Sunday, pinfolk, or whatever day you're listening. This is NYC Pin Pod, in which a panel talks location pinball in New York City and nearby surrounding areas. My name is Benjamin Furiga. My initials are BCF. And after the way the playoffs have gone this past week, I'm trying to figure out if I can get Eric Sweetland a 10-day contract with the Knicks. My name is Eric Sweetland. My initials are HIP. And I'm a pinball tournament director in New York City. My name is Kevin Murray. My initials have traditionally been ZZZ. I help run the Red Hook Pinball Museum. Hi, everybody. I'm Wesley Michalski. My initials are WVM, and I am also one of the co-operators at the Red Hook Pinball Museum. On this week's pod, the last of this season, in ball one, we'll run down local competition results as usual. In Ball 2, we'll have updates and a bullet journal. And in Ball 3, we'll talk with Kevin and Wesley about the Red Hook Pinball Museum and what's to come with their operation. Let's get started. Let's talk about competitive pinball results in New York City. Last Sunday, May 18th, the Pinberg Satellite, Buttermilk and Roulos, was convened at two bars that usually open at 5 o'clock. but it started at two doors opened at one it was eight rounds of match play the top eight players went to the finals the winner got a big number not sure what it was because they did not have full entry entry in the tournament got everybody a raffle ticket earning tickets was possible by advancing farther into the tournament by getting into the finals and getting into later rounds of the finals, presumably, the raffle winner got a ticket to Pinberg after all those eight rounds and eight players whittled down to four. Alberto Santana came out on top. Dante Oliva came in second. Sean Grant, third. And Adam Kane, fourth. I'm pleased to say that I'm not pleased for any of those four gents because I like them all quite fine. But I am pleased to say that in the Collider's chat on Monday morning, I woke to a message that said, Jess, I saw that you won the Pinburgh ticket. Congratulations. And there was a photo from JLW, Jess Warren, holding the Pinburgh ticket in the Collider's chat. each of the top four received a pass to another pinball event. That's right. And I don't recall exactly how they were distributed because the one that I do remember is that Adam Kane got a spot in Pin Pride. Oh, cool. On Monday, May 19th, the finals of Pinball NYC's left orbit and left in-lane division were held. My New York City Flipper Sport Association played the Mutants as the virtual home team at Jack Bar and won 10-6. Back-to-back victories for our association. It was a great night. In the left-in lane playoffs, the Deluxe Horses visited virtual home team the Aristocrats at solid state and the aristocrats won nine to seven to become the champions of the left in lane congratulations to the aristocrats and on tuesday in the right orbit playoffs the ball drainers faced danger danger at arcade brooklyn with a round four comeback danger danger claimed the trophy. Also on Tuesday, in the right in-lane playoffs, we Butterballers played virtual hosts to the replays at Scrapplelands. And the Butterballers also are now back-to-back champions in the right in-lane. Yeah. After a 9-3 win. Yeah. Did everybody stick around and play more games? I hope. There's so many games. We did play for a little bit before we boogie it out. I'll talk more about that in ball two. On Wednesday, 18 players came out to Scrapple Land for the second qualifying week of Scrapple League's second season under the direction of Greg Pavarelli with several assistants. I wasn't able to make it this week because of work. They played five rounds of match play with IFPA scoring and the goal of garnering as many points as they can for their series total. Nint Who got the most points this week with 28. Evan Seftai got 27. Sorry if I mispronounced your name, Evan. Greg Pavarelli, Adam Kane, Robert Gagno, and Mike Pantino all picked up 25 points. Not sure of the stats on the side pot this week, but I can see that the top four people with the dollar sign label were Nint, Evan, Greg, and Mike. On Thursday, May 22nd, 27 players gathered at Jack Bar for No Bro Presents Thursday Night Strikes. It was back to one player at a time. And this time, Ian Leone took the night in 11 rounds with only one strike to his name. Wes Ulfig came in second. Travis Rosenberg and Greg Fertel tied for third and got through nine rounds of the maze. Next week, and we'll go a little farther into the future too, but next week on Wednesday, May 28th, Scrapple League Season 2's third meeting will be convened at pinball 8 o'clock at Scrapple Land in Greenpoint. on Thursday, May 29th, No Bro Presents Thursday Night Strikes will be convened at Jack Bar. I imagine, I believe, I cannot confirm based on any calendar thing that I have found, but I believe that South Slope Pinball League's third season of 2025 will be convened that same night at pinball 8 o'clock. The Jack Bar, the Thursday Night Strikes, you better be there at 8 o'clock. that happens sharp sunday june 1st at jack bar the stern army kong launch will be convened that is whatever the full king kong mystery island scenario name is whatever that is that it's the launch party for that so we're gonna be gone for a few months but you know, pretty much every week over the summer, you can go to Scrapple League at Scrapple Land on Wednesday nights at pinball 8 o'clock, right? Do you know of any break that is planned for Scrapple League, Eric? It'll just be, there'll be a like a break week that happens generally so that the first qualifying week of any season would be on the first Wednesday of a month. NoBo presents Thursday Night Strikes will be convened at 8 o'clock sharp at Jack Bar. It might be, if you walked in on the third Thursday of the month in any given week, or rather, in any given month, you would probably walk into a split flipper tournament, which isn't going to yield you any whoppers. You can also, for most Thursdays, in between now and then, I imagine, play the South Slope Pinball League at Buttermilk. at pinball eight o'clock gebhard's has on the match play calendar a summer tuesday nights at 7 30 i don't i don't know much about it i didn't look at what the format was or anything but it seems like every tuesday night at gebhard's at 7 30 over the summer there you go while we're gone monthly you can expect no bro slap tism at jack bar in williamsburg that tends to be the second Sunday of the month. At Rulo's and Buttermilk and Park Slope, you can expect South Slope Strikes, which is usually on a Saturday. And it probably depends somewhat on just the availability of the Saturdays or what other big tournaments might be happening. You can also, at those two venues or potentially between those two venues, expect RWI. You're invited. On Sundays, that will be scheduled based on local tournament