it's time for another pinball profile i'm your host jeff teals you can find our group on facebook we're also on twitter at pinball profile emails pinball profile at gmail.com and please subscribe on your favorite podcatcher now i'm about to say something that could end everything i am about to talk about something i am not supposed to talk about but that's how much i care about you the listeners, I'm about to talk about the famous Fight Club. I am here in Pittsburgh right now. I am at technically the new Papa Facilities right now. I'm in the building, but I'm here because I'm here to see my friend and the guy I want you to know, Fred Cochran. Hey, Fred, how are you? Great, Jeff. How about yourself? Am I in trouble for saying Fight Club? No, not at all. We want people to come out and test our games. Ah, thank goodness. You know, the old rule is you weren't allowed to talk about it, but that's what really Fight Club is for, is to test the games. You've got two techs on hand here, I've noticed, and making notes, you're timing how long the games are. Correct. It's all important for replay and for Pinberg. Yeah, there's a lot of different things that Fight Club gives. Timing for games, what groups are going to be good, what games are going to play long, what adjustments we need to make. So there's a lot of different things. And also, too, it's a casual tournament. It's worth Whopper points, so people can come out and enjoy that. And there's a little bit of prize money involved. Well, there are a couple reasons why I think this is going to be the best Pinberg ever. One, you've gone to 1,000 people. and you've also had so much time to look after these games because the Penguins didn't make the playoffs this year. Oh, too soon? No, not too soon. The Penguins stunk in the playoffs. So, yeah, it's a long process, man. Even if the Penguins would have made it, I probably would have, you know, I've already been neck deep in this stuff since December. That's when I start getting ready in the building. And plus we moved this year. So that was another set of obstacles. That was January, right? We moved in January, right in the middle of winter here in Pittsburgh. Brilliant. Great. It's not like there's a lot of hills in Pittsburgh. No. And we only moved a mile from the old facility. Yeah. I know where it is. So, yeah, we moved a mile from the facility, and we had to get everything in here and set up around a company that was in here previous and work around them. And they did a lot of fabrication, so there was a lot of cleanup involved and things like that. So, you know, we really didn't start getting into delving into everything until mid-February, late February, when we actually started working on the things, getting ready for the show. But I was already, like I said, getting stuff ready back in the old building before we moved. You know, Fred, you've already been doing a lot. We're going to get to Pinberg in a second, but I want to talk about the ReplayFX Foundation. I want to talk more actually about Papa because we catch yourself and so many others from the Pittsburgh area on Tuesday nights on Papa Pinball TV on YouTube. It's always great to watch. You learn a little bit. You get a nice variety of games. But there are so many different people involved in bringing Pinberg and ReplayFX that, listen, the first time I went to Pinberg, I saw Bowen on stage. I go, oh, I guess it's all Bowen. I had no idea. There is so many people behind this. Elizabeth, Doug, yourself, Mark, and I'm forgetting so many. Petey in Virginia, my goodness. So there's a core group here at the building. We have a whole six employees with two full-time techs and a contractor that does a little work with us. Well, a lot of work with us. But the amount of people that it takes to get everything going and everything running, it's a mammoth effort. We have over 100 volunteers every year So and these are people that spend their time you know away from their families and do different things And they sacrificed themselves for not playing in Pinburgh or enjoying the show to its fullest to help us do it And we're eternally grateful for that. And it's ridiculous. The sacrifices that the Pittsburgh people do, yourself, John Replogle, AJ, PD Hendrix, Virginia. I mean, there are so many people that just probably would like to play in this tournament. And we had dinner before yourself, Doug, Elizabeth and I, we were over at Olive Garden, which I miss Canada, by the way. Anyway, the point is, I've seen a lot of big, big tournaments, and nothing is bigger than Pimber. And the effort that people put in these tournaments is ridiculous. It's huge, and I don't know if the players realize how many sacrifices are made, how much time, how much blood, sweat, and tears and money goes into these, really, to just put on a good show. It's not like they're making a lot of money on these things. No, nobody gets rich doing pinball. that's you know people route games and do different things to to enhance the the hobby and the sport but nobody's making a million dollars doing pinball and like you know when we do our show you know for us it's a labor of love you know I had to give up playing pinberg to do this and the reason why I do that is because I believe in the cause and I believe in what we do and I believe in the people that I work with and um you know that's the first thing if you don't believe in what you're doing or the people you're working with you're