Hello. Hi. Hi. This is the Punk Rock Pinball Podcast, episode 34, we think. I think so. My name is Mike. I'm Stephanie. We're the hosts of the show. This is Marshall. This is Marshall. We had to lure him with a treat. If you're listening on Apple or Spotify, thank you. You can't see Marshall, but he's sitting here in between us. He may or may not be licking his wiener. He's doing inappropriate things. But on this show, if you're new, we talk about pinball mostly. We talk about music sometimes. and kind of our goal with this show is to get you to start playing pinball and especially competitive pinball. That's our main mission is to grow participation in competitive pinball and just to make you play pinball. You should just start playing pinball. But eventually we'd love for you to play in a league or play in some tournaments and we're going to try to help guide you on the way there. Yeah. But we also talk about other things in life once in a while. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And our dog, Marshall, likes to join in the fun. Yeah. Marshall sits here sometimes. He walks away. He's questioning it right now. He's not sure. He's just mad because I said quit licking your wiener. Yeah. And there he goes again. On this episode, we've got a couple updates. We have an association called the Punk Rock Pinball Association. the prpa the prpa and now we have the wprpa yes we do right yeah and what is that it's the women's punk rock pinball association which by the way you forgot that last p on your facebook post oh my god it's all right it's all right i'm being nitpicky but i'm gonna edit it right it's a wprpa and it is the ladies only. So a lot of people are like, well, why do you need a ladies only pinball association or group or scoring like a leaderboards? And I'll tell you why. It is to encourage more women to come and play pinball because believe it or not, it is male dominated. So it isn't that ladies can't compete with the guys because there are plenty of ladies and plenty of ladies that we know that can kick some ass no matter who they're playing. But this is really just to create a friendly space for more women to feel comfortable in playing pinball. Yeah, that's the thing. Anytime John Youssi something posted about like women's, because the WPRPA, we have like a women's leaderboard. Brand new. And IFPA also has a women's division and a women's leaderboard. And inevitably, when posts are made about that in certain groups, there's always a couple of dudes like, why do women need their own thing? I don't get it. Well, it's because you're a guy and you don't get it. It's because you're a guy and you don't get it. it's because some women might prefer right to just come and play competitively just against other women and to hang around with other women right yeah i mean i'm a man so i i don't fully understand i don't i'm not going to speak for it because i don't know but my assumption is and if I were a woman I may rather just play the women's tournaments and not have to be around a bunch of dudes yeah you don't need to I mean the open for everybody tournaments are super fun and most people are very kind hearted and helpful and whatever but the ladies tournaments are just different and they're equally as fun I'm not going to say one is more fun than the other but it's just like a different kind of fun. And it is, um, kind of in a lot of ways, like less pressure and, um, yeah, just like more inclusive, more supportive, even more friendly. I don't want to say that the open tournaments are not friendly or inclusive. It's just more and ladies are competitive, that's for sure. But it's just a different vibe. And it's just like a more welcoming place. And I think especially for new people. And for some ladies, it can be intimidating to play with, I don't know, bigger groups. It's usually a smaller group. And it's a great way to learn and encourage and get better and gain confidence. And it's not like we don't want to go play against the guys either because we do that too right some do some don't yeah and because yeah it's not really like oh men have a huge advantage in skill like there are plenty of women that are everybody as good as as many of the men like the wisconsin state chip state champion for open is is a lady a 19 year old gal yeah and she's also the women's champion but she's open champion but like the the open pinball tournaments i mean it is like male dominated in terms of the the demographic there at the place it's usually i mean if you have a 10 mix of women players like that's pretty good so maybe if you know old guy that's commenting like maybe if you went to tournaments and it was you know if you flip it and if every pinball tournament was like 90 women and 10 dudes maybe you'd want one that was like just dudes yeah i mean the thing is is if it was 90 women and 10 dudes the dudes that don't get it wouldn't be there yeah but whatever it's like i just feel like it's a space for the ladies to have their own thing. And I think that's great. And now we have it here in the Punk Rock Pinball Association. Super fun. So if you want to see that leaderboard, you can go to our website, punkrockpinball.com. And up in the main menu, there's a button for the leaderboard and there's a drop down there. You can click like the main leaderboard or the women's leaderboard. So cool. Thank you, Nick Greenup. Thank you, Nick, for making that happen really fast. Kat Davis is currently number one on