availability. Typically, I think that, you know, I think Jess tries to avoid the first Sunday because someone sort of has a thing every month then, which happens to be Tommy Ortega's Silver Ball Sundays, the first Sunday of the month at Single Cut Beersmith Queens in Astoria. These are all things that you can expect once a month, just like you can expect those other things we just talked about once a week. I went looking for the one-offs that might be important, the things that are on the match play calendar, the things that are on the IFPA calendar, just to mention here because, you know, we're not going to be back until the fall, right? We're going to come back maybe for a pinball NYC season, probably. So here are a few things that you might think about playing along the way. Obviously, on June 15th, Brooklyn Pin Pride registration will be on June 9th, Monday, noon. Monday, June 9th at noon. On Match Play. On Match Play. So matchplay.events. Matchplay.live slash pinpride2025. There you go. And as we will talk about at least once after this, on June 22nd, Red Hook's own hybrid monstrosity by the sea. will be convened at the Red Hook Pinball Museum at 228 Van Brunt in Red Hook, which is also the back of Seabourn, a really great cocktail bar. There are some travel opportunities this summer. It's summer. People go on vacation. I don't always love to travel, but I understand people go on vacation. If you wanted to travel, you know, but not go terribly far, I went and looked for some things that might be in the Northeast that might interest a pinball player of even modest means to enjoy a weekend away or some such. You could find yourself at Stomp in Rochester the weekend of June 6th, and there are a ton of different opportunities for two different kinds of tournaments that you can play in that weekend. it seems like if you go up to the Rochester Pinball Collective. And man, is that collection good. As I may or may not talk about momentarily, Pinmania will be the last weekend in June at Arcadia in Portland, Maine. If you happen to be Jess Warren or have pre-registered, you could go to Pinberg the weekend of July 24th. The Beast will be convened just the next weekend in Buffalo, I believe at Pocketeer Billiards again. The Rock Fantasy Summer Open is actually scheduled for summer, and sometimes the Rock Fantasy seasonal opens, that's actually a really big accomplishment. Sometimes they have the fall in January or whatever, But this time, they are having the summer open on August 9th at Rock Fantasy, Middletown, New York. When I said before, someone of modest means, like if you can split a zip car for the cost of a zip car for a day with three other people and afford less than $20 entry fee and less than $20 coin drop, you could go play in that tournament at a super cool record store in the exurbs in the Hudson Valley. While I was looking at all of that, I came across this one thing that I just think is worthy of mention. I set the match play calendar on like the New York City region and looked at everything and I set and you know, the couple of New York regions and I set the IFPA calendar on like 300 miles from New York City or something like that. And the best tournament name that I found on the IFPA calendar was God Damn That Demoman Left Ramp Anyway in Wheaton, Maryland on July 18th. As of May 23rd, 2025, there are 303 pinball machines in New York City at 81 public locations. Thanks to the creators and users of Pinball Map for this data, here are machine updates from the past week. On Sunday, May 18th, user Spicy Mary was at Barcade Chelsea and played the Black Knight 2000. They said, right flipper keeps sticking. The A switch in war does not register plunger is very weak on monday user farm ball 150 played the fishtails at skylark and said many play the field lights stuck on and not responding to game condition totally playable but hard to know what to do next on tuesday may 20th user jns visited scrapple lands and left a couple of comments on their spider-man vault edition they said so great top five stern table of this century gameplay is peachy you can backhand doc ock color dmd plays friendly like coming home that spider-man is the spider-man i need to make it out there i've heard so many good things so i've not been and of king kong myth of terror island jnf said shit is fun On Wednesday, user SLPenza let us know that the Monsters at Bertie's has an out-of-order sign on it. On Thursday, user JNS went to Burger and Shake Co. in Harlem and left a couple of comments on the NASCAR there. First, they said, played fine, if a little soft. No flipper or multiball problems Replayed dumb low like 9 million And then afterwards they said got a replay a special and a match on one credit Sounds about right. Pretty good. On Friday, May 23rd, the shadow was removed from Gebhardt's beer culture on the Upper West Side. And a King Kong Myth of Terror Island was added to Gebhardt's beer culture. I know they have a Spectrum there, and that's a game I've been dying to play forever. It's awesome. I need to make it up there too. Yeah, that's a pretty cool one. Let's do a bullet journal. I want to start with last Thursday, even though I... So I partially have a boring bullet journal, but I also completely omitted this last week. Oh, yeah. Partially because we record on Fridays and, you know, it hadn't had time to sink in. and partially because I may or may not have had several drinks culminating in the shot of whiskey that you probably can see me take on YouTube if you go look at the NYC Pinball Twitch stream right before a game of The Walking Dead that I start at like 10.30 or 11 o'clock at night. But in that tournament, Zen Zokniak, who often sends me text updates, as you know if you listen to the show regularly, about what is happening in his team's pinball NYC matches, or if he had something cool go on at a tournament personally, so that we've got the information for the podcast. And when he and I were in the same playoff group while we were playing, I don't look at my phone, by and large, while I'm playing in a pinball tournament. I look when it's time to figure out what the next match is. But if I'm in a finals where I don't have to look at match play because someone chose the game, and so I just go play the game they chose. I don't look at my phone for the most part while I'm playing a pinball tournament. And Zen was texting me the whole time that he and I were playing round one together. He texted me this update about the match that we were playing at 8.16, just as we were starting the tournament. In a rare move, Zen deferred game choice in round one and then sent me a screenshot of the groups, one of which I am in with him and Billy Vazine and Zen Zokniak, and then immediately follows it with, Billy is pissed. At 8.42, he says, after a brief moment of insanity, Zen decides to get back in the bus and picks Walking Dead after a crushing