Happy Sunday, pinpoke, 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 I think I just saw a New Yorker's initials in a game in Rehoboth Beach yesterday. My name is Eric Sweetland. My initials are HIP. And I'm a pinball tournament director in New York City. Hey, y'all. My name is Madeline Lin. My pronouns are she, her, hers. My initials are MXL. And this week, I actually learned what No Bro stands for. My name is Gabe Chazanoff. My initials are GC. And in this week, I will be playing in seven instances of competitive pinball. On this week's pod, we'll run down competitive pinball results from New York City and nearby surrounding areas. In ball two, we'll review Gebhard's as a pinball venue. And in Ball 3, we'll talk with Gabe Chazanov about The Harvest, an upcoming tournament at GebHarts. Let's get started. I want to insert a quick editorial note here before we really kick this thing off and point out that you will hear qualitative differences in my voice throughout this episode between the times that I have dropped something in and the times that I recorded with the panel. I stupidly, I actually took my podcast rig with me, but I didn't take the chargers that I needed to be able to use it while I was traveling this week. And so I unfortunately had to call in with a Bluetooth headset. And so you will hear some weird artifacts. I apologize and I appreciate your grace. Onward. Let's talk about competitive pinball in New York City and nearby surrounding areas in the past week. On Saturday, October 19th, in Middletown, New York, the Rock Fantasy Fall Open happens, and New York City pinballer Gabriel Chazanov won the day. Gabe's here with us. How'd it go, Gabe? It was last. As usual, Keeler puts on an incredible show at the world-famous Rock Fantasy. Might have been one of my luckiest wins ever. a lot of people were at Expo that you would expect to see no Jerry Bernard who is a local gargantuan up north and sort of an interesting but no slouch Ed Zeltman came in second no slouch to beat either there were some names there yeah Zeltman is a titan another funny way in which I got lucky the finals were timed match play so I was playing Metallica and we determined that I had about two minutes left until the round was over. So if my ball lasted more than two minutes, the results would stand. I was down 20 million on Metallica to Zeltman and I fully expected to play for another 10 minutes and win. I drained. We played another round. I started in second place. I was in second place in that round. I needed to win the final game. I did win on Metallica. Zeltman needed to get third, which he got by about 100,000 points. So it was a very lucky win but still my first time holding the Hulk head Congratulations I'm envious. I've always wanted to hold that Hulk head On Sunday, October 20th the Rob Wong Invitational was met at Rulo's Matt Falzone came in first followed by Robert Wong, Taylor Conley, and A.J. Gould. Also on Sunday, the Avatar launch party was convened at Sunshine Laundromat. Alberto Santana won the day. The Jersey City Women's Open was on the calendar, but there aren't results on match. We'll try to figure out what happened there, but I have a sense that maybe it didn't happen. On Monday, October 21st, the two for-wonners went to Barcade Brooklyn to face Pinball Union. Jose Garcia emailed us with a haiku to begin with. Get swept, sweep them back. Tied at the end, ball apiece. Pinball Union wins! That's adorable. Jose goes further to say, a great time was had. the games were really close all night the night was settled with a ball a piece twilight zone where jason wise fuse put up a nice score in ball two and that was that jose goes on adorably to say sorry i've been disconnected lately you don't owe us to email us every week jose we love when you do but you absolutely don't owe it to us thanks jose jose goes on to say i was at Pinball Expo all week, had a ton of fun, won a pinball machine on a raffle, and met a bunch of new people. That's pretty cool. A special when lit came to Buttermilk Bar to visit us colliders, and I'm sure you can tell by the tone of my voice that the score was not good. We got handed another disappointing loss in a row at 13-3. I myself played a very bad game of Metallica in the first round that unfortunately cost us two points, although I might have played a very good game and MMC might still have beaten us. That said, we did very little throughout the evening and too bad, but we had a ton of fun and I love it when that team comes and visits us. And I just also want to say we missed Kate Martin, who did not come join us that night. And we missed you, Madeline, for not having joined us that night. But lives happen. I'm glad you all had fun. That's what matters. New York City Flipper Sport Association, right just catty corner from where we were getting our asses kicked, was doing some ass kicking themselves at the Aristocrats at Rulo's. Eric, do you want to tell us how that went? And Gabe, if you were there. Yeah, no, Gabe wasn't with us that night. We were a tight five going in. We won every game we picked and we split all of their picks is the story of the night. We decided to stick entirely on Bond and John Wick with one throw to Pirates of the Caribbean for Sean Ford. And, yeah, it stood us well. For Sean Ford and not for you. How about that? Oh, I played Pirates when they called it. I see. Very good. Very good. You had three people who wanted to play it. Very good. Intermission Dolores went to the other bar in Chelsea, and the lesser players, after Intermission Dolores has been on a very good run, handed them a 9-7 loss for their first win. Every team in this division now has at least one. Nice job, all. Balls of Steel went to Owl Farm to face Parliament, and the home team picked up a 10-6 win zen zakniak texted me at balls of steel to say this week we had a similar machine failure issue from last week i don't know if you recall they had a baywatch issue last