both she's number one on both she's our proper whore she's tied with Shelly for number one in the women's but probably not after today we'll see because we have a tournament this afternoon and Shelly's in Florida I think unless they sneak in Dad I'll call you back in a minute unless Joe and Shelly sneak in Joe just got a friend, Joe Sharp, he just got tied for fifth down at the Pinball at the Beach tournament. That's so cool to watch last night. Yeah. I mean, just so awesome. It was super cool. He had some really epic comeback victories and in the quarterfinal or semi, it was kind of the semifinal, he down to the last match, he had to win that to force a playoff and he did win it. Congratulations, Joe. He's cool under pressure. Representing our Central Illinois scene. Last bit on the PRPA before we go into our topic. And our main topic today is going to be about scenes, like different scenes. Like maybe you have a punk scene, like a music scene, you have a pinball scene. if you've got a bowling scene, how scenes and why scenes grow and why most of the time they die. We're going to talk about that. Okay. But the other Punk Rock Pinball Association update is that coming very soon, we're going to have localized leaderboards. What? Yeah. So every kind of individual seen throughout the country will have their own leaderboard on the website so you can see how you're ranking locally. That's super cool. So this is a little bit of a different take than how the IFPA does it. So IFPA is really done by state. And this is going to be, like you said, set up by scene. So it could be a city. Yep. It could be a state and maybe a smaller population, a state with a smaller population. Yeah. But there could also be several scenes in one state. Like. Yeah, it's all based on like kind of the player base and like kind of like central Illinois, for example, will be a scene. And that's going to include all of our tournaments that happen in Peoria. They happen in Champaign. They have been here in Bloomington. Those are all Central Illinois. Like Peoria and Champaign aren't that close together, but we're all kind of in this little triangle down here. If there were tournaments in Springfield, they would also be Central Illinois. I think what's really cool, too, is we're not looking at state lines. So in talking with Nick from the Kansas City area, Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas City, Kansas, you're going to be a scene together, Like you live every day, basically, in one larger metro area. And even like the Quad Cities that go across state lines, or even St. Louis, the St. Louis area with Atomic on the east side of the Mississippi and Illinois, like that should be one scene. Those are all players that play together on the regular. Yeah, that's the kind of wild thing. Like if you play at Atomic, that is in Illinois. so if you play a ton of tournaments at atomic which is it's a cross of order from st louis it's it's it's st louis more or less uh but you're earning illinois ifpa points so if you're the kick-ass player down there you're going to end up playing the illinois state championships and i think if you were really doing it by what the scene is you'd probably play in the missouri state championships it's closer to being missouri than it is illinois so we do have some folks signed up down the st louis area and if atomic were to sign up and do prpa tournaments they would be in the st louis scene which would include stuff in missouri and in illinois yep um like you said the quad cities like they're going to be grouped with the folks up over there in iowa on that part of the state. We'll have our central Illinois. Places like Montana is probably going to be Montana. Our buddy, Seth, he runs tournaments there. We have a couple people from Canada. For starters, Canada is probably going to be Canada. I thought we were going to break it up. We might break it up, but maybe by province. Yeah, or city. Or city. so those might be but like down here you're not going to have a bloomington scene and a peoria scene because it's all all of the players here from bloomington to champagne we all play against each other all the time so that's our scene yep we got to figure out like chicago chicagoland need to figure that out because i'm tempted to just do central illinois and northern illinois because there are some in chicago there's some in chicago suburbs well let us know what you guys think. Yeah. I'm thinking Central Illinois, Northern Illinois, and if somebody starts running them in Carbondale, they can do Southern Illinois. Well, we'll see how it grows. But even if we had Southern Illinois, Atomic would still go with St. Louis, because I think half of those players live in Missouri. I think so, too. They all play together. So that will be the scenes. That's coming very soon. I don't know exactly when, but probably within a couple two, three weeks. very soon. Nick is a madman Nick is a madman with a plan Yeah Thank you Nick Yes Yeah so our topic we can get into our topic of the day Okay. So, scenes. We're talking about scenes. I just talked about the scene leaderboards. But we have, I think about scenes, the first thing that comes to mind is like the punk scene that I grew up in. Mm-hmm. In the very early 1990s. And you had one too, and ours were different. Because we had one kind of in Crystal Lake, and we had one in Elgin, Illinois. Which were kind of one. It was like Northwest suburban punk scene. You guys had like