loss. The best laid plans of mice and men, he continues at 9.21, and then sends me a text that says my first game after poor play and it is him having put his initials into the metallica on at buttermilk at 144 million points it's high score number two pretty good game two beat my last score at 144 958 which is just more than the previous score and follows with i guess i should have been on the metallica tour bus as the bus driver, if you recognize all of those bus references. The bus driver, of course, is the person who has the choice. Zen could have chosen every game in the round, but he deferred at least in the first game and unfortunately got his ass handed to him on Ghostbusters. We talked about it last week in the results segment because it was really interesting. Anything over the weekend for you, Kevin? Any pinball playing or anything to rap about that's pinball adjacent or pinball exciting? The machine behind me was finally playable last weekend, so we were able to play it after six months of working on it. That was exciting. 1954. That was big. What is the name of the game? It's Diamond Lil. It's one of the last reverse flipper games. The tips do not face inward, they face outward. It's a mind fuck. You end up flipping the wrong flipper sometimes because your mind sees the orientation. and it's fun. It'll be at the museum for June 8th. That's exciting. It's our first wood rail that'll be in there. That's great. That was fun. Did not get out though. I went on Sunday to Coney Island. Oh, nice. I wish it were. I have this experience almost every year that I go down there at or near the beginning of the season and I see that everywhere that could possibly have pinball in it is either boarded up or behind a stanchion yeah and unfortunately what i saw this time was that the storefront the uh what the shooting gallery is what the storefront had it had been a shooting gallery game you know in classic coney island and had been converted into an arcade last summer at least and maybe the summer before but i think maybe just last summer they they're trying very hard and they have all of these games. I believe Dennis is the name of the operator and he is associated with the Freak Bar and I really like his games and I want him to be able to succeed but unfortunately when I went the weekend before the beginning of the opening, before Memorial Day, it was not open and there was a for lease sign on the shooting gallery on the awning of the shooting gallery and so I am sad to report whatever pinball map might say, try to verify or have another good reason to go to Coney Island because I am here to tell you that the Rolling Stones at Margarita Island has never worked. Never once has it worked. It did not. When they first installed it, it didn't work. It has never worked. It has only got worse since then. They've never tried to repair it when it didn't work. so don't try to play the margarita island rolling stones that's not a viable pinball machine this might mean that there is no pinball at coney island right now that's that's i i hope that it shows up somewhere when i went by the other storefront where they used to have the like five or six games yeah just right next to the freak bar not on surf avenue but on the side street It was completely full, chock full of arcade cabinets and pinball games, but in completely storage. Like, absolutely a storage locker and not a place that anyone was going to work on anything. Hopefully, it's all in good shape. And hopefully, you know, it can be deployed somewhere very soon. I really hope so, because it's a good collection. It's fun. I want to play the Mystic over and over again. Over and over again. I want to play the Evil Knievel, at least as long as they've fixed whatever the one thing was that didn't work. One of the three features didn't work on the Evil Knievel, and it pissed me off for a while. But it's still Evil Knievel. It's still Evil Knievel. I think it is not the EM. I think it is because, right, they made two Evil Knievels. They made two versions of roughly the same game, but I think it's the solid statement. I can verify that because I had to be able to back up our claim that we're the only EMs in New York. Oh, oh. That's cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. And that was one that you at least had to dig a little deeper. Yeah, of course. Make sure, yeah. Yeah, of course. That's a bummer because I never got down there, and I always saw their lineup, and I love classic ballets and stuff. Look, to be fair, I just said that this has happened to me every year. It's entirely probable that I should have learned my fucking lesson and not gone until – Well, but also just not gone even before July 1st maybe. I think that the season really has to get ramped up before they're ready. But I think I should have learned my fucking lesson and hopefully one of those storefronts – I mean, look, if there's still a for lease sign on that storefront on June 1st, you think the landlord really wants to play hardball or is a few hundred bucks a month that they didn't have going to be worth it? Yeah, totally. One would hope. Yeah. For our collective good. Yeah, indeed. Indeed. That was my weekend. I tried to play pinball and failed, and then I fucking punted, I'm sorry to say. I punted. I mean, I had a burger and a beer on the boardwalk. It wasn't the end of the world. I also if I weren't a stodgy old fucker, I would have bought a ticket right before the first pitch of the Cyclones game and walked right into the stadium because I walked up. I left Tom's on the boardwalk and walked that way thinking, you know, if there's a two o'clock first pitch, I could literally walk into that stadium and see an entire baseball game and then get on the subway. And that would make the disappointment of there being no pinball at Coney Island worth it. and then I got there and realized that the only way I could do that at that entrance was to scan a QR code and download a goddamn app and that unfortunately it is also true that you just can't go into a baseball stadium unless they're playing some level that is Little League or below without a fucking app on your phone and I'm a stodgy old fucker and so that was a hard pass being alone was more important than any of that I have a very funny related story I was working in, it wasn't Allentown, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, doing an event job. And we were staying in a hotel. And we had one off day in two weeks. And there's a pinball museum in Lancaster. But it is inside of a minor league baseball stadium. And they had a bunch of cool games. They had a bunch of wood rails and shit I really wanted to play. So I had to walk along a highway. It was not friendly. I walked two hours to get there. and then the pinball museum was closed because they were only open for events i think it was like a rental spot basically but there was a two