week and they had to tilt it and then they had to switch the game because the person who tilted out probably would have won but they didn't get their bonus because of the machine failure in this case on a two-player game of avengers at owl farm greg fortella's player two ball three had a ball get stuck under a pop bumper. The only option was to tilt out and lose or let the ball finder go. The ball finder didn't kick it, and because this is a Spike 2 game, the ball just ended. That means that the game gave him the bonus, and after it gave him the bonus, Greg won 104.9 million to 104.1 million points on Avengers in that one game. They still lost 9-7, but really cool that that That that one game, that this team keeps having these crazy games that come down to these interesting machine failures. The Mutants went to Skylark and just got past the Pin Pals, 9-7. Lion Persons hosted the Deluxe Horses at Gebhardt's Beer Culture, and they picked up a 10-6 home win. so far in pinball nyc the top half of the playoffs there are 10 teams who could very reasonably with a small couple point shift be within the top six new york city flipper sport association at 7-0 is unquestionably at the top and at this point they have we're locked into You are locked into a playoff. You are locked into an upper division slot because the sixth seed has three wins. There are only three games left. The best they can have is six. So, no matter what, you can't fall below sixth. We're not locked into the top seed, though. Not top seed. Not yet. We're working on top seed. That's right. You'll get there. We'll see. if the lion persons have anything to say about it, they're 6-1 and they are looking like the very likely second seed at the moment. Wait, how many points do they have, Benjamin? Oh, my goodness. 69, Madeline. Nice. Nice. The Mutants have 79 points and they're 5-2. Balls of Steel also 5-2 in Parliament with 66 and 61 respectively. Now, in sixth place right now. The Deluxe Horses are sitting there at 3-4. So there's a two-win gap, but also, they are in by points only. The Deluxe Horses are 3-4 with 55. The Aristocrats are 3-4 with 54. Special When Lit is 3-4 with 53. And Pinball Union is 3-4 with 43. So at this moment, Pinball Union seems like they are... Intermission Dolores is 3-4 with 52. Right before the spring. I even skipped right over them. 52-55. those four teams right here, holy cow so a lot is still up in the air about that upper division with three games left to play if the bottom half started today the deluxe horses would be presumably in the top half but they have the same record at 3-4, all those 3-4 teams would be in there and the 2-1ers and the pin pals at 2-5 would be at the bottom of the standings The lesser players and we colliders are sitting far on the outside looking in, both of us. The lesser players with 40 points and the colliders with 38. Plot twist, this game is scored like golf. On Tuesday, October 22nd, in round seven of Pinball NYC's right flipper division, the Pinister Six went to Buttermilk Bar to face Danger Danger. zenzokniak texted me to say buttermilk rolled in with a strong four Janos Kiss flynn matt and billy pinister stayed alive playing all players including reserves but lost both needed doubles for a 5-11 loss and a huge drop in the standings and then zen points out that the standings will shake up next week because all four top teams play against each other so while while it's true that that's going on, there's going to be some weird stuff happening next week, we think. Ball Drainers went to Barcade Brooklyn and beat up on Reston Pinball, parenthetically, RIP. Gabe, is that the team you're on? That's the team I'm on. The legendary Brooklyn Ball Drainers. The legendary Brooklyn Ball Drainers. What happened? How did the legendary Brooklyn Ball Drainers, did you have fun? it was great split the first round lost hard on Johnny Mnemonic we came in real hot assuming it was our game we got destroyed by Al Klan went 3-1 in the next two rounds and then swept the final one we all had a blast great team those guys we had the same Baywatch issue in the final round where the ball got stuck and had to be tilted out I will note Baywatch you can calculate the bonus. Like, it was brought up. We could just tilt the ball, count how many letters you have, count how many missions you started, count how many lifeguards you've collected. Those are each worth one, three, and two million respectively, and then multiply that by your multiplier and we can just manually add your bonus. We ended up tilting out the ball and throwing in a comp ball. But, yeah. Baywatch has issues. It was turned up for League this week. Yeah. One of the best games in the bar, though. Harlem Globe Flippers went to Jack Bar to face the other Jack Bar team and picked up a nice away win, 11-5. Trolls went to Birdies to face the Pin Babes in the battle of all-women's teams. Jess Warren texted me to point out that the Trolls' scores were a palindrome this week. 0-4, 1-3, 3-1, 4-0. The trolls went from better to worse throughout the evening. The pin babes in the opposite direction I love that Jess texted me that and didn actually point out that they won in a tiebreaker Eric did you follow the Trollstery on Instagram I did indeed. And a couple more details in there. It was a 1-2-3 tiebreaker. And it was also Silly Hat Night. Oh, who had the silliest hat? We got to look at the picture. They're all pretty silly. Okay, very good. I would like to point out that that was in reference to the Family Learning Channel, which is in reference to Rejected Cartoons, which was a 2000 sort of unusual, let's see, Wikipedia calls it an animated surrealist short comedy film. no quarters for laundry went to visit scrapples squad at sunshine laundromat robert gano of no quarters emailed us to say no quarters took the seven to the g to play at the expanded and awesome sunshine laundromat with the good folks of scrapples squad pizza and beers and topo she