It's really so minimal. Do not diminish my third place win that I just got. Yeah. I'm not diminishing it. I'm just not saying don't open your 401k with it. I was very proud of you. But what I'm saying is that for them, the whole point of these is that, hey, we want to hang out with people. Yeah. And we've said it before. The beautiful thing about pinball is how it's something that regardless of your political affiliation, your religious affiliation, your social affiliation, your gender affiliation, just insert whatever thing here. It doesn't matter. You can still play a game together. Yeah. And coming together because that's the I think that's one thing that's really helped pinball thrive in the last five years is because we've lost that ability to connect with people. Yeah, that's that's really the main reason. Even if I get my butt kicked, I'm going to like hang out. But then, you know, I can still kind of play dumb a little bit. You know, I don't know how much longer I can rock that. But I'm just being like, oh, I'm like new to tournaments or whatever. and uh you know i made friends with in the um episode i played two boys and mums and me getting my butt kicked by this guy hunter who then i ended up just like making friends with him because i sent him a link it was like hey i talked about you kicking my butt in the show and then we were playing each other in foo fighters and i was like man i'll level with you i've played this like three times i don't understand it and he showed me something with like the drop targets where you like get the power up things i i i still haven't totally gotten the hang of it but i just like hit a really nice wave and then i just i like i think i knocked him out actually i can't remember if i knocked him out or if i just beat him but i i kind of like he showed me a couple things just like to be a nice guy and then i just like accidentally racked up a huge score and he's like god damn it yeah he should have waited until after to show me but people are pretty generous with the knowledge okay but it's fun though like i actually i think that he probably laughed about oh yeah we we had a good i guess he's like i can't believe that i told you how to do it and then you just uh went farther and i was a little embarrassed yeah i was like oh that was unusually that was like very lucky yeah but like you know i i'm pretty good at creature actually i really love creature it's just like it vibes with me that's a great and so yeah i beat someone I was like, hey, actually, I'm like pretty good at creature. Like, let me show you my tactic. And which is like, just try and try and hit that move your car as soon as you can and collect the the film along the way. But like you can they were trying to get F.I.L.M. And I'm like, you can get a decent bonus from that. but if you just go for move your car and if you can really practice nailing that every time then you like that more than makes up for the point difference and so it's like oh okay cool i have a great strategy for creature i can hang with that now i need to learn the strategy for like 80 more games you know i'm like and there's a new i'm like okay now i gotta learn the food now i gotta learn the bond one so that's the one thing where i'm like oh this is a lot of work if you want to like stay sharp and so like yes well and it's harder too because like when i first got into it 10 years ago the biggest strategies were for the 90s bellies williams games it was like making sure you just shoot left orbit on theater of magic over and over and over until tell it tells you to shoot i think it's still the left orbit yeah it's like and you'll blow up your score that way or giant mnemonic it was light spinner and i love john you know they have one of those here and i just like i love giant mnemonic it's super underrated now it's like now godzilla it's like well i could go for damage there are five different ways you can well okay but that speaks to that speaks to how well balanced modern games i modern games have really taken especially stern have taken that tournament friendly vibe where they don't want the one path to a big score they want to say look you can go this way you can go that way you can create your own and you can still build a score have it be fun but not always have to take the same path yeah and when i another really interesting thing that keith talked about is he was like you know we'll put some multi balls close to the start so they're pretty easy to get like you know you start off the gimme yeah gimme's yep avengers you gotta thought it's pretty you can start that thor by accident if you're not careful you know like so i usually do someone's you know you want to try and save that and and you know for when you're in a gem quest but also if like someone doesn't know anything about that or is just there to like flip and have a good time they have a pretty high likelihood of accidentally starting thor if there's flipping around they're like oh my god multi-ball and like that stuff is like really fun you want to make it accessible