o'clock first pitch and i went to the fucking game and it was actually really nice because i hadn't been to a baseball game in years and i was like oh this is minor league so much fun i mean it's just like family friendly and you know it's a good environment i'm hoping maybe the uh the shooting gallery opens in coney islands by June 13th because we've just arranged the whole group package for the Cyclones Pride Night. Yes. Oh, yeah. We're excited. It's a tradition we do every year in conjunction with Brooklyn Pin Pride. Yes. The big tournament that Jess Warren and I run. Where and when is that? Tell me. On June 15th at Scrabble Land. Putting it down. The new location in Greenpoint. Really excited moving up to a big location. We're going to have a pre-registration on Monday, June 9th. It opens at noon. Okay. Sold out every year we've done it. So it's a good idea to, if you want to do it, to sign up at the beginning. But we're excited this year to go to this location because we're going to jump up to 80 people in the tournament. Sick. That's going to be huge. Our last event was 56, and that had sold out pretty quick. So we're hoping, you know, we want to get more and more people in and have a big fun party. What time is the registration for interested parties? June 9th at noon. June 9th at noon. Cool. I think I will. I'll probably take you up. Yeah, cool. It is the best party in pinball in New York City all year, bar none, every year. Hell yeah. If you make it pin pride weekend, go rock that fucking Friday night game. Yeah. at Coney Island. I had, I will tell you right now, I was last year, I think, maybe two years ago, but I think it was last year, I went to the game with the whole pinball community. We went to the Wonder Wheel, and we were somewhere near the top. Everyone in the pinball community who was in the fucking thing was somewhere near the top of the Wonder Wheel when the fireworks went off on Friday night at Coney Island. Holy shit. So we were all like up at the highest point, and it was, I mean, I'm pretty sure that 25 people in the pinball community would tell you that they were in the swinging car that was swinging at the top exactly at the moment that the fireworks peaked. But I know that the whole pinball community who was on the Wonder Wheel that night It was like up around the top right when the fireworks were going off, and it was super cool. I was there. I know that Madeline and Albo and I were in one of the swinging cars. I can tell you for sure that Madeline and I were in a car because you can hear her voice right now when I just said that screaming every time we go over the little rollover. So it was great fun. you should go do it if you have the opportunity to do either or both of those things. I endorse that. I was at Asbury Park last year at the museum on July 3rd and we didn't know there was fireworks and then we were outside on the boardwalk and we got fireworks. It's a good pinball fireworks combination. Eric, I know you competed on Monday. I did. Well, I also worked on Monday, so I joined our finals match at the halfway point. Well, we already know we won. We talked about that and Ball won. Our New York City Flipper Sport Association is now back-to-back left-orbit champions in the team league. Congratulations. Really cool. We took the trophy down, took it over to solid state for the end-of-season party and take it back to at the Wallace. The end-of-season party already happened? It always does. It always passes me by. It happens the Wednesday after the two finals, right? It was Thursday. It was last night. But then on Tuesday night, I was able to attend the entirety of the match of the Butterballers versus the replays at Scrapple Land. So Butterballers won the right in-lane playoffs, and that's back-to-back also. I would refer anyone to my intro comment here based on the Knicks' recent performance and Eric's playoff team performances. I figure now that having with NYC FSA winning back-to-back and then Butterballers winning back-to-back, I'm now the back-to-back double team champ. Yeah! Thank you. anytime anytime just cutting in here to say that was kevin hitting the bell on the diamond lil that he had talked about that was behind him also i noticed i'm sure this had been around and it just hadn't caught my eye before but the replays had a cute little miniature pinball machine home constructed out of plywood with electronics in it with a coil and a button on the front and press the the button It looks a lot like a start button or a launch button It fires the coil and it a knocker It's a knocker, yeah. It's the replay. It's the replay. The replays have a replay. Yes. Yeah. It's Rolo's replays, it says on the side. But it's so cute. Yes. I hadn't seen it before. Yeah, I didn't. It's so dumb that I have not found someone on that team and said, I'm going to put a microphone on it. Get it out. because, of course, that should be their sound effect for this podcast when we say their team's name. Is it battery-powered, or do they plug it in? Battery-powered. That's sick. When I first had seen it and realized it, and I was walking over to look at it, leaning over, and I was talking with a teammate. I was like, it looks like it's actually wired up here. I bet if you push the button, it fires the knocker. And I was holding a beer I had just gotten from the bar, I pressed it. It did work as I thought it would, but it still surprised me and I splashed my beer on myself. Well built. After the Butterballers win at Scrapple Land, several of us headed down to Barcade Brooklyn to see the other finals match that was happening, which would be the Right Orbit playoffs between Danger Danger and the Ball Drainers. Yes. On Twitch. That's right. It was also being streamed, but thanks to Matt Grady. And commentary by, they didn't say their names, but I am 99%. I know that Greg Pavarelli was the voice I heard the most often. I believe that Monica Weidekamp was the voice that I heard that I recognized. And the third voice I was having a hard time figuring out, but I had it alternately at various times as various people. Who was the third one? Pretty sure it was Wes Ulfig. Yes, of course it was. That was one of the people I had it as at some point. Yeah, we came in just in time to see that round four. pretty exciting. Neat in that Danger Danger is bringing a trophy back to Buttermilk along with the Butterballers. It's now a double trophy bar. Double Tuesday trophy bar. Watch out. That's right. Good close fought match. You know, also sad for my friends on the Baldrainers. Right. Like we were talking about last week. They made it to the final match. They made it to the final round. Yeah. Go just about as far as you can go. Yeah. It's a good season. Yeah. Normally would have been at Scrapple League on Wednesday night, but was working again. Had to miss that one. Is that a regular? That's a weekly? Yeah. Scrapple League