chose were enjoyed round one was a split round two the home team snuck ahead five to three round three no quarters evened it up the finals doubles match was a relatively quick game of spider-man that they needed a calculator to determine the outcome of there were solid games all around on uncanny x-men but one huge ball from player three put the away team on top 10 to 6 final no quarters. He adds great hang and big thanks to our hosts. Thank you to Robert for sending us that. Butterballers went to Rulo's to face the replays. Eric, were you there? I was. That was my third night in a row at Rulo's following the Rob Wong Invitational on Sunday and NYC FSA visiting on Monday. I was feeling pretty warmed up. The Butterballers took the first eight points and we split the rest of the way to get us a 12-4 win also on tuesdays at rulos is drag bingo and apparently randomly in between the bingo calling there's also uh trivia oh my uh so gizabella you know was on the microphone and and said okay uh who can name the television show that this is the theme song from and started playing the music and i was at the back of the room but i immediately recognized it it was a drum fill i went and there's a little shimmery noise i'm a hand shot up and and points at me and i said it's bay watch that's the that's what happens when you press the start button on bay watch i know that drum fill. Excellent. And my prize is this little lapel pin. It's a silhouette of a witch and it's a pride flag hat. Heck yeah. After the seven weeks that we've played the top half and bottom half have a clear line on Tuesday night. Neptune's Treasure, Ball Drainers, and Danger Danger are all six and one. Neptune's Treasure and Bald Rainers both have 72 points. Danger, Danger, Madeline, can you tell how many points Danger, Danger has? Danger, Danger has 69 points. Holy cow. Heck yeah. What a nice score. No Quarters for Laundry and Finister Six are five and two at 74 and 68 points respectively. The Harlem Globe Flippers are in sixth at four and three with 63 points. If the playoffs started today, the bottom half of the right flipper division would be presently Butterballers and Reston Pinball at three and four and 57 points for the Butterballers. If anyone's going to move up from this grouping down here, it's likely to be them. Reston Pinball has 44 points. Schlubbs, Scrapple Squad, the Replays, the Pinbabes, and the Trolls are all 2-5. The Trolls are on the outside looking in with 40 points at the moment. Replays and pin babes each have 45. Scrapple Squad has 46. The Shlubs, if anyone was going to move up from this group, have 51. At the moment, Kettle's hand grenades at 1-6 doesn't look great for the playoffs. On Wednesday, October 23rd, Eric, I think Barcade Brooklyn Pinball League had a meeting, didn't you? That's right. It was the fourth meeting of our fifth season and 18 players came out. Adam Kane had a perfect night, 35 points, and Matt Grady had 27. Very nice. It was once again streamed on Twitch, thanks to Matthew Grady at pinball underscore NYC. yc sunshine fall league 2024 number four was convened at sunshine laundromat four players showed and francesco larocca and sean grant tied for first with 29 points also on wednesday at gebhart's seven players convened for a for five rounds of match play after the five rounds of match play hunter hayden came in first and then four people of the seven who were met played in the playoffs uh eric i think probably has a rules thing to talk about here but after those four players played in the playoffs uh someone who is on the panel today came out on top. Gabe, how did it all go? Well, right. Let's just first make the point clear. The playoffs were completely illegitimate, as was the W. The championship belongs to Hunter. The victory is theirs alone. But it was a blast. I mean, Hunter has a great vision for what they want to do at Gabbards. Bring in players who know almost next to nothing about pinball, who won't be intimidated by you know the ultra pros or even the medium pros uh there isn't really a space for that person in new york city strikes tournament i run uh is as welcome as can possibly be it's very low entry you don't have to show up multiple times everyone is super nice but um i think hunters like a vowed mission statement is going directly for that community of people who have never played pinball before um which i think is a super important uh group of people to go for because the scene can get stagnant, right? And if we want the scene to grow, you need to bring more people in. Not that we're some kind of cult. It's just that it's very fun, and as many people should know about it as possible. And I like meeting new people, and that's probably one of the best parts about pinball. So let's meet as many new people as possible. Cheers to that. And also, if Gabe ever offers you Kool-Aid, if you ever see Gabe in person and he offers you Kool-Aid, just be wary. you have more fun as a follower but you make more money as a leader uh-huh gabe you were saying sorry uh yeah it was a blast it's a great tournament um hunter uh actually is an erstwhile sometimes tournament director uh at thursday night strikes stepping out on their own with their own tournament series um really excited excited to see uh how it develops excellent excellent and i like the mission to it too yeah on thursday october 24 no bro presents thursday night strikes was convened at jack bar nissan goodbye won the night adam came came in second and it looks like alex kelly and jose garcia tied for third the first meeting on thursday also of south slope pinball league seventh season of the year was convened i guess not of the year just of all time because i think the first one started last year robert wong and dante oliva tied for first and billy vazine and zen zachniak tied for third That's the first meeting of this season. So lots to be done there. On Monday, October 28, we have Pinball Union and Special When Lit over