not going to do it I volunteered for three years before I even became an employee for the foundation and each year it gets different and more complicated, but it becomes easier at the same time because we've done it for five, this will be our fifth year. It's a machine. Now it's adding machines and space and everything else too as you've gone to a thousand players, which is just an unbelievable number, but I mean, you're going to be able to pull it off. Well, you know, a thousand players is a pretty incredible feat. Like I said, I haven't played in the Pinburgh in five years. So the one thing I don't miss is trying to sign up on Saturday morning whenever we, when tickets go on sale. So it's something I don't miss doing. But like I said, for me, I enjoy playing, but I enjoy pulling. If you ever see me at the show, I'm having a good time. I'm smiling. I'm having a great time. All gussied up, too. All gussied up and hanging out with the kids on the arcade side and making sure everybody's enjoying themselves. And I enjoy just watching people enjoy themselves, and that's why it's easy for me to do what I do. And I think you'd get the same answer from everybody else. We enjoy seeing people enjoy what we do. And there are sacrifices you have to make to do that, but again, it's an easy decision whenever you can go into that convention center and see everybody having such a great time. It's worth the price of doing what we do. I hear that from a lot of you and the PAPA staff, and thank you very much on behalf of myself and those listening to this pinball profile right now. But, you know, it does bring a lot of people to Pittsburgh that may not come to Pittsburgh, not only from North America. You know, you've got people from Europe, Australia. It's kind of exciting that they're coming to your town, which you take a lot of pride in. Yeah, and the city's starting to recognize that as well. You know, we're working, you know, with different groups in the city showing them that what our show does brings income into the city. And it's a destination for people to come into our city. So whenever you talk to city officials and things like that, and you're talking about bringing money into the city, then they'll listen. Every year we've gotten bigger and bigger. And this year is going to be bigger than the previous four. And I'm super excited to see some of the different things we have going on this year. And hopefully people will enjoy it. Well, if you're going to Pinburger, if you're going to any tournament, make sure you thank the volunteers, the scorekeepers, the TDs, the techs, the staff at the facility. Just thank them for putting this on because again it a real labor of love and it a lot of hard work And we are the ones who benefit from the enjoyment of these big tournaments You talked about some of the volunteers I know last year you had tech school and you brought on some extra TDs You going to a thousand, probably the case again this year. Yeah, we have more techs than I think ever. We have more TDs than ever. As the show grows, we have to bring more people on. Like, you know, we'd like to have a tournament where we could have 1600, you know, 2000 people, but that takes more machines, takes more people, takes more time. And I like the pace that we're growing at just because, you know, we can manage that process. Instead of just going, hey, we can get 1600 people in and do a cash grab. We're doing it, you know, smartly by incrementally growing it as we have more staff, as we have more games. And as we, you know, time becomes more available for different things. And I'd like everybody to get into Pinberg at some point, but we have to do it at our pace. So it's a quality event that it's been, you know, talked about for the last few years that it's the premier you know tournament in the world it's not about the size it is really i mean it just happens to be a huge quantity but really it is about the quality of the tournament and that's why people not the size that's why people say it's their favorite yeah i think you know you see a lot of people from overseas come over to you know different tournaments and things like that but every year we get people from you know we get from europe we get them from japan we get them from you know new zealand australia i can tell you right now if i didn't believe in a tournament and I was a competitor, I wouldn't travel that far to go to a tournament unless I believed in the quality of the show. And that's really what it's about is the quality of the show. We want people to come, obviously, and enjoy themselves. But if the games aren't playing great, then you're not going to enjoy yourself. So we spend 12 months out of the year. Once replay ends, we start working on the games for the following year. We want people to think of us as a premier pinball event in the world. Let's talk about the Replay Foundation, because not just at ReplayFX, but all year round, you have different events going on. You talked about the Penguins and whatnot. I know you helped out at an Ariana Grande concert or something like that, Pink, Eric Church. Tell us about some of those little events that maybe we don't know about. Yeah, so besides doing the tournaments we do, we're always trying to expand the brand, and what we do now is we rent games to different organizations or musicians that are coming into town. So a lot of cities in the NHL have theme nights like 70s, 80s, and 90s nights, and the