Downers Grove had a thing. Modern times, I think about our pinball scene here. And they're very similar where it's like there is a core group of people that participate and make this happen. You know, like up in our northwest suburban punk scene, we had like shows in Glenn Porter's garage. And a fellow named Brian Ashley Peterson, he would book these random VFW halls throughout Elgin. so like brian and glenn were kind of key like main drivers of facilitating like shows to happen and then you had all the people that were in the bands that played the shows and we had a group of people i don't know like between 150 and 300 people depending on where it was and it's you have your show it's almost always mostly the same people a crop of bands it's mostly a mix of different bands or different people in different bands and that just grew because we kept doing it and and you had a supportive group that participated i know it's kind of wild to think about like how all of that happened without facebook groups or the internet or cell phones yeah like it just happened yeah isn't that Wild. Yeah, there's a Facebook group. I can't remember what it's called. Sometimes people will share flyers. And the flyers we would make for these shows, you would write on a piece of paper, and then you'd cut out clip art things, and you'd tape it and glue it all together. Then you'd take it to whatever the copy store was of the day, and you'd Xerox a bunch of copies and then tape those up all over wherever you could. Hand out flyers. Yeah. Physical piece of paper. And that's how you got the word out. Mm-hmm. But what's crazy with these scenes, and maybe your experience is the same, like, none of it was, like, calculated or planned. It just happened. It just happened. Well, and it's funny because, I guess, I know you're kind of pulling this into, like, the pinball scene, but, yeah, it does take this group of, like, doers, like the organizers, and like having the spark of an idea and not just having an idea, but actually acting on it and like having some initiative to like take some steps to make it happen. And you just need that one person is kind of like the first light on a, like if you're lighting a matchbook, like they're the first spark. And then it all, if you have a healthy scene, everyone shows up and participates and has a good time and talks about it and wants to do it again. Yeah. It's kind of like creating a movement. Yeah. And it was all like really DIY. And so much of our pinball stuff is, too, because, I mean, there's not like corporate money funneling to any of this. And like, so typically like in our Crystal Lake scene, like Glenn would be like, I'm going to have a show in my garage on this date. Would you guys play? I'm like, yeah, we'll play. And then we had a friend, Jeff Sorley, who's like kind of good at artwork, really good at artwork. So like, let's have Jeff draw the flyer, you know? And like, I don't know if we've ever paid Jeff. If we did, it was like 10 bucks, you know, we're teenagers. but like you know some kid in the scene knows how to do art so he'll make the flyer and then like oftentimes a lot of our shows like josh and our band he would he would like take it to make the copies i know josh did that a lot he went and got the copies made cool and then he'd have big stack flyers and give them out to everybody and he'd go tape them up and there's Outside of the technology, at least what we have here for pinball is very punk rock in that way, where Joe and Shelly are having a tournament at their house. They have tournaments at our house. These are like the garage shows. Totally. Yeah, and you have going to shows back in the day. someone was always like taking pictures or videoing it and now we've got live streaming and um and that piece of it too which is and that a lot of times those are different people or someone's taking the reins to do that and play at the same time yeah it is super diy and it's when you think about how scenes grow i think the like our pinball scene in the in the punk scenes is also very similar in that back in the in the 90s days like if i met somebody like if i went over to downers grove if i went to a show down there and i met someone i'd be like oh you know well we have shows at this vfw and elgin like your band should come play and then you kind of start to merge these scenes and they become bigger and that brings me to how we kind of met joe and shelly where we were playing um cj's tournaments at night shop here and i think somehow he had mentioned them and we heard about like there's these house tournaments so it's it was all very like word of mouth and then it happened on Facebook but it was like word of mouth by meeting somebody like you meet somebody in person you find out you have like a shared kind of mutual interest or passion and then I learned oh they have these and then I saw Shelly post it and I said can we come we're Brewers fans even though I was a Brewers fan I am a Brewers fan they let us come that's so nice so like the way they spread the way they grow it's word of mouth it's people meeting people telling them like hey these things that you like happen over here too you should come right yeah totally and it's yeah totally totally and that i think is like the like the name punk rock pinball like that it is kind of like a nod to those those days yeah it isn't about it isn't about having a mohawk or wearing plaid pants or like whatever it has nothing to do with that it