at Rulo's, the Pin Pals and the Two for Oners at McKenna's Pub, Balls of Steel versus the Mutants at Solid State, the Aristocrats! with Intermission Dolores at Commonwealth, the Colliders versus the Deluxe Horses at Barcade Brooklyn, Parliament versus the New York City Flipper Sport Association at At the Wallace, and the Lesser Players versus Lion Persons! or Factorial, At GebHardsbyRecalled, sure. See, you make the same joke twice. Oh, well. And yet the same people still laugh. I'm flattered, Benjamin. On Tuesday, October 28th, we have Danger Danger vs. Ball Drainers at Jack Bar, Scrapple Squad vs. Pinister Stakes at Boat Bar, Neptune's Treasure vs. No Quarters for Laundry at Solid State. We've got the Schlubs and the Trolls at Bar Great Harry, Reston Pinball vs. Butterballers at Buttermilk Bar, Kettle's Hand Grenades vs. Harlem Globe Flippers at The Wallace, and the Pin Babes vs. the Replays at Rulo's. Wednesday, October 30th, three events. We have the Barcade Brooklyn Pinball League at 8 p.m. at Barcade Brooklyn, Sunshine Fall League 2024, number 5, 7 p.m. at Sunshine Laundromat in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and the Fall 2024 JPA Tournament, number 6, in group match play format at 7.30 p.m., 8 on the break in Dunnellan, New Jersey. Thursday, October 31. Well, it's Halloween, first of all. That should be remembered. And then, also, Buttermilk's Halloween Max. Match play spookiacular. 8 p.m. The place is in the title. No Bro Presents Thursday Night Strikes. 8 p.m. Sharp Start. Jack Bar. Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Saturday, November 2. National Deviled Egg Day Tournament in a private location in Brooklyn. And Sunday, November 3. Folks, remember, it is daylight saving time for your clocks. Remember, turn your clocks an hour ahead. Your clock should be one hour forward to this fall for November 3rd, Sunday. Hour clocks. Turn your clocks an hour forward. I'm kidding. Please don't do that. You don't really have to do anything anymore because your phone will do it for you. So we're by Sunday at Single Cut, 23 p.m. Single Cut, Astoria, Queens. And the November monthly at Gebhard's, registration at noon, and the Upper West Side in Manhattan. As of October 25th, 2024, there are 277 pinball machines in New York City at 86 public locations. Thanks to the creators and users of Pinball Map for this data, here are machine updates from the past week. On Saturday, October 19th, user JNS went by Solid State and left a couple of comments. On Black Knight Sword of Rage, they said, played fine, just mean, and Mata Hari played great. Machine is crisp and perfect. Rip those spinners. On Sunday the 20th, user Benjamin Furiga played the Monster Bash of Bar Great Harry and let us know Phantom Flip doesn't work. Also on Sunday, user Pennash went to Gamehouse New York and tried their newly arrived Elvis and said, costs a whopping $2.75. At that price, you might think it's pristine, but no. It's dark, weak flippers, and needs a clean. Also on Sunday, user Mayor of Now stopped by Skylark and said of their Foo Fighters, on the quiet side, but you can still hear the music if it's not too busy, drains easy, and said the medieval madness is out of order. Also on Sunday, user MarevNow stopped at Commonwealth and left a comment about their Spider-Man. yet I'd randomly get locks when the ball was still in play. Hitting start once ate two credits and started a two-player game. And the top right flipper sticks, but unsticks if you use the left flipper or hit a bumper. On Monday the 21st, the uncanny X-Men Pro showed up at Jack Bar. On Tuesday, user Mayor of Now stopped at Charlene's in Brooklyn and played their Attack from Mars remake? They said, the right flipper button keeps jamming, making the game difficult and frustrating. The launch button is rarely strong enough for a super skill shot, but it's sporadically registering one anyway. On Thursday, the 24th, user SuperCoven37 also tried the Spider-Man at Commonwealth and said, why will nobody fix this machine? It's such a good game. How are you going to let it sit in this condition and take people's money, please fix it stat. Also on Thursday, a theater of magic showed up at Elwife Brewing in Sunnyside, Queens. Let's talk about Gebhard's beer culture. Relatively new on the scene at 228 West 72nd Street in Manhattan. You can take the two or three train to 72nd and Broadway, and that's probably the best and closest thing to do. But you can also take the B or C train to 72nd Street and Central Park West. I'd also like to point out that this is a convenient spot if you are a driver who's coming from north of Manhattan. You don't have to go through Midtown to get here. This is something that we have heard from people on our pinball team who live in Westchester. the it's hard to talk about the decor of gebhardt's beer culture without at least first recognizing the strange architecture of the space you walk i'm gonna say 15 feet back a hallway back a breezeway actually because it outdoors before you turn down diagonally into a door and go immediately down several stairs to what is sort of the main level of the space It has five distinct places in it that you can sort of occupy There that sort of hallway, sort of front bar area right when you walk in. If you walked to your left and then up many stairs, I'm going to say eight, probably five feet up at sidewalk, or just a little bit above sidewalk level, there is a little seating area that's sort of a solarium. Then also downstairs, there's a back bar area that's a little bit more open, has a couple of TVs, almost sports bar-y, but also there's trivia there, there's comedy there sometimes. You can go upstairs, just right between the sort of front and back bar area, and I mean upstairs to the next floor through like, I'm pretty sure this is a repurposed, this is someone's home repurposed into this bar, right? The way that it's laid out. But you go up this staircase and you're on