and I feel like when I go to bars, I'll see people hop on Godzilla and just having a blast, you know? Like, people really have fun with that game. And that's really what it's about. It's, like, what's fun and enjoyable. And then other stuff, you know, you can be ahead and you can be, like, well, yeah, I really like this, like, one specific thing. But, like, you know, then you can't bring your friends. Like, yeah, I try and bring my friends who, like, are much more. I mean, I'm a medium, but I try and bring my super casual friends. And then I'm just now starting to make friends in New York who are hardcore. And I'm like, oh, you guys are on a different plate. I don't know. They're totally on a different level. I can't get that. I just respect and admire and hang out and try and learn a little. But I got other hobbies, too. It's not just football. Some people, that's their life. If you ever want to melt your brain on tournament talk, just talk to Travis Murie. Yeah. Holy crap. he's a top 10 player of the world well no he's 24 i just pulled it off sorry and yeah the other 23 that i just short changed yeah okay well i'll put it this way so 21 22 23 24 let's see if you've heard these names josh sharp yep okay yeah keith elwin okay Eric Stone Travis Fury So that's really good company And then just two above him is Colin McAlpine And these guys are Crazy crazy good Here's my Rank I'm Number 16,813 Yeah I'm 260th in New York out of Let me see here we got 513 So I'm like right in the middle in New York, you know, not too bad. But, you know, it's like it's fun. Well, OK, so let me point that out, though. That shows that there is a very tight demographic that is bundled in the middle of of saying, hey, we're really OK. Maybe at the beginning, I guess, however you want to say it. But like once you get beyond like the top 500, top thousand, then it really goes into very casual. So it shows how much how much reach even casual players can have in pinball. And you're the perfect example where you don't have machines like you have to travel to them and you are. i guess the beauty and the curse of what you're doing is that you don't have to worry about investing in a game but you're also beholden to whatever yeah it's right you're that's why i'm on these hunts it's like if i could if i had space i would totally get you know like a doctor who or something like and every once in a while i'll hop on the marketplace and just be like on on pin side like that's the only reason i go to that is just go how much would that run me you know even if i had an extra five grand i where would i put this thing come on you could you could put it you could put an apartment oh my neighbor would not be stoked he already has to hear me like playing music all the time like and looping the same part of a podcast over and over i don't want to put him through anything else you can put headphones on them actually that that's your key get a modern game get a headphone jack oh yeah well even just like the mechanics it's like you know i can hear my uh my next door neighbor like walking i can hear their floorboards creaking like that's the new york life like it's real thin walls so you just have to kind of pretend like in like sometimes you'll hear someone i'll hear my downstairs neighbor have a loud conversation where he's all hyped up and i just have to like you're like but he can't hear me right like it sounds like right yeah no no no suspension of disbelief i'm in the bubble yeah so i like coming to this studio it's like you know i i come in here once or twice a week and you're just like all right i can crank the speakers up and i can mix and i know i'm not bothering anyone or if i'm talking like it's just going to be totally isolated so i would love to to get my own studio and i would love to get my own uh pinball room and so who knows you know maybe if i'm if i like get married and have kids or something i'll go back to rhode island and go like that's what one of my co-workers did he just moved back to here he moved to rhode island where his wife's from and just was like oh we can buy a house here like we can't it would be crazy to buy anything in new york like there's just no reason to oh so i go visit him and i'm like oh this is nice and i go play i go to the pinball museum i'm like oh we kind of fund this right now but i mean it's new york baby it's like the best city you know and uh yeah there's a new place on long island i want to check out that i think has like 100 machines or something it's like just opened up a couple months ago oh good and uh there's some places in new jersey where you can like go play a lot of stuff so that's that's my next thing is like round up a little posse borrow someone's car go like spend two hours on the train and go be like all right this place has like a ton of like 80s got leave i'm gonna check this out you know it's my next move so well i i will say there is a guy in new york that you should probably uh find out his name is charles what's up and he's yeah yeah definitely he can he can take you on the tour