really is about the spirit yes and the um the community yes 100 like i don't give a shit what kind of music you listen to and it isn't like how crazy can you be or chaos it's more it's i think for for us like growing up in these small like kind of punk scenes it's the community it's being inviting people in organizing things making things happen creating like a special atmosphere for your community and growing that and to me like that's punk. Totally. That's punk. Yeah, it's funny because the pinball thing, there are a lot of parallels and maybe you could say that about any hobby probably. But it is very similar where you could meet someone from a different scene and then you chat for a little bit and you realize you know a couple of the same people and then all of a sudden like your little network just got a little bit bigger yeah this actually makes me think of yesterday at um portillo's okay i was going through portillo's drive-thru you went to portillo's yesterday i did yeah i offered to buy some for jeff he declined but i'm in their drive-thru and i see a bumper sticker on the car in front of me said i'd rather be playing pinballs at boss battle games where's that i don't know their license plate is Indiana. I didn't do it. I should have done it. I damn near got out of my car. Oh, my God. And went and knocked on their window and said, hey, I'm going over to our pinball club right now. Do you want to come check it out? And I should have done that. That would have been punk. I was I was out at that point. But I strongly consider getting out of my car and like walking up to theirs and knocking on their window. Hey, you want to play some pinball? Do you want to come play some pinball right now? Because I'm going over there. Oh, my God. I wish you would have done that. That probably could have helped grow our scene, so I missed an opportunity. But they were from Indiana? It's an Indiana license plate. We'll have to be on the lookout. What kind of car was that? What kind of car was that? It's a Toyota Corolla, white one. Okay, let me see it. Okay. All right, I'd rather be playing pinball. Yeah, bro. At Boss Battle Games. So we'll have to find out about Boss Battle Games. uh yeah i didn't mean to derail it there but it made me think about yeah about taking that picture that's pretty awesome because like growing the scene like because ours down here and i feel like up up in the punk scene up there we didn't grow the scene like hundreds at a time it was like one by two by one by three like you meet these three people now they're in it yeah and then you just kind of feel like you When you do meet some new people and bring them in or you have a little bit of overlap of a scene, you're like, okay, you're cool. I know your people. Yeah. You're cool. Yeah. So I think that's a good summary of how do they grow. Yeah, they grow by people. It's not just one person. I think it doesn't work if it's just one person doing it. Right. It's a house of cards because if something happens to that person, it all folds, right? Yeah. So it has to be something that like there's a group of people who are passionate and interested in doing. Yeah. And yeah, and just participating. Participating at some sort of a level. Some people are going to go a little bit deeper than others and that's totally okay. Yeah. So like if you're in an active scene of any kind, maybe it's a pinball scene, maybe it is a music scene. Those are the two scenes I'm familiar with, like in my life, and I'm not too familiar with any other ones. How can you help your scene? How can you make your scene grow? It is by when you're out in the world or even online. and if John Youssi somebody like posting something or if you encounter somebody that you maybe you go to a restaurant John Youssi some folks that like they look like they'd be into your thing maybe you start talking to them and you tell them you invite them in so if you're part of the scene and if you're not one of the doers that's like actively organizing the events then like your job if you want it to continue to exist and to grow is to one when events happen in your scene go to them right support them and also when events happen in your scene like share them with anybody that you think might want to go like as a just a if you're like a passive member in in a community you can amplify that by sharing it on social media by commenting on posts if I'm in the Philly music scene there's a local show coming up next week I can share that they got a good scene in Philly they did it one time I haven't kept up but the Philly scene was really hopping there for a while well it funny because last I don know what day it was Maybe it was on league night I just took a little video of Funhaus just blinking its lights, looking all cool. And I put it on my stories. And I was really surprised at the engagement that I got from people who aren't pinballers. Or at least, like, we don't play pinball with them. I mean, everybody plays pinball at some point in their life, I guess. But I had a couple really old friends reach out saying, oh, my God, I love Funhaus. That is the best game. One of my friends who lives in New Jersey, he wrote me and said, oh, I had a Funhaus. He had a recording studio and he had a Funhaus. No, Earthshaker. He had an Earthshaker in there. And he's like, I grew up with it. We had it at the recording studio and they got really good at it. But Funhaus is his wife's favorite. And I was like, well, fun