another floor and there's a very wide open area where it's absolutely pinball heaven. Absolutely. Yeah. Downstairs, there are white and orange painted panels that sort of alternate with exposed brick on the walls. There's a bunch of beer advertisements. There is a single seat bathroom on the ground floor, and there are two needlessly gendered bathrooms on the second floor. Does anyone have anything to say about the decor of the space other than that? Is there anything, did I miss anything, or is there something special to you that I didn't talk about? I mean, there's something special for pinball in the decor, which is the giant screen above the pinball machines upstairs, which, you know, any of the pinball machines can be selected to be shown on it. Yeah, most certainly. Now that Spectrum is up on the little balcony, you can't do that. and obviously the two games downstairs, but the six bank, I think it is there, all of those games you can select on an iPad, which overhead video camera is rooted to this vertical screen mounted over the middle of that six bank. And it is glorious for competition in the space. It is absolutely glorious for that purpose. I think my first season joining a team, I remember where it was just the machines in the solarium, as you put it. And then the next season we're there and we were upstairs and I was like, oh, my goodness, this is amazing. So it was pretty cool to see the before and after of that venue. I'm glad that there's some more locations in the more northern half of Manhattan or New York City latitudes in general. and if you include bumper factory and at the wallace and such you know you got a good little cluster going and i look forward to seeing what that community will grow into in in the coming time the menu while they have some liquor is beer beer beer beer beer they have a giant selection of cans they have a large selection of drafts they always try to have an upstate new york draft there for relatively cheap. Sometimes it's a Utica Club, sometimes it's a Jenny, I think. Shout out upstate New York. I love the Westbrook Go's, which they keep in cans there. It's salty and tangy and just right for me. They have non-alcoholic Guinness. Delicious. They have a non-alcoholic Guinness poster. And it comes in a Guinness glass, but it's normally alcoholic Guinness glass, not non-alcoholic. But still, the production is great. I think they also have Narragansett. You mean cans of... Not non-alcoholic Narragansett. Yeah, no. Cans of regular Narragansett. They also have it on draft. But I get the can. Downstairs, there are two games in that solarium. Deadpool Deadpool and Godzilla upstairs on a little sort of balcony seating area. There is a spectrum hidden in a corner, not hidden exactly, but not in an obvious place right when you get to the top of the stairs, at least. As soon as you hear someone flip one flip on it, you know it's there. But it's hidden away in that upper left corner. OG haptics. And then on the floor, you get, from left to right, Star Trek The Next Generation, Indianapolis 500, Whirlwind, Pulp Fiction, Congo, The Shadow, and The Who's Tommy. now i wrote down three lists that are the games on here that i love the games that i like to see in collections and games that you can play lots of places but are also necessary parts of a large collection what what do y'all think i would say it it feels curated and also classic not classic in the solid state sense but um in terms of staging similar to what we discussed last week the newest tables other than the pulp fiction are down in the solarium right the main playing area most of the tables they don't have the full tv dmd we're back to the um the orange uh wide aspect ratio display and again with the pulp fiction being a sort of exception but also based off of an older table it feels it connotates similar to a a beer culture kind of vibe. It's like, here's a selection of some of the older and the better and more fun things. When I first played Shadow the first time, I was like, okay, this is pretty cool, because you got a lot of different options there. First time I ever played Congo over there. First time I ever played Whirlwind over there. I think there's some well-known tables, but also some tables with a touch of gimmick, if you will. I'm personally a fan of all of the choices. Uh-huh. What would you say has a gimmick? Oh, well, I mean, Spectrum, when it pops out the sides and such. Anything, I guess, beyond your non-standard, but also it works. Not gimmick connotating negatively, of course, but something novel, if you will. Gabe, what do you think? I think it's great. I mean, there's a lot of just stone-cold classics, but also, like, you know, you'll call them like a Williams B-list, but some of my favorite Williams games are quote-unquote the B-titles. Yeah. indie is fun it plays super fast for a game from the 90s um yes feels modern in its flow um congo is similar um yeah i love it it's great lineup and uh also just like weird games they like spectrum i've seen that maybe once in my life they've got it yeah and that's only scratching the surface of what's to come at gabbers for might talk about something in ball three Eric what do you think of the games I haven't been there since this latest lineup was put in so you weren't there for Indian Who's Tommy then no that's correct yeah I haven't seen those there or Godzilla the Godzilla right Godzilla is also new to me um boy i'm excited to you know to i want to try that indie and i want to play that tommy very much it's this sounds like a really cool lineup here the games i love spectrum indie pulp fiction i love listen spectrum it it's freaking weird but you give me high concept low scoring game that once you figure out the high concept turns into a high scoring game I love it. It's Mastermind. If that scans for anyone, that's all it is, really. But you also have to understand how to play the tennis part of the Mastermind board game. Indie 