is weekly on Wednesdays. Each season is six weeks of qualifying, followed by a finals week. Cool. And then as they go forward, it'll be timed so that the first week of qualifying is falling on the first Wednesday of a month. Gotcha. Cool. Cool. My wife and I were planning randomly to return to Portland, Maine, where we vacationed earlier this year on the last weekend of June. If you happen to follow a calendar of what happens in pinball in the Northeast, you might note, and I mentioned it in Ball One, that pinmania happens that weekend. I did not actually know this when my wife and I planned to go to Portland, but I found myself this morning looking at Arcadia's website because I was going to go to Portland, Maine at the end of June. and it turned out that I could still register for Pin Mania on the day that my wife and I were planning to be one of the days that my wife and I were planning to be there on Sunday night or on either Friday or Sunday night. We're going to go to Sir Lee. That's definitely true. There's not a better meal in Portland than Sir Lee. Let me tell you that in no uncertain terms. There are great meals in Portland. There's not a better one than that. but I think I'm going to hang out with all those New Robert Englunds pinball folks that Eric was talking about last week on the Saturday because this morning when I noticed that that was the case and I went to the website and saw that 60 people could register and well less than 60 had been registered and it was a mere $40 for me to enter. Well, this morning I found out I'm going to Pin Mania this year. That's really cool. I didn't try to. It wasn't intentional exactly, but it's a cool thing. Do they spell it like the state? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pin main dash I-N. Yeah, that's good. Phonetic of sorts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is that? That's just like a big arcade. Arcadia, you say? Arcadia. It is a big arcade. It is based on the marquee. I'm going to say it's in what almost definitely used to be a movie theater. It has clearly like the bar up front is very probably the concessions place. There is a ticket. It was a concert venue when I lived there. Okay. Arcadia. Arcadia National Bar. Oh, right. Because Arcadia National Park. Because of Arcadia National Park. Yeah. Arcadia National Bar is where I discovered that competitive pinball exists. Oh, cool. That's what got me into it. When did you live there? I lived there in 2015 to 2016. Cool. Cool. So that place has been around. A 10-year run is pretty good for any pinball spot. Yeah, they were a couple years in when I found them. And then during the pandemic, they moved from their old location where I had known them into the old Port City Music Hall. A much bigger space, and it's really cool nowadays. It is really cool. Yeah. Because that quantity anywhere is pretty special. And there's a bunch of cabinets, too. Yeah, tons of cabinets. And some redemption games, yeah. Cool. They got that Simpsons coin roller. Yeah, that's right. Whoa. what is that you know kind of like push machines but you drop the your coin and down the slot it rolls down the metal thing and shoots out and you're trying to get it into various simpsons characters holes it's designed by someone who was pinball famous i think it was trying to remember i think it was Steve Ritchie i thought maybe it was gomez i thought it was it was i looked it up thank you kevin and wesley you are the co-operators of the red hook pinball museum which opened its doors earlier this year, I believe for a birthday party. How do you guys get this whole thing started? Kevin, I'll let you take it away. I'll take it away, I guess. We've both been into pinball a long time. I guess I probably started a little earlier. My family friends had machines in the basement when I was a little toddler. I bought a Gorgar while I was in high school. Nice. When I was 16, and I fixed that up. My friend's dad is an electrical engineer, so he helped me. So I've been into fixing them for a long time. And I moved to New York City in 2018. And, you know, me and Wes kind of both figured out at the same time that we would really like to own a machine. We went to Silver Ball Museum in New Jersey. And then after that kind of decided we got to figure out a way to own one here. And then where are we going to put it? And we want to learn how to repair them. And I was really into EM technology and just, you know, learning how to read schematics and kind of going down the rabbit hole and all that. And we found a machine we wanted. And then Wes and his roommate were both regulars at Seabourn, the bar where the museum is. And she used to have machines there that were Al's machines, which I know a lot of people in the New York pinball community loved Al. You know, there was a history there. And Wes and I approached her about it. And she was very down. And so for the first like two years, we've been in there since 2022 or 2023. And for the first couple of years, it was just a workshop. Like we had one to three machines, but it was kind of part storage unit, part workshop. We were there working on the games all the time. Now we work on them in our bedrooms and bring them there when they're done. Over the course of two years, we expanded the lineup. And now we were we were finally ready to open to the public, you know, in February of this year. Yeah, with those really cool classic machines and you got a collection like that. It's really, I mean, I'm really happy that you decided to share it with us. Totally agreed. And let me just say this all being inspired by Asbury Park, which I love. I love that museum. But it's also like a lot of 70s Gottliebs. Yeah. And I think you guys have one 70s Gottlieb, if memory serves. Maybe two. but like it's you you have gone a little you've skewed a little older here i think is that right that is correct you know as we expand our collection you know we're restoring a couple games now and they're all you know dated right now between 58 with sitting pretty i think 52 to 58 yeah 52 to 58 in 1930s if you count some pre-wars that we're going to be working on later wow yeah you know one thing that also inspired us to to go older is the fact that as Kevin and I got more into the EM tech world and started meeting you know a lot of the older generation we would get to go to their houses you know if we bought a machine off of them like one of their old projects that they were getting rid of we'd go and we'd see these immaculate restored 50s machines and we'd always go away saying like wow it's so impressive that they have these great like you know, 30 beautiful wood rails in their house, but you know, we wish there was a way for other people to play them because Kevin and I can go and list off all the wood rails we've named. And most people will say, I've never even seen one of those. I didn't even know it was a game for