fact, same designer. And he said, oh, my God, I have a type. I had no idea. The Lottler guy? The Lottler guy. So just doing something as simple as that, you just never know who you're going to attract. And the one thing about, like you said, the pinball scene is that we can always use more people. Yeah, because the pinball scene is maybe even more niche and underground than punk. Oh, my God, completely. It's so niche. It's tiny. so like invite people in like that's i mean if you're in like a pinball community or scene like invite people in is the number one thing you could do oh well and i guess you could say that about any scene that you're in if you're in in uh i don't know insert hobby here invite more people in some have a higher barrier of entry yeah i'm just thinking about my weaving yeah i like to weave that just that's takes a lot to get into that hobby you have to learn a lot you got to learn a lot it takes like there's a lot of equipment involved and all that kind of stuff but like pinball you don't need anything you just need to show up and have some quarters in your pocket yep does your friend want to buy an earth shaker because i think jeff might sell his he lives in new jersey okay that could be shipped i i think he has one or he had one okay maybe he needs another one well he loves it i'll ask him i don't think he's i don't think he listens to the podcast but shoot i'll ask him yeah so yeah participate attend share invite that's how you grow it but how and why because most scenes especially these underground kind of diy scenes most of them either die or like evolve to something else and why like what are the main drivers of this was once like the the flourishing community like pinball community now it's gone i mean there's a huge punk scene here now it's gone i feel like drama yeah drama i mean it happens in everything Like, remember when I did roller derby for a while? Yeah. Drama. Yeah, because did like a whole league kind of break up in this band? Yeah, a whole league broke up and like an offshoot happened. It was just like a mess. It was like, I don't, I guess that's just kind of what happens when it isn't super organized, maybe. Yeah, and a lot of these things aren't super structured or organized. And that's the way they were created and formed because people start doing stuff and things just grow. So there's not like a head of the Central Illinois pinball scene. There's not like a CEO of the Northwest Suburbs punk scene to ensure that it's staying on the right track. No. So it's like the group of people, like, yeah, like if there's, I think in a lot of scenes you will get, inevitably as it grows, there will be a handful, usually a very small number of people that just don't really contribute any kind of positivity to it. Yeah. And will, like, complain about most things about it. Yeah. And then I think they can sort of become a cancer to like color the opinions of different people about different things. That's one of the ways like a scene can die. Like, well, they're doing this and it should be like that. And it's like, maybe you should talk to that person that's doing this that you want to have be that. You should talk to them and maybe express that and get involved and make the change that you want to see. Yeah. You know? Yeah, it's easy. Well, that's what I meant earlier in saying that to have the idea is one thing, but to take initiative to actually do it is a whole different thing. And sometimes things work and sometimes they don't, right? But you got to give it a shot. And also after you do something, it's like Monday morning quarterbacking. Yeah. Is that it? Yeah. You know, it's really easy to criticize or do a postmortem on how something happened. Yeah. But you don't know that when you go into it. So you got to like apply those learnings and do better. Yeah, it kind of made me think of our friend that made a Facebook post. I'm not going to name them. But they made a post about how they were at one time very critical of some tournaments at a certain location. like they would publicly express sometimes very harsh criticism of like either the machines or the tournament or how these things go at this location and that individual said to the other one the tournament director the tournament director said to this person you should try running your own and they did they did run their own and they made a post just last week saying like i have a new appreciation for their tournaments there because i ran my own i ran my own league and it it's a lot it's a lot so but i think a lot of times when the when a scene is is growing and it would happen in our punk scene like different people would start doing shows because maybe they didn't like Brian Ashley Peterson shows for XYZ reason. Drama. Drama. And then you'd have like, it would split into a bunch of different venues and a bunch of different like sub-clicks of the thing and it ultimately, a lot of the punk scene stuff was just kind of all grew and moved. But usually the people that were the most critical of like how certain people did shows they would do their own show and most of the time it would be a shit show and then they would be like oh shit and they would do one they would would quit so i think we need to be i think careful and measured in in our criticisms of over the people in our communities that are like doing the most not that you can't criticize because because criticism can can lead to improvements it can be constructive it