500, it's, as you guys said, it's fast, it's fun, it's great. Pulp Fiction, neoclassic, I guess. It's like Billy Joel playing doo-wop. It's a bygone era, but a brand new thing. Yes. The games that I like to see in collections that I wrote down are Whirlwind, Tommy, Congo, and Shadow. I'm not aware of another Tommy on site in the city right now at a public location. I'm not aware of another Whirlwind in a public location in the city. That doesn't mean there isn't one. That one's a little bit more common, I think, to see than the Tommy. Congo and Shadow stand out when I look at this list. Those are my two favorite games in this list of games. And also, they're both fantastic games based on atrocious movies. Yes. With Tim Curry. Yes. I do want to specifically give a shout out to the operators. NYC Pins is how they're listed. that I know that Glenn Gilliar is at least a cooperator, if not the sole entity. They have filled some of the hole left by Al Seahack, the kingpin of pinball mafia, who left the mortal coil. They operate this venue as sort of their flagship, but they picked up a lot of the venues that Al used to operate at. Glenn, I see you. I appreciate you. I will not mention the name of my employer on this podcast, but I work close to this venue. And I often see Glenn there working on games when I happen by in the afternoon after work. He cares for the space. When we were there, when the colliders were there, Glenn went to the air conditioner and turned it way down an hour before we started playing. And it got cold. And I looked at him and I was like, this is crazy. And he was like, just wait. And as soon as there were 10 of us all trying to play pinball in the room, it was the right temperature. He knows this space and he loves this space. He knows how to treat the venue in addition to knowing how to treat the pins. The operators care about this venue and it shows. So I think it's important to thank them for that. I really like this place. as a Bronx resident, the fact that it's not in Brooklyn is huge. Brooklyn almost has like a hegemony over the pinball scene and they deserve incredible locations. But, you know, just to have operators try and do their pinball thing in an environment that isn't necessarily as primed for pinball as Brooklyn is, brave to be lauded. I'm a big fan because I don't have to transfer a train to get there. It's one train. It's great. Big fan. I thought you were up on the other side of the river there. Totally true. I think anyone coming from the north, anyone who is in upstate Manhattan in the Bronx. Like I said, if you're driving from Westchester, that's a really good point, Gabe, that if it were the most convenient place for me to go close to home, I would be in Hog Heaven. All three. Let's talk about The Harvest with Gabriel Chazanov. Returning to the show, Gabriel is putting on a new tournament in the coming days. Gabriel, please tell us about it. The weekend of November 15th, it will be New York City's most Whopper-dense pinball tournament. Actually, two pinball tournaments. Oh, my. And we're really trying to... Main and classics? We're going to have a main or we're going to have a classics. Both will have at least a 200% Whopper bonus with 60 players. You're looking at total for both events somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 Whoppers. Don't quote me on that. it's probably around there maybe more yeah but we're sort of trying to go in a different direction from where most tournaments of this size and scope go we sort of have different motivations one of our biggest thing there is it is a $60 buy-in to play in the tournament and then pump and dump entries are totally free so the format is pump and dump you've done it you've played in nycpc or you've gone to papa back in the day where you are basically bleeding your paycheck out onto the floor for about 48 hours straight grinding your teeth trying to get that one good game is it fun maybe it's fun if you get in it's fun to get better at pinball but on another level it is heart-wrenching so we're trying to create an environment where you can have that experience um this honestly relatively novel format for the local local new york city scene of pumping and dumping trying to get the best score but you don't have to worry about burning all your money because it's just unlimited free entries play uh as many times as you want as long as you can there's a little coin drop for uh my you know partner in this glenn gillyard um but i think that's only fair is it the normal price of the games, do we think? Or do we know if there's going to be any sort of increased price? Is there, you know, some tournaments have put in token mechs or something like that. Is there anything like that going on with the pricing? It will not be increased. I'll tell you that. If anything, it will probably just stay as it is, which is, I think, a perfectly reasonable dollar for modern games, 75 cents. A more classic game. Very reasonable. Also, on most of them, I think you can use a phone app to pay, is that right? Yeah, which will be helpful, I think. Our Classics Bank which is going to have a lot of really interesting games Also doing it in part from Jeff Anderson the main creator behind Barcade nationally who got an incredible warehouse in New Jersey. There's five games in the bank, but your ticket will consist of ten games. How is this possible? You're going to be awarded points for your best game and for your second best game. sort of another level to make pump and dump a little bit more fun because normally in pump and dump you've got one score that you need to beat if you don't beat it your heart is broken you have to wait another 20 minutes to get back in line in this format okay maybe you didn't beat your top score but you beat your second best score you got a little bit of points um so i think that will make it more interesting and it will also double the amount of Whoppers the tournament is worth. At this point, I