us. If we can start to offer that for people publicly and, you know, maybe broaden people's view of earlier pinballs, give them opportunities to try them. That makes us very happy. It makes me very happy too. Thank you for doing that. Of course. It's good to see our hard work paying off. You recently hosted the first IFPA tournament there, a seaside putt directed by Gabriel Chazanoff. Oh, yeah. How did that get put together? Who came up with the thought, oh, let's have a tournament here? Gabe and Sam were at the opening night. He wanted to do it, and I'd never played. I played in the one we did a couple weeks ago, but I'd never done it before. Right. and I was aware of the scene kind of because I used to go out and play in bars all the time before we started doing this and now all my time is fixing them but yeah it was kind of perfect because you know he has done it a bunch of times he was able to get a bunch of the community out and we didn't have to think about the you know the logistics which at least for me that's kind of the hardest part like I hate doing the Instagram and all that stuff it's like more fun to just work on everything but you know it's cool when someone has experience and it was super fun because playing in that environment too, for me, it was totally new and the amount of adrenaline involved was fucking crazy. I had never experienced that. It was nuts. You both liked it, right? Yeah. How did it go for each of you? How did you enjoy it, each of you? Wesley, how did you enjoy it? I had a blast. It was really fun. I made it to top eight, which felt good for, you know, I'd never done anything in a tournament. Of course, their games, I'd played a fair, I'd spent a fair amount of time playing them and having been on them. So I was like, alright, if I can get to top eight or anything like that, that would feel really good. How was pin golf as a new competitor? Were there goals instead of score? Was the goal a score? Oh, great. Each machine had a score threshold. So how was that as a new competitor is probably a better question than anything we could ask you other than that. It seems a little confusing to me. I mean, I personally enjoyed it. It also definitely helped that a few days before Gabe had come by and kind of talked down the rules together. It definitely felt a little confusing at first, and Kevin and I at one point, we were like, oh, is this going to be weird because these games are Adaball games and not replay games? And things all worked out really great, and we were like, wow, this is actually really fun. I definitely could see, especially for somebody less familiar with pinball or the machines, it could feel really confusing. With the older games, I think, especially with the 50s games, with there being potential different objectives on the game, the pinball does make sense in that regard. For me, it was really fun and really engaging. It was sick because it just made you play the game differently. On Dimension, which is the same layout as 2001, which people might know a little more. It's like you have those two massive banks of drops and if you're doing the golf and you had to get one side down, it's like, alright, I'm going to just try to get it to the other side every single time. It just made you play the game differently, which was super fun. It was a pretty good draw. I had 30 people come out to that tournament. I'm sure a lot of people were curious to see the new location so it was a great way to show off those machines and with the goals and things, get people pretty involved in them. I guess that's a success. yeah yeah that's that's big no matter what even just to get people to come to my house is difficult so and enough of a success that you're going to be doing it again but a different format but what what is the upcoming tournament it's the 22nd i believe sunday june 22nd we're doing a different format i don't actually remember exactly how it works but i think you play each game and try to get the highest score you can instead one of you probably knows more about this than me but It's a hybrid best game qualifying event. Okay. Which means everyone will have 20, exactly 20 entries to put up their best score on each of the five machines. Okay. You can distribute those entries however you'd like across the five, but you have to play all five at least once. Right. So if I roll up and blow up Dimension right away, get all my drops down, I don't remember exactly what the best thing to do is on Dimension. but get all my drops down twice on ball one. Get all 20 of them, right? There's 10 up each side, is that right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That like, you know, somehow... Don't need to play that one again. Yeah, I don't need to play that one again. Now I use my 19 other entries only on the four games that are remaining. That's cool, yeah, yeah, yeah. 20 is a good amount, but I guess since they're EM, they play a lot shorter, so that'll probably make sense. Yeah. Yeah, it'll be it'll keep it moving. Yeah. Y'all are different from other pinball cooperatives, partially because you're in New York City and there is just a necessary difference like that. We talked to somebody at the end of last season from the Rochester Pinball Collective where all these folks from upstate just own too many pinball machines and were like let go get a place in a strip mall where we can put them and people can come play it And then we can like charge money for a wristband and hold big tournaments The ethos was totally different. What y'all are up to is like, yeah, we're working on the games in our bedrooms to get them. This is definitely a question of scale, right? It's New York City versus Rochester to a certain degree, but it's also, you don't charge anyone for wristbands, or at least you didn't. On the night that I was there, it was donations. Is that, I presume that is the mode as the museum, is that true? Yeah, like a strongly encouraged donation. But it's like, the thing, you get a lot of people who want to come play for five minutes, and they want to check it out, and if you, I don't know, we found that if you ask people right at the door, they're not going to go check it out, but if you let them in, even for a few minutes, they might get totally hooked and then stay for two hours. Just having it be as open as possible, even if that means we make a little less money, I think it's totally worth it. Especially the 30s games, people have really never seen anything like that. And you get kids walking in and just seeing the stuff for the first time. It can be a very positive experience, even if it's only five minutes that they spend in there. And then they donate a lot of the time, so it's cool. That's great. In that way that, you know, being in New York City, it has to be a different sort of cooperative. It's also special in New York City for this classics lineup in public. It's, you