It's time for another Pinball Profile. I'm your host, Jeff Teels. You can find everything on pinballprofile.com. We're on Twitter, X, Instagram, at pinballprofile. A great Facebook group as well. You can email pinballprofile at gmail.com. And if you'd like to show your support, don't worry. The show will always be free. Thank you to wonderful Patreon subscribers. And we really appreciate that. But again, you certainly don't have to do that. But I do want to acknowledge great people like Lua W., Ken G., Jerry S., Bart V., Derek S., and others. Thank you so much. Patreon.com slash pinball profile. It's hard to miss this guy at a tournament. Why? First of all, he's a very pleasant man. But some people have a look, shall we say. You know, when you think of Mohawks, you think of maybe Mr. T. If you watched Poppy, you saw Andy Bagwell. But I think of Jockton Straley, who joins us right now. Hey, Jockton, how are you? Hey, how's it going? So that mohawk's been around for a while, hasn't it? Yeah, I've had this for nearly 20 years. Now, what made you decide to do that? And I don't believe it's the natural color either. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I could use to get rid of some grays myself. But how'd this all come about, I have to ask? Well, it wasn't to get rid of grays, at least not then. But basically, me and a group of guys were going to Burning Man around 2006. And we said, hey, let's all get mohawks and we'll just shave them off when we're done. And it just somehow, it transformed me into kind of a new person. And I'd always kind of hated my hair before that. It was kind of just hard to deal with and too curly and too frizzy. And it's been my favorite hairstyle ever since. And now I've got three kids that have grown up with their dad having a mohawk. So I'm in trouble if I lose it. They're not going to find me in a crowd. Well, that's the thing, right? There are a lot of people in pinball that are very outgoing. There are a lot of introverted people. I would imagine it would hard to be the latter if you have a huge mohawk like yourself. Right. Yeah, I probably was more introverted before, but it does kind of break the ice. People will come up to you and ask you to take a picture or just say, hey, it looks great, or they like the color. It's really fun. And it really kind of gets things moving when it gets to interacting with other people. Jockton, this isn't lip service. I love that. I love when people stand out, when people are unique. I love people who are original. So don't change a thing. It's great. Awesome. So we know you because for years now you've been helping people with, oh, my goodness, the glares on some of these machines with the LED lights, or especially in a dark place and you're playing a game and you just get blinded. And Jockton came along years ago with Pinshades, and I assume that's kind of what made you decide to do this, after maybe playing in the odd arcade that just was, I can't see the game, it's too dark, and these lights come on. Exactly. Sometimes we'd be playing at League, we'd be going to one of the locations, and it's got a spotlight directly over the play field, and it's right above the flippers, and you're like, I can't see the ball. It's just impossible. If I just had a little bit more, it could give me a little bit more reaction time if I could get a little bit more information coming in. That's kind of the thing where I'm like, I've got to find something. And I tried all kinds of different solutions, different kind of codings, and it was hard to find something that worked with pinball in a dark room, because that's really important that it works in all pinball playing, you know. you know it doesn't even have to be dark because as you know i play pinball all over the world and i see people wearing them in all different types of locations and light dark doesn't matter i mean sometimes they just the way it just helps you see the ball so i compare it to in baseball you know when the first time sunglasses are always tough to wear but oakley's something the way it knocked out the sun and like okay i don't feel like i'm wearing glasses it's kind of like that with pin shades with pinball. Right. Yeah. And, you know, once you've like I wear them all the time, I wear them even when I'm not playing pinball. I wear them to drive. I wear them to go to the pool. You know, I wear when I'm working in the yard. I just use them all the time because that they're they're very pleasant to wear. And I also want to make sure that what I'm selling to other people has got good quality. It's going to last a while. Now, years ago and only older people are going to recognize this reference. there was a movie that Steve Martin made. He made some glasses, and I wear glasses all the time, and he was complaining about how they always slide down your nose especially when you looking down So he put this kind of bar in between and it was revolutionary Everyone was getting these things but that bar in between would make people go cross So he got sued, lost all his money. The movie was called The Jerk. It was hilarious. We're talking about people's eyeballs and sight. And I know The Jerk was a little bit of an over-exaggeration, but you probably had to make sure and probably test a few to make sure they're just right. Yeah, lots of testing, lots of feedback from people, making sure that the product works well for them. I do get a lot of requests for lots of different types of things. Some people ask for a prescription, and unfortunately, that kind of requires a lot more medical kind of licensing to do. So it's not something I can actually offer. But if you've got, if you want to use, say, contacts or something, they work great. And I even have people who wear them right over their glasses, and they don't care. It's great because it's so worth it to get that few extra milliseconds of reaction time, regardless of what it takes you to wear them. The edge matters in pinball, especially in competition, and just to get better, and of course, being able to see the ball. But that brings us to the next kind of invention, if you will, that we've been seeing a lot over the last few years. I know Pinshades and Pinsteps, a big sponsor of Pinberg, my event the beast and everything so pin steps are more than what i originally thought they were i thought they were just oh okay we can lift the back up by half an inch or an inch or