think I should say that as a tournament director, I've been tournament directing for three or four years now, one of my main philosophies has been to not be motivated by the constant hunger for Whoppers. Thursday Night Strikes, which is my standby, which I now run with a bunch of great people, it's head-to-head, so you're not getting a TGP doubler. Three Strikes, That tournament could be four players each. It could be four players, four strikes. It could go an extra two hours and be worth 20 Whoppers a week. That's not what we're about. That's not the point of that sort of tournament as I see it. Now, why am I now making a tournament of this scope with so much focus on the Whopper? I've sort of been to a couple different tournaments recently where the Whopper was one of the main motivations. The machines were set up in such a way that they weren't designed to measure skills so much as luck. And when that happens, you're really measuring quantity of games played to reach the point where you get that lucky game. And when you're charging per entry, what you're really measuring is the size of one's wallet. So we're trying to give you that pump and dump experience of trying to play your best game possible without, as I said, bleeding you dry. And by limiting the players to 60, then hopefully, even with free unlimited entries, the lines aren't going to be too crazy. Because there's just not going to be that many people jostling. Right. How many games in total in the banks? There are 10 games in the main bank, 5 games in the classics bank. So let's say that every single... So 4 deep. If everyone lined up in just one and perfectly lined up in only where there was room, the queues would be 4 deep. And everyone showed up for all the time that they're eligible to show up. That seems pretty good. The IFPA threshold for a quote-unquote certified tournament, which basically just means it's worth a bunch of points, if you do a couple small list of things is 20 hours of unlimited qualifying. So a lot of these are like, we're doing 20 and we're only doing 20. That's all we need to do. Um, we want to make sure that as many people are going to be able to get in as possible. Um, so we are doing, what is it? 14 plus 12, 26 hours of qualifying as much as we can possibly do Thursday night, Friday night, all Saturday. And then we're going to have, you know, your finals bonanza on Sunday. Um, um, Can I ask? Because you were just talking about the Whoppers. I had been wondering, look, I'm a slow local food guy. I had been wondering about the name The Harvest, but it occurs to me that maybe it might actually be about the Whoppers themselves. Is that the idea for the name of the tournament? Is you're harvesting the Whoppers here? Is that it? Obviously, I'm making a dish of roasted vegetables right now. I'm all about autumnal vibes that's part of it but we are also absolutely harvesting whoppers you've heard of whopper farms this is a mega fun um another thing i've heard is like new york city has so many pinball players we have a gigantic scene but we are also segmented due i think just to the nature of public transport so we're kind of ghettoized into our different neighborhoods which means that each of those individual neighborhoods has a much smaller pool of players which means the general Whopper output of any of those given tournaments is much smaller than you would think a New York City tournament would be given how many players we have. And I've heard a lot of people saying we need to harness the power of New York City's players we could be outputting Whoppers like District 82 which for those who don't know is a gigantic space in Wisconsin which has a huge scene and there are a lot of incredibly highly ranked players from there um just because of their volume of players they are not segmented by their public transport they've all got cars they all drive from the surrounding areas into green bay uh and play in those giant tournaments to get a huge amount of whoppers so yeah we're trying to harvest the power of what new york city has done in the past 15 years where we've built this incredible scene all right let's run a big tournament that isn't going to break your back. The seeds have been planted. Yeah, exactly. The harvest is... A thought on how we are sort of operating differently from your standard large-scale tournament. Often those tournaments will make the games hard because they want the queues to be shorter, or they want, let's say, a certain amount of internet clout to say, oh, the tilts were so tight. It was one of the most fun I've ever been to. I also just want to say, I think that sometimes they want more money in the pot. Absolutely. Sometimes, if it's very hard, more money gets thrown in, and that means that you had a very high-money tournament. Right. Ultimately, this tournament is not about payout. The winner might get $1,000 or $2,000, but this is about bringing the people of New York City together to have a fun tournament. It's about getting New York City players on the map, so to speak. And it's about having a great time. So how are we going to make these games hard? How are we going to keep our cues low without doing sort of silly things like making the tilt super tight? To as much as we can with how we're able to change these games, I'd like to make the games more interesting, more unique, not necessarily punishing where you're not even having fun playing um so that's another you know let's say tentpole and in the mission statement of of the harvest i find that really interesting yeah like uh yeah the strategy of playing a busted up location game where something's not working is a challenge I really enjoy in pinball. I'm looking forward to seeing what you got in store. I love broken pinball. Broken Metallica? One of the just golden game. I'm going to break a little bit. That's actually the LE version of Metallica Remastered is Broken Metallica Remastered. that reminds me from uh i saw