know, you can't find this anywhere else nearby. I guess accepting some private collections with some classics, not as old as yours, But like for instance, this coming weekend, the Brooklyn Memorial Classic is happening at a private location on Classics Machines. That is very exciting. I'm excited to play those machines for sure. I mean, I know there's a Quicksilver and Stars, like a few Classics turns I really, really love. And obviously some great, some great Gottliebs too. Is there still an Argosy there? Yes. I think it's really cool. you open this classic pinball museum and the tournament people come and find it and now you guys are coming and joining into a tournament yeah yeah yeah no that's amazing it's the pinball community growing in the city it's so cool it's amazing yeah it's been really great to see how um you know i mean one to be totally honest like kevin said earlier we weren't in the scene really at all before like kevin had been you know playing around for a little bit and people had definitely like approached him and been like oh like do you play in any leagues blah blah but the schedule just never worked out uh in february when we had the grand opening seeing pinball people come through was like whoa wait a minute how did everybody find out about this we were like we flired around the neighborhood like but then it was like incredible and then later i ended up meeting up with some other people who got me on the discord and everything it's cool people were talking about and like oh let's check it out you know go out to red hook you know very nice to see and yeah, hopefully, you know, I'm going to be playing in the summer league as well. I'd like to make it out for a couple of those. I really want to play stall ball after one of the tournaments. I'm really excited. After the first time, it sounds really fun and intense, but like in a very free hearted, uh, fun way. So I'm excited to try that out too. I don't remember the span of years that you said before, but it ended, I think in 1958. This is something you can't find anywhere else. In particular, it seems to me that when I was there, there was a tabletop pinball that can't have been, even from the 50s, I don't imagine. What's the oldest thing, and what's the coolest thing that isn't the oldest thing? The tabletop one that was playable, that's a 1931 Whiffle, and that is credited as the first pinball machine ever. Because it was the first one that had a coin slide and glass. So it was like, you know, the first commercially viable. You put it in a bar, collect your tokens and coins, you know. So that was what kind of launched the whole industry. And then Bally was launched like six months after that. And Gottlieb released their first game within six months. Their first pinball machine. They made grip strength testers before that. That game's cool because it was really the first thing that started. And then it started how the entire industry works. That's when operators became a thing, which you guys know about, but not everyone might know that the people who run the machines and bars own them and then do profit sharing with the owner of the location. That's how that whole industry got started. But we have one from 1886 too, which is a precursor to pinball called Bagatelle, which was basically it evolved from lawn bowling in Robert Englunds in like the 1600s and then by the 1700s it was like a aristocratic French parlor game it looked like a 30s pinball machine but you shot the ball with a pool cue and then it fell down into holes and then the one we have was the guy who patented the spring plunger which was patented in 1871 so we have that we have like a slightly later model from 1886 and then we have the whiffle and then we have Since you guys were there, we have a 1932 one, which is very small. It's like a countertop. It's also beautiful. The balls are like three-eighths, I think, of an inch. They're tiny, so it's very fun. What Wes said earlier, too, you know, we've been able to play a few of these things at people's houses, but the pre-war games are really surprisingly addictive, and kids really, really love them. And so it's just a way to show people, I think, you know, how engaging these machines were and how groundbreaking they were at the time and the context they came up in. It was in the middle of the Great Depression, and people were just looking for something to do. It was a way to spend your penny, and then it evolved beautifully into this and then into Solid State and everything else. And we have two more 30s machines coming soon that are probably the two most well-known pre-war, as they call them, like pre-World War II machines, both made by Rarkola, which was later to become the Jukebox Company. Yes. They released, I think, about 15 pinball machines, but there's three that are really well-known, being Jigsaw from 1933, World Series from 1934, and then Army-Navy, which is 1935, I believe. And they're all mechanical, but the Baseball one, World Series, has a rotating diamond that actually keeps track of where your runners are on base and spins, and it keeps track of your balls and strikes and your outs. So every time you lift the ball, it's winding a spring to make all these mechanisms work. And then the Jigsaw one, it has a matrix of, I guess you would call them gobble holes, where if the ball falls in the top one, it runs down and flips over an entire row of puzzle pieces. But if you get in the bottom one, it just flips the bottom puzzle piece. They made 70,000 of those, which fucking destroys any numbers. Destroys Addams Family, destroys Flash or 8-Ball or any of the other really high production number games. It was huge, but they're not easy to find these days. you know they're they're old as fuck it's gonna be probably six more months until those are ready i would guess but those are just really beautiful and some of the most ingenious mechanical design i think because it's right before electricity started to get used so they're it's like how many cogs and gears and springs can you put together and have them still work right right and have it still work reliably at least yeah yeah yeah yeah totally it was a miracle just to To contextualize that 80,000 Adams family, I think they celebrated the shit out of their 10,000th unit. I believe that that's when they did the gold. Adams family was 21,000. 