even go bigger if you want but i found out from people using them buying them and telling me what they're using them for it is for a lot of different purposes the one that really actually shocked me i didn't even think about it was like i was i remember i was standing near you at pinberg and the guy bought a set. He goes, these will be great because I've got these old legs that I can't change the leg levelers on them and stuff. This will be perfect. So there's another example. But I guess the original reason was to kind of help you maybe play a little bit differently as far as the ball coming down a little faster and your action time. Really another way to help you at pinball. Is that fair to say? Oh, for sure. the original thought was some people put 2x4s in the back of their game to raise it up a bit to make it harder for practice, say a big event is coming up and you need to change things up a bit make things a lot faster so that you can be ready for those games that are set up so hard when you get to an event and I said you know, it's so chintzy let's put this 2x4 back here and it's just it's this there's no class in that you know you've got this ten thousand dollar fifteen thousand dollar game and you're going to put it on a piece of plywood or a piece of you know two by four and then is it going to slip off is it going to bang into your wall is it going to it's not the best way of doing it so i i thought of the first design i came up with actually was wood and it was actually a kind of a wedge that had kind of cups in it four different cups i I remember it. Yeah. I sent those out to a bunch of the top players, you included, to get feedback and say, hey, how are you guys using this? Do you like this? What do you think about it? I took all that feedback and brought it back into the current design, which is individual cups. I sell four different sizes. They go in half-degree increments. So if you put them on your machine, it's going to change your incline or decline by that degree. So it goes from a half a degree all the way up to two degrees in half degree steps. So that gives you four different sizes. And what that lets you do is really dial in a game for you. For me, I like to put them on when I need to really practice. And, you know, I can't leave them like that all the time because my kids want to play. They get mad if, you know, they come in and the game is just killing them. And, you know, they don't care about a competition. They just wanted to have some good times. so being able to quickly get them on and off and not have to re-level the game every time you want to change something it's it's you know very important um you don't want to spend all kinds of time just just trying to get back to level just because you want to change something i never even thought about that aspect there's another one because yeah if i do want to raise it by a degree or two or three or four or five you have to do it to both sides and that's the leveling thing well Well, if it's already level, this will cure that with the pin step. So good on you for doing this. I know a lot of people have seen them at the events I mentioned. You're going to be at the UK Open just in a few weeks. You're going to be at Pinball Expo. So people will be able to see both pin shades, pin steps, and Pinsonati, another great Stern Pro Circuit event coming up in December. But the best way to find out more about pin steps and pin shades how can they reach you Jonathan You can just type in pinshades into your browser It'll take you to my shop, which is currently housed on Pinside, and you can purchase them there. You'll find that there are different levels, too. I mean, even the subtle ones make that much of a difference, too. So, again, you see these in competition, and I've got them at my home, too, and the places I play in and around here in Ontario as well. But I just saw earlier that Star Wars came out by Stern, another new Star Wars game. It's Fall of the Environment. I saw that, yes. Looking forward to that. But a lot of people might not know, you have a connection to Star Wars with the original app. Is that correct? That's correct. What is this? So back in about 2014, 2013 actually, I was approached by Disney, and they wanted to hire me to design their app once they had just bought the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas. And they were getting the first movie into production. And they brought me on to design the first Star Wars app, which had all kinds of great features in it. It was kind of a home app for a bunch of smaller interactive experiences. There was an AR feature, a VR feature, a soundboard, a little minigame where you could fight a little remote with a lightsaber. And, of course, lots of Star Wars news and other things. And that was a really awesome project to work on, I must say, working at Disney. Just loved working on that. And the fans loved it. Got lots of awards, actually, too, while I was there. I just find it funny because next year is the 50th anniversary of Star Wars, and you and I remember it from our youth, but generations of Star Wars fans. These movies were originally made for, I don't know, 10-year-olds or something like that. Here we are, much older than 10, and still admired. And you mentioned you have children, I have children. I mean, my youngest started a little high school project. We did a little podcast about Star Wars called My Young Padawan, and it was a lot of fun. So it's just, yeah, I mean, how can you not be excited by Star Wars? I'm excited to play the new game, but that's cool, your connection to the original app. You've got another kind of little piece of history that I'm sure not a lot of people know this. You mentioned the Burning Man thing, but it's a different kind of burning. And tying it all back into pinball, you know, there are a couple of kiss machines, and you see Gene Simmons there and the God of Thunder, and during the show he would breathe fire. Ha! Says Jock. What is this about you and fire breathing? So that's another funny thing. It actually is connected to Burning Man, my Burning Man experience. The first Burning Man I went to, I was a real newbie at it. I was what they call a virgin. When you show up to Burning Man, when you're there for the first time, you're kind of being exposed to a whole new world that kind of changes things quite a bit. And for me, it changed quite extreme. I saw someone