Happy 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 I have almost started to believe in religious dogma because finally there's a Dolly Parton on location in New York City. My name is Eric Sweet. My initials are HIP. and I'm a pinball tournament director in New York City. My name is David Potlock. My initials are DAP. I ran into Benjamin at Barcade Phi Dio on my lunch break today. My name is Monica Wedekamp. My initials are QQQ and I'm about to be the new captain of the Trolls. On this week's pod, in ball one, we'll run down local competition results and let you know where you need to get to on Monday or Tuesday night for Pinball NYC. In ball two, we'll give you venue updates courtesy of Pinball Matt, thanks to Eric. and we'll talk about the changing landscape of pinball venues in New York City over the summer. And in Ball 3, we'll speak with David and Monica about what NYC did for its summer vacation. Let's get started. Let's talk about competitive pinball in New York City and nearby surrounding areas for the past week. On Sunday, August 31st, at Milo's Yard, Jose Garcia ran the pacer test at Milo's Yard as a part of the NYC Triborough Series that he has organized, and we talked about last season. Just to give the briefest amount of context to that, Jose has pulled results from certain tournaments throughout the course of the year, so that even if you haven't purposely entered the NYC Triborough Series, you may have played in a tournament, if you've played in any pinball tournaments in New York City this year, that are pooling standings toward finals in November. It had a registration because there are only the six games, seven, six? Six. Six games at Milo's Yard. I found myself learning as I was walking back from my third farmer's market of the weekend. Exposure of my neuroses might also be a good way to look at that. Only 20 players were supposed to be involved. This was expanded to 24 players. And so basically, if you showed up, you had an opportunity to play because enough folks on the waitlist showed up or folks who just wanted to play who maybe didn't know that they needed to register. I don't know for sure. There were at least two new folks in the tournament, I think, like new to IFPA. It was a really interesting and fun format, I thought. Alberto Santana, as he often does when he plays in local tournaments, won the day. Gabriel Chazanov came in second, Tommy Ortega third, and Matt Falzone fourth. After finals, it was a three-game finals, I believe, where the four of them fought it out for those top four seats. So that's the same order they finished the qualifying in also. Interesting. Interesting. Which is to say that it probably would have been the order that they would have finished in if they just kept going in, if they played more rounds. If there hadn't been a finals, let's say. For the last Monday in a minute, there was no pinball NYC. But on Tuesday, the finals for Bells and Chimes NYC's second summer season was convened at Buttermilk under Kate Martin's steady hand. In the A division, Miriam Nadler beat Kate Martin. Monica Weidekamp came in third and Amy Poulin fourth. That's for the whole season, six weeks that they came out and qualified, I believe. Four of them counted. This was the finals. And after all of that, Miriam, New York State champion, wins. Kate, tournament director, comes in second. Monica Weidekamp, panelist today, comes in third. Amy Poulin, fellow troll, comes in fourth. Also, it was streamed by Matt Grady, and there was commentary from Dante and Till. Nicely done. It's great to be able to watch that happen. Cool. I think I clocked that it was happening, but I don't think I had the bandwidth for it on Tuesday night. In the B-finals, Annie Schneider came in first, Jenna Altamirano second, Liz Purr's third, and Semmy Lanzetta fourth. Also on Tuesday, September 2nd, at Gebhard's Beer Culture, what I am going to imagine is actually probably the last Tuesday summer night at Gebhard's. It was. Was convened. Very good. The calendar still has one for next week. I imagine that it won't actually be there. The match play calendar. That doesn't mean it's on the IFPA calendar. The match play calendar has one for next week. This week, they had enough players show up that they did have a final. So they had five rounds of group match play, and then four players advanced to the finals. And after all of that, Gabriel Chazanov came out on top. GC from the boogie down. Nint Hu from Queens came in second. Zvika Geft came in third and Zach Till fourth. Next week is on the IFPA calendar. How about that? So perhaps there will be a Tuesday night tournament at Gebhard's next week if you are not playing in pinball NYC. Hopefully there's no Tuesday team that plays at Gebhard's if that's the case. I don't think there's any team that plays at Gebhard's now. I believe the lesser players moved there. Oh. There was no Scrapple League on Wednesday, September 3rd. It will be met again next week. But on Thursday, September 4th, No Bro Presents Thursday Night Strikes was convened. I don't know who the actual tournament director was, but Gabriel Chazanov is the director of record. I believe Sam directed the night. As so often happens, Adam Kane came in first. Rachel Grimm came in second. And Teddy Belsom and Adam Robinson tied for third. Also on Thursday, the South Slope Pinball League had its second meeting of qualifying of its fourth season in 2025. At Buttermilk Bar, 18 players attended and played five rounds of match play with the goal of garnering the most points towards their series total. Tournament director Kate Martin did the best at that with 29 points on the night. Matthew Carlson got 27 while Matt Grady, Rob Wong and Janos Kiss Gonzalez all got 25 I played all of those jokers in the last