22, right? Oh, okay. So maybe it was their 20,000th that they celebrated the shit out of. But still, 80,000. Yeah, there's nothing like that today. And Whiffle, even the 1931 one that you guys saw, is 27,000 confirmed at the end of the first year. You know, obviously a little less involved on the production line than a 90s Bally Williams, but, you know, pretty cool. Is there any eye toward a consistent schedule or have I missed that there is a trend in when you're able to be open and when you're not? Our ideal goal right now is to for sure have an open house style thing, you know, lining up with the second Sundays at Pioneer Works, where there's a lot of people already maybe have a reason to come out to Red Hook for that. We're trying to match with their second Sundays. So our next event will be June 8th, roughly noontime till late, as late as people stay. Generally, I will recommend for anybody interested, come on the early side. The first like hour or two, there's very few people there and it's really easy to get your games in then. Once it hits around like 2, 3 p.m., everybody who was up to lunch decides to come and hang out. And it's really fun. It's really packed. So it's a little harder to get your games in. It's more of a party at that time. It's a blast. Definitely come out no matter what. But the beginning and the tail end of the event, for people who just want to sit, zone in, lock in, and try to get some high scores on some EMs, I'd say to come at those times. Yeah, and you'll want to do that, because then two weeks later on, June 22nd, will be the hybrid best game tournament, Red Hook's own hybrid monstrosity. By the sea. By the sea. A short lot. And yeah, we're very excited for that. It's been great to get, especially the last tournament, seeing all people in the scene coming out, seeing some really talented players out there playing, scoring. It's really cool to see people walk up to some of these games and just very quickly know what to do, know all this stuff. Because most of the time, people there are not players. So it's cool to see people come in who really know how to handle or to work their way around some of these EMs. And if somebody could please come and roll Diamond Jack, we would really appreciate it. We've rolled every game except for Diamond Jack. So if somebody can do that for us, we'd really appreciate it. Hold my beer. And the tilts are very loose, so that's something everyone else should know. Tilts are loose. Nudging is good. Nudging is good. We like that. The condition of those games even became a meme on the Discord server. That was not very good. Yeah. We were very mad at you reporting, games play great. This one I probably, me and Wes have put 200 hours into this one probably at this point. And most of them are around 100 to 200. It's a massive undertaking to do this stuff and you get discouraged a lot of the time and there's parts you have to buy off eBay and source random shit. Because almost all the ones there have been complete projects that we've bought that haven't been plugged in in like 30, 40 years and so every single component's taken apart you know when we get them playing as we want them you know it's it's extremely rewarding but the most rewarding thing is is having people come enjoy them you know because it's like Wes said it's like people that are really dialed into playing pinball and know how they should play can really put up good scores and it's fun to watch people play them I'm coming for that diamond jack when you're open at noontime will the bar be open so I can have some Brooklotic? Yes. I don't know what Brooklotic is, but yes. It's the scotch in the light blue bottle on the top shelf. Oh, shit. If you like scotch, you should have it. Hell yeah. Cool. Good tip. Yeah, Lucinda makes incredible drinks in the bars. Yeah, cocktails. A really amazing spot. Yeah. Yeah, so definitely get some drinks. Tip your bartender. Uh-huh. If you're in Red Hook and you want to splurge on a nice dinner, There's a restaurant down the Grand Brunt called Pips, P-I-T-P apostrophe S. And they recently released a cocktail that was featured in Nine Pair magazine called the Red Hook Pinball Museum. Oh, yeah, that's right. I saw that on the Instagram. Yeah, our friend Ben works there. And we were unloading. We went to the Allentown Pen Fest. And we were unloading a machine from Allentown after we got back at midnight. And he was parking a city bike. And he was like, wait, are you guys the Pinball Museum people? They're like, yeah, that's us. You know, what's up? And he was like, yeah, I work at this new place, Pitts, and I came by the museum one time, and I'm naming a drink after you guys, and it's going to be there in, like, one week. We're like, holy shit. You know, gave him a bunch of buttons. Yeah, super nice guy, and that's, you know, obviously a wild and pretty funny thing to happen, but pretty cool, yeah. Do you know how much I'd have to splurge on dinner? Because I splurge on dinner sometimes. The entrees range between 30 to 50. Oh, I'm not afraid of that at least once in a while. Yeah, I was going to say, it's not like it's a splurge. But yeah. Like you treat it differently. Like you think about it before you go. You don't just pop in there and say, I'm going to stop in here. You think about it. That's not just Tuesday on my way home. I'm going to spring by. Yeah, right. It's like, oh, I want to go to a nice dinner on Friday. Let's go to Pits. Also, one last note. We are working soon. Within the next like two months, we should have some announcements. about a few more locations potentially. Very cool. So places that would be probably less machines, but that would be open multiple days a week with regular hours. And once that happens, fingers crossed, I think it will, we'll be rotating stuff all the time. So the stuff that's at the museum will go over to another place, hopefully one to two new spots with at least two machines, all in Red Hook still. That's great. It makes perfect sense because you talked about incoming and it feels like there's not a lot of space left back there. So it makes sense that there would have to be some degree of expansion. So that's awesome. I'm really glad to hear that. Yeah. And we'll probably still keep it on just like donate and not coin drop so people can just give us a couple bucks and play their heart out. that's all for this season's pod i expect we'll be back in the fall once you start thinking about hey is it pinball nyc season yet you could start thinking about hey is it nyc pin pod season yet i'd like to thank everyone who joined us on the panel this season on behalf of eric and madeline Jess Warren joined us twice. Jose Garcia joined us twice. Zen Zokniak joined us and will actually be inducted into the NYC PPA, the awesomeness archive on the blog eventually when I actually get around to doing that. Miriam Nadler, Tommy Ortega, Kevin Murray and Wesley Michalski. I want to thank all of them for joining us this season on behalf of me and Eric and Madeline. I want to congratulate all the Pinball NYC Championship teams, New York City Flipper Sport Association in the left orbit, the Aristocrats in the left in lane, Danger Danger in the right orbit, and Butterballers in the right in lane. Congratulations. Enjoy those trophies. I want to personally thank Eric and Madeline for joining me on this journey. Whatever you're up to this summer, pinfolk, go get them. Big point. Fantastic. you