fire performing and I'm like, that's amazing. I want to do that. So, I mean, that was just all I needed to go back to LA after that. And I spent the whole next year learning how to perform with fire, with fire breathing, with fire poi, with a fire sword, all kinds of fire stuff. And with a troop that really did some awesome stuff. I learned from some of the best people in the business. And just, we would just do this once a week. We would just do all kinds of crazy things with fire. And one of the things that we did was a couple of years later at, at Burning Man again, we got 86 people together that were fire breathers and we all breathed fire at the same time. And that broke a world record. And I now have a Guinness world record on my wall but it's for fire breathing, and it was called Ocean of Fire at Burning Man 2006. I mean, sorry, amazing. Did I say crazy? I say that as someone who's, like you say, a noob or a virgin when it comes to something like this. I'm sure I would be just as excited as you are. I'm just fearful right now sitting behind a microphone thinking about it, but I've seen some of these shows in the past, whether it be, I don't want to say Lollapalooza, or Jim Rose Circus or something like that, or Cleepin used to have all these neat little fire acts. I don't know if you've been to that event, too. Yes I been to Cleepin but I did not see a fire act no Yeah they used to do something out in the parking lot and i don know if it was just you know stealing catalytic converters or anything out of the cars no i i can remember what it was but but there was some sort of huge fire act and i was like oh that was cool um do you still do this it like you say it's very dangerous um you are taking your life into your own hands every time you light something on fire you always do it with safety in mind uh we always had someone who was you know if you're doing a routine there's always someone that's ready at the ready to put you out if there's any kind of problem. I even had my best friend one time, he was doing fire whip and he did a fire whip routine and the whip flipped back, wrapped around his hand and got stuck while it was on fire. And, you know, you've got to be able to jump on that right away and put someone out. He got some pretty bad burns from that, but, you know, he's okay mostly because there were people there to help you when things go wrong. so yeah it's a dangerous thing I don't do it anymore I've got lots of videos that I can go back and look at if I get the urge you get to travel you get to play a lot of pinball obviously trying to make sure people are checking out the pin shades and pin steps for sure but you do get around and I know I'm going to be seeing you very soon but some of the places you love going to play pinball outside of Florida for example oh I mean I love I love playing pinball everywhere. I love playing with new people. I love playing different types of events. I like to see how everyone interacts with the game, plays the game together, because the game is different when you're playing competitively with other people. It's different when you're playing by yourself and you're trying to beat the machine. But I love going to... Indisc is one of my favorite places to go. It's pretty far away from the East Coast, but we'll try to make it this year. Also have a lot of friends from California. He used to live there. He used to go play with a lot of the guys that are playing, like right now, pinball at the lab. Johnny Monica, Jim Belsito, Carl D'Python Anghelo, Voof Voof. These are all great guys to play with in California. They have a great pinball scene there. And also SFGE up in Atlanta. Those guys really throw a great show. I also like to bring my games up there, and I would love to play in their tournaments up there. We have a great scene down in Florida, too, playing down at Pinball Lounge. They take really good care of their machines, and they throw quality events. I can't wait for Pinball at the Beach coming up down here as well. I think tickets are going on sale very soon here. So excited about that. I'm always excited about the events I can go locally as well, besides the ones that I fly to. I see Freeplay Florida is back in Orlando, so that's something exciting in November. That's a great event. That's a great location. I'm glad they're back there. They had to leave there after COVID because of scheduling conflicts and maybe some other things, but I love that venue and the people that run it. They do a really great job. I'll be bringing machines down for people to play as well. I got a trailer. I'll throw six or eight games in there to share my games that I like to fix up as well. Yeah, the Royal Caribe, a wonderful location. You don't have to go anywhere. You just, you know, first of all, a very accessible airport as well, too. And, yeah, you mentioned Pinball at the Beach, the one that happened last year for the first time. Looked fantastic. And coming from where I am, in the frozen tundra of Canada in February, Florida sounds pretty darn good. That's a great event for that. It's a great hotel. it's definitely one to try to get to if you can. For sure. Jockton, I'm going to see you soon, but it is always good to talk to you. And again, check out Pin Steps and Pin Shades, whether you're at the UK Open, whether you're at Expo, Pinsonati, or Pinside. You will enjoy either of these products. And talk to Jockton about how he can improve your game. It will do it for sure. Thank you, Jeff. This has been your Pinball Profile. You can find everything on pinballprofile.com. We're on Facebook as well. We're on Twitter, Instagram, X if you will, and also pinballprofile at gmail.com. If you have anybody you want to hear from, you've got some questions, please shoot us an email. And if you'd like to show your support, you can do so. The show will always be free, but we do appreciate the support on Patreon. Thanks to great people like GME Law, to Jake C, Tony V, Erica's Pinball Journey, Fox Cities Pinball, Sean I, and others. Thank you, thank you. patreon.com slash pinball profile. Check out pin steps, pin shades, and say hi to that man in the mohawk, Jockton, next time you're at a big event. I'm Jeff Piolla. Come on, baby. Got to keep moving. Come on, baby. I'm taking everybody back. Got to keep moving. Come on, baby. Got to keep moving. Come on, baby. Got to keep moving. Come on, baby. Got to keep moving.