this a while back for for game theory there's honing and innovating honing is getting good at the same thing but just incrementally better and then innovating is going in a totally different direction but then finding a better result gabe do do you want to talk about the games list i would love to talk about the games list and okay canonically speaking metaphysically speaking i don't know what you would say uh this is the first time that this game list is being announced publicly this will be right yes metaphysically metaphysically it is true it is it is true both physically and metaphysically it's just that it won't actually be published until it's metaphysically true when it's published it may be metaphysically true and not physically true. Right. Just know that I said it here first before you read about it. Eric is squirming while someone throws philosophy at me. That's what metaphysical means. In our classics, Pink, we've got some real humdingers. Python D'Python Anghelo's Big Guns. The Diamond Lady. Game 2. Game 3, we're going to the slopes. It's hot dogging. Game 4, the eternally beautiful Quicksilver. And Game 5, Spectrum. Although there will be some more classics in the main bank. Most of these you've already gone over, but our main bank will consist of Congo, Deadpool, Godzilla, Indy 500, Pulp Fiction, The Shadow, Star Trek Next Generation, Whirlwind, Tommy and rounding it out, courtesy of local New Jersey legend Jeff Anderson Transporter. A game that I, after having played pinball for 10 years, had never seen in my life. Immediately Googled. And if you haven't heard about it, Google it with me. Because it's one of the craziest things I've ever seen. Transporter. Jason Statham. This is... There was one at Thess Ancom for a while. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah, I've never played it, but I have looked at the play field, and I won't get too deep into it, but it does have one feature that I've only seen on one other game, which is Escape from the Lost World, where it is an upper flipper shot. Now, most upper flipper shots are feeding into a ramp, like a railed corral there, right? this is just essentially a catwalk for the ball no rails so you have to hope that you hit it straight which then goes into sort of like a whirlpool and I loved it in Escape from the Lost World and I'm you know excited to love it on Transporter which has wild art what are all these red balls they're all looking at me Who came up with this? I'm just excited for people to play that for It sounds like I'm going to play that the entire time I'm in the tournament. Can people still register? Yeah. As of today, we've pretty much sold out. We are at capacity. But as with any given pinball tournament, you're going to lose a couple people. Things happen. so get on the wait list get in we may expand the player count um if you don't get in come hang out gebbards is a great place uh and i think it's going to be a great cross-section of new york city pinball players what do you need volunteers for and how can someone volunteer pretty much just scorekeeping yeah i mean we've got 26 hours of qualifying to fill we're going to have games going on upstairs and downstairs. Normally, volunteers are reimbursed in cash or entries. We don't have cash. It's all going to the pot. It's going to be small anyways. We don't have entries. They're free, baby. But we can give away gorgeous art designed by Glenn Gillyard, enamel pins, beer glasses. Glenn Gillyard is an incredible graphic designer and went so far beyond you know because ultimately he was the operator he's the person who's operating these games and I assumed that would be the tournament director he would operate the games and that would be the relationship but he's really been a huge partner in this and he's even gone so far as to make incredible trophies using his artistic abilities he has made an incredible graphic of a turkey with a sickle you're going to see it on the internet soon sickle is pinball flipper it's going to be available as an enamel pin it's going to be on some beer glasses which will be available to volunteers please volunteer but this turkey has a feature that some people haven't understood they're like what is that giant thing on its beak it's a snood it's a turkey snood and this has been Glenn Gillyard's personal request to me to say on this podcast a turkey snood is a fleshy, skin-like appendage that hangs over a turkey's beak and attaches to its forehead. It's part of a group of small bulbous protuberances on a turkey's head, neck, and throat called caruncles. So when you see Glenn's beautiful art and you see that glorious snood, just know it wasn't a mistake. It was an homage to the incredible beast that is the turkey. there's no hotel block for this tournament this is New York City this is us and if you are interested and you're signed up for the tournament you will be receiving an email soon with a link to sign up for two two and a half hour volunteer shifts it's going to mean a lot to us it's going to mean a lot to the fellow players this is a community tournament you know it's mostly New York City players just playing in a big tournament with each other it's going to be managed by New York City people Matt Grady is going to help stream. Glenn Gilyar is operating beautifully. I'm going to tournament direct, and I'm sure that some other local New York City tournament directors are going to help out. I'd like to thank Gabriel Chazanov for joining us this week. I would like to thank Jose Garcia, Robert Gagno, Jess Warren, Zen Zokniak for sending us updates about their matches. I would also like to thank Gabe for all of the work that he's doing on the harvest coming up at Gebhard's, November 14th through 18th. Join us next week. I'm not exactly positive what we'll do in Balls 2 and 3, but I'm sure we'll do something in at least one of those spots. Between now and then, whatever you're up to this week, pinfolk, go get them. you