example is really, really good. And the other example is when I'm traveling, I'm looking for women's division tournaments because I don't know any of these dudes who are running the open division tournaments. I don't know what I'm walking into again there's a gender Ryan Policky from the IFPA we know that there's no follow up or actual action taken we saw that happen at OVX Clippers lots of people excluded from the tournament it's not safe when I know when I'm traveling I know that I can go to women's division tournaments and I will be welcome they will be like oh you're in promoted town that's fantastic let's play some ball and I don't want to go to open division tournaments where I don't know the operator and the location person and the TD. So, I mean, for me as a traveler, that would help. You know that at every open division tournament, right, right, right. Some cis women are terps. Some cis women are not. Let's honestly, we know this from the person who was at the center of the OBX situation. It doesn't solve everything. it's a concrete step that's easy to take that will make an enormous difference at a lot of tournaments and you don't know the players who don't come in we don't hear about the players who don't come in and like which communities are growing right now like our community is growing you know why our community is growing is because we're inclusive we're welcoming I mean, we opened up this assigned pinball at birth club because like gender, gender queer folks and non-binary folks need somewhere to play. That's you don't feel quite comfortable in the women's category, but not really, really keen to get all the all the abuse and misgendering and whatever that you're going to get the open division tournament. Right. So, like, where do you go? Well, we thanks to Eric and Eric. So I didn't go to a sign pinball at birth. that there's an APAB Toronto. I think that's so cool. Let me talk about that for a second because that is changing things from the inside. That is improving access to people who need access to pinball. I'm going to continue to run those open division tournaments. Again, I'm not crossing against my own boycott because there's a woman as tournament director so right so there's a woman as tournament director and we're very inclusive of gender queer non-binary folks in a space that helps them feel safe and there are people who come out to those tournaments who would never come out to another tournament and who now i can't even say that oh pinball is getting better oh hey you should come to this tournament it's great oh yeah that guy's a jerk but like he's really trying like i can't even how can I say any of these things? I have new trans folks coming out and I'm like, yeah, you better just stick with these tournaments, honestly, because if you go to that tournament, you're going to get in trouble. If you're going to go to that tournament, you're going to get misgendered. It's very sad. For me, keeping those tournaments going, I'm increasing access to people who need it, who don't have access to Whoppers at regular Open Division tournaments because it's not actually open to everyone. Therefore, please boycott the IFPA Open Division tournaments that don't have at least one woman tournament director. Benjamin pointed me to this document, your call. Is it available out there publicly? Is it somewhere people could see this? I'm happy for this to go as far as it can. I dropped it in a few Discord channels and sent to a few people. I'd love it if some more major players would actually stand with the people who are having issues accessing tournament. That's something that would be really lovely and I hope that as this call becomes more widely known and begins to snowball a little bit, it's a lot of other people saying, hey, we need to stop this train for a minute and just look around and see what the heck is going on. We need to stop this for a minute. is not okay. So that's what the call really asked for. And again, really concrete, I think really achievable asks that will do a ton, not only to improve access to pinball for people who need it, and also to show that the IFPA is making serious concrete changes to take this seriously, to improve access for people. It's a no-brainer for me that every male TD running an open division tournament around the world should be saying, oh, wait a second, you're right, that is a really easy thing that I could do. And you know what? They can't find a woman with whom to co-TD or they think that's a bad idea. They should not be running open division tournaments because their tournaments are obviously not open to everyone. As I think everyone listening will understand that I am playing the devil's ist of advocate. Advocate away. I'm a guy who has a pinball. I know a bunch of guys who want to play in a pinball tournament, and I don't know any women who want to play in a pinball tournament, and we are trying to host this thing. What do I do? There must be at least one woman playing pinball in your town, and if not, I would invite someone out to teach them and then teach them how to run the software and then they can TD. That was the ask of the Women's Advisory Board that women are in a real position of authority. This is what that looks like. Every tournament. I don't care where. Every single tournament. Otherwise it's just, oh, we're going to make a call to the thing and whatever and meanwhile, the transphobic attack, whatever, whatever has happened. It's already happened. somebody's already excluded people haven't even noticed a thousand other times it's happened it's a starting point and again very concrete very simple I wanted to make it easy I wanted to be like hey I don't want to boycott anyone I don't want to have a boycott just to say like we're boycotting I want to find a solution I want to find a way through this I want to find a way for us all to enjoy pinball together in harmony and we cannot continue the way things are going so just put out a really really simple straightforward basic ask yeah and if you're getting a lot of pushback about that i think that tells you everything that you need to know about the people who are running regionally nationally internationally ifpa yeah organized pinball the ability to travel and playing pinball this international community, all the friends I've made, this is all really important to me and I don't want it to go away and I don't want it to disappear and I think something amazing does exist in the IFPA and it needs some changes really badly and so thanks for reaching out to talk to me about that today. that's all for this week's pod and this season's pod i would like to thank polly jean vernon for joining us this week i would like to thank everyone who joined the nyc pin panel this season that includes monica whitecamp david potlock jose garcia negron gabriel chasanov obviously Polly Jean Vernon and Eric I just I'm so thankful to all of you for helping us do this throughout the season we received several very helpful and interesting communiques from Monica and Gabe and also Tommy Ortega and Zen Zokniak I'd like to thank you all for connecting with us you can always email us at nycpinpod at gmail.com or, newly, you can leave us a voice message at speakpipe.com slash nycpinpod. That is on our WordPress blog at wordpress.com slash nycpinpod. This is the last regular episode until probably late February when Pinball NYC comes back, so we may be a little bit slow to respond, but we'd still love to hear from you. Whatever you're up to, between now and the beginning of next season, go get them, pinfolk. Bye.

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 04864b5a-0be5-4b55-a31b-acb1a45425c6*