he's actually really good friends with sunshine and he knows about all that stuff he even has a big lebowski so if you've ever wanted to play one of those there's actually a couple of those there's one in sunshine and there's one at rulos across the street and buttermilk so i play that a lot i actually like i love lebowski i think it's great well okay charles it's m-a-r-t-i-n at 99pi.org hit me up there you go drop me a line I probably shouldn't be giving my email on the internet but only email me if you have or if you have a really good idea for a story that's not pinball or if you're a Nigerian prince who wants to smuggle money out of your country yeah listen I live in New York which is not expensive at all and so I have tons of disposable income to just like spend around you know yeah not a problem all you needed all they needed your social security number just to verify it you so they can send you god it must be so cheap living in utah i jealous of you guys it's so expensive actually it used to be in the last in the last 10 years it's gone crazy i gotta say man a little bit just okay it's not new york no oh my god no it's outrageous here especially like yeah in the last year or two but salt lake city rocks uh you know i'm i think it's a really underrated city i think it's so cool and uh keep it that way keep it that way we're good the traffic's not bad it's not it's not east coast bad because i used to live in dc but it's uh oh yeah and you guys have the giant streets i've i've heard this story might be a pot you know like this i work on a show about history i love kind of collecting these old stories i heard a possibly apocryphal story that the streets were designed to be that wide so you could ue a horse-driven cart like that's why those streets are like six seven lanes wide so that you could like do a u-turn on a horse-driven cart without having to go around the block even if it's apocryphal that sounds fun right it's like it sounds cool because it i'm this was uh well utah at least from the uh the anglo-saxon settlers of utah and they were all mormon pioneers yeah yeah so they came and they it was set up by a grid system. Yeah. And so, which is actually like pretty easy to get around. I, you know, Oh, it's super easy. Yeah. I'm okay. When I moved to DC 15 years ago, Oh, more than 15. Wow. That was the first time I actually bought a Garmin because I don't know if anybody knows this, but all roads spontaneously end up at the, at the Washington. I have no idea why I always ended up there, but I was always so lost because it was so difficult to get around. Now you have GPS and it's not a big deal. Oh my God. That was like a revolutionary system back then because everything was so confusing. Oh, my first couple of tours, 2009, 2010, no one had like iPhones had just come out, but like no one had them yet. And I was like printing out MapQuest directions. Like I still, maybe it was Google maps at that point, but like, yeah, I definitely would print out driving directions from like, all right, we're going from like Atlanta to Raleigh. Like, all right, print out my directions, whatever. Like that was how I started out touring. So that gives you an idea of like, you know, it was a different time. And, you know, now it's talking to your kids. They must think that like we came from the Stone Age or like, how did you ever get lost? And I'm like, Kate, let me just tell you how difficult it was on a car trip. You had to keep visual contact of the car in front of you because if you got lost and you had to say, well, they could either be 10 miles behind us or 10 miles in front. But we have no idea how to hook up. I mean, seriously, you got to pull over and wait. Exactly. Yeah, that's not that long ago. Well, I always love, you know, I've been in New York for about five years now. I was, you know, at first really like, oh, I got a map everywhere. but now it's like um i love when you get to the point with the subway i'm like uh google maps and i have a better idea here you know yeah i i think i i'm i got this don't worry about it i got you but uh yeah and so you know i don't know uh new york rules i'm trying to make some pinball friends here you guys have my email now so if you uh want to be friends and go play some pinball get in touch and also it's just like people are so friendly like i've made a lot of friends just like you know yeah new york is known for being friendly no it's true people don't believe me but well also i'm just a friendly person i like going around chatting people up but like yes man i can't tell you how many times you know you're just flipping you just like talk to someone and chit chat and make friends and it's like it's pretty cool and so i've i've gotten some tips that way and like made some connections and it's just like a it's a nice hangout i just yeah I wish there were more older machines. That's my one critique. So if you own a bar in New York and you want to, like, get some pinheads together, like, people can play Stern anywhere. You need a co-op. Oh, does that exist? Pinball co-ops?