can be constructive but criticizing and then just bashing are kind of two different areas yeah because and if you want to criticize i would implore you to like go to the person whether it's like a show promoter in your area or a tournament director or an organization that hosts multiple tournaments and if you think oh we need to do these kind of formats or these kind of tournaments just take that to them and try to to help be part of the change that you want to see rather than bashing it and then like saying things publicly and getting other people to be like yeah those tournaments suck or yeah and i would also say that like it goes both ways if you are an organizer and somebody comes to you and says hey Have you thought about this? Or it might be cool to do that or whatever. The idea might be like, be open to hearing it. Yeah. Because there's two sides of that coin. You could come and say like, hey, I have got this idea or have you ever thought about doing it things, you know, this tournament that way or whatever the idea may be. and if someone feels like they're kind of the master of the scene yeah or that that event which i mean i get you put a lot of time into it it's a lot of work to pull off an event um but you also like you need in order for it to work you need you need folks to come forward and share ideas and you also need people who are in perceived positions of power. I say perceived, but people who are running it and organizing it to be open to hearing that. Yeah, that's a very good point. That's a very good point. Yeah, because if you're one of the main doers, like if you are a promoter of punk rock shows in a certain area, and maybe there's something that's stupid about all your shows, and you have people come to you and say, like, this thing about your shows needs to change. Like, maybe it's you always have six bands on the bill on a Thursday night. It should be three or four. And if you're just like, no, there's going to be six, well, inevitably what's going to happen is people are going to stop coming. Yeah, you have to, like, listen to your customers. You have to listen to your customers and listen to your community members. I couldn't think up the name. because I was going to use a gendered name and I didn't want to. But, yeah, listen to the individuals in your community because even if you are a super successful promoter of rock shows in an area but half of your community feels a certain way about it, like a bad way and you don't change it, that will be gone. And so, yeah, your thing is successful now, but if you don't listen to your community, then you need to structure your events and your activities so that they please and support the community in the way that they expect. Yeah, because it's like, well, yeah, whether it's a music thing or a pinball thing, it is about the community. So, yeah, you have to. And if someone brings forward an idea or suggestion, it can't be done. Maybe explain that, too. so it doesn't seem like it just is on deaf ears. But then again, some people who are organizing things, and I'm not thinking of anyone specifically, but sometimes when there are people who are organizing things, it's like their way or the highway. And I feel like they are not community builders, and they're not the builders of scenes. Yeah. If you're a your way or the highway person and you have a community, it's not going to last very long. Because it's not a community. Because, no, it's a U-unity. U-unity. It's a U-unity, not a community. No. It's a U-unity. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think another thing, and this is the real tricky situation on how do you handle this. We had a way to handle this. But a lot of scenes die because most scenes revolve around, scenes in communities, they revolve around like a space where your activities take place. Yeah. And the space usually becomes like iconic, like you had the Fireside Bowl in Chicago. You had McGregor's in Elmhurst where we had the All Ages shows on Sundays. we had like Turner's Club in Elgin you had Glen Porter's Garage like these were the sacred spaces where we did our scene things right? and like with our pinball thing here like it's been tough because we had the tournaments at Night Shop and Night Shop went down you had it then at Gone Social and Purion that went down that moved to Landmark Lanes and that went away and this happens especially in like real niche communities because nothing that we're doing is like profitable no so there's no business that can just come in and be like i'm gonna have a punk venue right here i'm gonna make a million dollars no and i'm right next to them and have a pinball venue and make a million dollars like because punk and pinball are not profitable no so the challenge for us is the space Mm So what we did was we made one Well, what we did was, and Joe and Shelly, is we opened our houses. Yeah. Is what we did. Yeah. To keep it alive and keep bringing these awesome people together and share fun times playing pinball together. And then we decided to take a leap of faith and control our destiny and open up the training facility, aka HQ. Yeah. So, yeah, we started it like our own little club for our community here. And other people have that. They have that already up around Chicago and Buffalo. They've got a deal. So that's one thing you can do. you can like have a group of folks and like make the space and it's real challenging in music especially these days where all the