Pittsburgh Penguins contacted us about three years ago and asked us if we were willing to bring games down for like the 80s night and that was the first time we did it. And now we do it for all three of their events during the course of the year. So are these actually at games? Yeah, they're at games. So when they have 80s night here in Pittsburgh, we take 12 games down and put it outside in the concourse on the main level and we have them on free play for everybody just to enjoy for an evening. It's funny because there'll be times where the game will be going on There'll be more people playing games than there probably should be when they should be watching the game, especially with hockey ticket prices. But yeah, that turned into the arena contacting us to bring games down for certain artists. They might request them or they might just be doing it as a courtesy for them to come into the city to do their show. I know that Ariana Grande is a NASA fanatic from what I understand. So we took down our Star Trek environmental space shuttle and... Space mission? Space Odyssey? Yeah, I can't remember what it was. There was another game we took. Apollo 13? No, we didn't take that then. That would have probably broke. But we took a number of games on Ferraro Grande and like I said, they enjoy them and they specifically asked for space themed games So that just something that the Replay Foundation now is growing into Whereas we just did tournaments now we doing it as a business renting games to organizations And there going to be more of that coming up in the fall as well That's pretty exciting. And as you talk about music artists, a friend of yours, a person that's been on this show actually through you on Pinball Profile, Mark Mark Tremonti, who is with his own Mark Tremonti band, does amazing things with Alter Bridge, of course, years ago with Creed. He's a massive pinball fan. And I think I just heard that he was doing some stuff with JJP. I think it might have been Pirates. I'm not 100% sure on it. I haven't talked to Mark in a while. It was Pirates. But I know he wants to get involved in a lot of the pinball aspects. He wants to make music for pinball machines. So if there's any makers out there that want to contact Mark, I know he wants to do it. The Guitar World Guitarist of the Year twice. I mean, the guy. Listen to Blackbird by Ultra Bridge if you want to hear a guy play guitar. Yeah, it's a great. He's a great guy. Obviously, he's a pinhead, but he's a great guy just above and beyond everything else. I've had the fortunate situations to hang out with him a little bit with my family. We went down to Columbus and saw him. We had dinner with him at Melt, which was really cool. Just a really good guy and a big, massive pinhead. And he might be coming to Pimberg. I'm not sure. He's trying to work on it, but it just depends. I give him the gears when Freeplay Florida is on because he's in the Orlando area. I'm like, dude, you've got to come in November. So hopefully he comes to that. But that would be great if he came to Pimberg. Yeah, he was just telling me that there's going to be a place down by him that's going to be opening up. I don't know if it's going to be a barcade or an arcade. It's going to have 150 pins. So he just texted me the other day, and he's just super excited about it. Every time I try to talk to him about music, he wants to talk about pinball. Every time he wants to talk about pinball, I want to talk about music. So we kind of bounce off each other that way. But, yeah, he's a really cool guy, and I've met a lot of really cool people just through the pinball community. Like I said, through the game rentals or just people coming and visiting the building. Ed Ed Robertson, obviously, he's been to the building. Super cool guy, real approachable, and real humble. So, Fred, you mentioned you're not going to be playing at ReplayFX because you're going to be so busy and helping so many others enjoy their great time there. But not just there. You've kind of shut down playing a little bit. Are you retired? I always tell people I'm going to retire. It just depends. You are a great player. Easily, if you're playing top 50. No, no, no. That might be a stretch. Fred, as I wear this IFPA 15 shirt in which I luckily squeaked in, you should have been there. I shouldn't have been there. And you couldn't have made it because of work or whatever. Yeah, I couldn't make it because of work. But one of the things I set out to do when I started playing competitive pinball and I found out the IFPA was a thing was to qualify for it. And I have. But it's in Florida next year. So I'm possibly back. I'm thinking I'm still kind of I'm like 150th or something like that. I haven't played much. And I'm thinking about trying to play a little bit more in tournaments outside, obviously, of Pinberg to be able to maybe qualify and make it to Florida, which would be a lot of fun. Well, I'd like to see you play more because you're a great player and you're a great guy. and thank you on behalf of everyone listening for what you do for ReplayFX and for Pinberg. We have so much fun and keep up the great work on Papa Pinball on Tuesday nights. All right, Jeff, thanks. I appreciate you having me on. This has been your Pinball Profile. You can find our group on Facebook. We're also on Twitter at Pinball Profile. Email us pinballprofile at gmail.com and please subscribe on your favorite podcatcher. I'm Jeff Teolas. Bye.