mid-sized venues like live nation is buying them all up like they're eating them alive and buying them all up suck and then the the small little indie venues are just really having a hard time like their rents are all going up they have like crazy insurance they have to have uh so many areas where these venues were in cities are being like gentrified and so your rent was this now it's five times so that it's a big challenge and it's one that's super difficult to address and and have a playbook on how to fix that unless there's somebody in your community with like financial means to make it happen especially for venues and that i mean that's been a problem with like punk but like punk communities forever is like you have this awesome venue and then it went away like mcgregor's was like a thing everybody went there every sunday and then like then it's gone now where and then okay brian's got his stuff in like elgin and that went for a long time but like inevitably like you just lose access to this space and then you have to keep finding new spaces and i and you don't have the internet and you're trying to communicate it to everybody and like where is it now it starts to fizzle yeah you can't you start to like lose people because they don't know yeah yeah it's not easy so yeah these pinball communities are really special if you've got someone in your area that is doing something like go even if you're tired go support it even if it's just hanging out or sharing it on um on facebook sharing the event on facebook like just you know help help support your scene yeah and if we're telling this specifically to pinball this takes me to like participating in tournaments and and just in the last six months I've seen I don't know six to ten different posts of this pinball place is closing and this pinball place is closing and this pinball place is closing because pinball is not a profitable business like a pinball location is not a financially viable business at all no it's very expensive and the break one of the main things you can do to help them is if they have like a monthly tournament, that is like their biggest day every month. It's the busiest day every month. If you have a local space that has a monthly tournament and you're in any way, shape, or form able to go participate in that tournament, you should go if you want it to continue to exist. If they have a league, you should be playing in their league. If it's a little far for the league and they have a monthly tournament, you absolutely should go to every monthly tournament that you can. If you want there to be monthly tournaments for you to be able to play, you need to go to those and you need to share those. You need to get other people to go to those. Unless you just want to continue to see around the country, like this pinball place went out of business and this pinball place went out of business. If you're part of the community, you need to attend as many of those as you can. you need to try to pull in others to bring one friend yeah just a friend bring in one friend this year one new person this year if everybody did that yeah just one person not even a month just one person this year yeah if everybody brought in one if you look at like our biggest tournament at HQ we had 50 people if everybody brought in one there would be a hundred and we don't have room for 100. So I'd like to have that problem of figuring out how to make more room. Mm-hmm. You know? Well, we probably won't have to worry about it this month because it's like our psycho. Our psycho monthly tournament is on the 22nd, the Chris O'Brien Classic. Is it the 21st or 22nd? Oh, 21st. Sorry, Saturday the 21st. Five hours of match play qualifying. I think it's four hours of qualifying. I think it's five. It says on the thing four. Oh, then it's four. But it's a long qualifying. There's going to be a lot of IFPA tournaments or points on the line. Let's punk rock pinball points on the line, too, but there's going to be a lot of IFPA points on the line based because how many... Whoppers and Proppers? It's a Whopper and Proper Bonanza. I'm just going to verify the date and time. It is the 21st. It's the 21st, and it says here, we will compete four hours head-to-head match play for qualifying we'll have a papa style finals depending on how many players 8 12 16 or 20 into the finals and that will be the 21st that's at like it's going to be a hoot nanny what time does that start 1 p.m at the hq but yeah like and i'm not just saying like hey if you live around here you need to come to our tournaments you should you should come to our tournaments but anywhere you are like if you have a local pinball location that has a monthly tournament even if you're not any good at pinball but you want there to be pinball near you then you should go play their monthly tournament absolutely and if they're an establishment that sells food or drink you should go play their tournament and buy the food or the drink or both and that is like the number one thing you can do to make sure your pinball scene stays alive is to support the venues in your area that offer it to you amen you know yeah if you don't support the venues if you like go to one when it's convenient this is a small little tiny thing that doesn't make any money so if half the community just goes like when they kind of feel like it, it's not going to go. No. It's not going to go. Nope. So support your local pinball community and businesses that support your pinball community. Even those that different businesses I know give out prizes for the tournaments and that kind of stuff, go patronize those people. Yeah. Yeah. We need more prizes. We've got to hit up some businesses around for some prizes. I was just thinking about that. And I was just thinking, I don't know where the prizes are for the tournament today. They're in your car. Okay. You know who we need to hit up? I don't know if anybody's watching this, but we do have some local people watch this. Like Red Raccoon Games. Oh, yeah. We need some prizes from Red Raccoon. We haven't asked them, and they haven't said no, so I'm not really putting the heat on them. I'm just saying it's a cool spot. Yeah, it is a cool spot. It's a cool, like... And they've got a pinball machine. It's a cool mom-and-pop shop. It's a mom-and-pop shop. It's a mom-and-pop shop. We love those. They have a pinball machine based on a D&D. Yep. Red Raccoon, they sell like Pokemon and they do like all the tabletop. We didn't even talk about Pokemon. Like board games and stuff. Well, Pokemon was teased. We'll get to Pokemon next week. It's going to be all Pokemon all the time. I'll wear my hat. Yeah. Maybe I'll get the Pikachu hat back. We'll have our Poke hats next week. Probably we will have seen it by then, I think. Yeah. We're missing the media day. We're missing the media day. Thank you, Stern, for inviting us to the Pokemon media day. And we wish we could make it. It's my fault. It's Stephanie's fault. I had too much work. And, like, we don't have anybody here to watch Marshall either. I mean, we can figure that out. But Steph has to go to Milwaukee. I got to go to Milwaukee. For work. Boo. Boo. but yeah i think i think that was a good something let us know what you think in the comments below about like what kind of scenes did you grow up with or what kind of scenes and communities are you in now and like what makes them thrive what makes them die what do you think yeah we probably missed something i'm sure we did because as usual we're just winging it kevin drink we're just wearing this like we just had this topic and we just we didn't even discuss it really beforehand. We just said, do you want to talk about this topic? Yeah, sure. And then here we did. We winged it. Marshall was mad as hell. Marshall doesn't even like it. He doesn't want to participate in any community. No, he's antisocial. He's just sleeping under Led Zeppelin. So on the video, if you're watching on the video, there's just an empty red chair in between us. What's that for? There's a dog that's supposed to be there. He's not. He's not doing his job as usual. He's not doing his job. Dang it. So Thank you for listening and making it this far. If you did, if you're on the Apples or the Spotifys, give us a review. If it's going to be like five stars, it's going to be like three. Don't do it. If it's three, then email Mike at livefromtherockroom.com and tell him what your issue is. Tell me what I can do to become a five-star podcast in your opinion. Yeah, some constructive criticism. Yes. Give me some direct feedback. And any feedback for me can also go to, you can direct that to Mike. Yeah, any feedback for Stephanie, send to me. Feedback for me, you can send to me. I'll take it. All feedback will be considered. He reads every email. I do. Yeah, I know. I read them all. I know you do. And we've got to go. We've got to skedaddle. To Poor Bros, Poor Cade. Blow no. In Bloomington, Illinois for an IFPA and PRPA monthly tournament on Super Bowl Sunday. It's 2.44 p.m. Who are you predicting is going to win the Super Bowl? I guess the Seahawks. Are they the ones that are supposed to win? I don't know. I have no idea. I hate football. There's no Bears. I just like the Bears. I don't like it. No Bears, no cares. I love that. Okay. Do you think, last thing, are you predicting that our friends Joe and Shelly, who were just at Pinball on the Beach, are going to end up at Porbros today? I wouldn't put it past them. I know nothing of their travel plans. Me either. But I'm going to say no. Okay. That's good for us. My prediction, we'll recap this next week. Did Joe and Shelly make it to Porbros after playing all weekend at Pinball at the Beach in Florida? My vote is they will not. Okay. But I wouldn't be shocked if they did. I know. Is this for a dollar? Are you saying they are? I was just asking. Okay. I wouldn't be surprised. Okay. But I, too, do not know their travel schedule. Yeah, I don't know. They might be tired. Because there are direct flights from down there to Peoria. Yeah, I know. So they could. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. Nor would I. But if I'm betting, like if this is a dollar bet against Kevin, my bet's on they're not. Okay. And I hope not because I can pass Joe for number two. All right. Well, he won't see this. Yeah. Until Monday. Yeah. So. So hopefully you don't show up, Joe, and I pass you for number two on the PRPA leaderboard. I probably won't catch Kat because she's going to be there. My dollar says Kat will be there. Oh, yeah. She's planning. Okay. Well, she has like a flat tire or something and I hope she doesn't. Hope she shows up. Yeah, if the cat's not there, there's a problem. Yeah, then you know we've got to send out the rescue party. Like a tragedy has happened. So the cat will be there. The cat will be there. Okay, I think that's good. I think that's a wrap on this one. That's all we got. That's all we got. Toodaloo. Bye.