couple of games and was right under that line but I'm real happy that I had 29 in the week but Rob didn't show up at all and MMC showed up in round two next week on Monday September 8th 2025 the long wait will be over the summer will be over and it will be time again for pinball nyc season in the left flipper division this season there will be 15 teams which is to say that there will be some buys and you're not going to play everybody so some some people will have buys some people will not on monday september 8th the aristocrats will face the mutants at solid state the pinbots a new monday night team we think will visit special when lit at their home Rulo's. Balls of Steel will have a buy. The Lesser Players will visit Us Colliders at Buttermilk Bar. The Pin Pals will just only have to cross 12th Street to go to Commonwealth to visit Intermission Dolores. Your New York City Flipper Sport Association will go to a venue that you might be a little bit familiar with, Barcade Brooklyn, to visit the D Lux Horse I like this first round draw The two for oners will visit the lion persons At their new home Barcade Fidei Harry's hand grenades Will visit parliament At Owl Farm Harry's hand grenades I'm pretty sure were from the horseshoe bar Previously But they're now at Bar Great Harry Which is why Harry's hand grenades I think But that I believe That's that Tuesday night team Moving over to Monday night Ah, it'd be nice if I just had at the top of my head all the different kinds of hand grenades they've been. Oh, sure. Because they were from a horseshoe bar, but then they were Kettle's hand grenades for a good while until the fire. That's right. And then they were some South Slope bar. They're called hand grenades because they were at the horseshoe bar, horseshoes and hand grenades. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. I think they might be making social commentary about close counting in pinball as well. regardless they'll visit parliament at owl farm on monday night on tuesday september 9th in the right flipper division there will be no buys in this division because they this division is back down to 14 teams this season ball drainers will visit trolls at their new home barcade fidei pinister six will visit rest in pinball parenthetically rip at barcade brooklyn no quarters for laundry will visit Neptune's Treasure at Milo's Yard. Your Butterballers will visit Danger Danger in the Battle of Buttermilk in week one, right? Danger Danger plays at Buttermilk, right? Yeah, it's the Butterbowl. Yeah, the Butterbowl. I keep trying to get us to catch on, but nobody likes it. It's the Battle of the Butts. Scrapple Squad will go to their old home of Sunshine Laundromat and visit Everybody Loves the Sunshine. The Harlem Globe Clippers will go to Jack Bar to visit the schlubs and the replays we'll visit the pin babes at birdies there is on the match play calendar also that night a tuesday summer nights at gebhard's i think eric you said it's also on the ifpa calendar yeah there is not a pinball nyc match at gebhard's and i'm not sure that there is a tuesday team so that may continue if you play on monday and don't play on tuesday or just don't like playing in the team league but like playing individual competition you you may be able to find that on tuesdays going forward we'll see on wednesday will be the resumption of scrapple league at scrapple land in greenpoint brooklyn starting off at eight o'clock this will be the first of six qualifying weeks leading to a finals on october 22nd on thursday september 11th No Bro Presents Thursday Night Strikes will be convened at Jack Bar in Williamsburg. And that same night, SSPL 4, that's Season 4. Yes, Season 4, third meeting, will be convened at Buttermilk at Pinball 8 o'clock. on Saturday, September 13th. South Slope Strikes will be convened at Buttermilk in South Slope. And Sunday, September 14th, No Bro Presents Sunday Slaptism 914 will be convened at Jack Bar. Also on Sunday, September 14th, the Red Hook Pinball Museum will be celebrating their last day at their pop-up location of 352 Van Brunt by having an all-day block party. Cool. As of September 5th, 2025, there are 345 pinball machines in New York City at 82 public locations. Since we last recorded this podcast in May, there have been some big changes to the landscape of location pinball in New York City, and we'll talk about that next. First, though, thanks to the creators and users of Pinball Map for this data, here are machine updates from the past week. On Sunday, August 31st, user Dibby Jane has added six machines to a location that's being called Coney Island Pinball. It is next door to the Freak Bar. It's the shooting gallery space, which is, it seems, now open for the season. For after the season. Oh, yeah. Right. The season ended as of Monday. Right. Labor Day. Duh. All right. Well. It's after Coney Island season. I'm very excited to go play this winter, I hope. Yeah. Well, they have Old Coney Island, Silver Ball Mania, Evil Knievel, Comet, Cyclone, and Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man. That Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man game is really cool. That's a good lineup. That's a great lineup. Those are the ones that have been in all three of those spaces that they've had stuff in. the Mr. and Ms. Pac-Man only in this last space now, I think. Only in the shooting gallery space ever. On Monday, September 1st, a monster bash was removed from Jack Bar and a getaway, High Speed 2, was added in its place. User Jack Bar John said, newly refurbished, August 25th. It is not the one that used to be there. This is a second different getaway. on Wednesday September 3rd user Gushfest dropped into H&H Reserve in Brooklyn and said of their uncanny X-Men plays well no issues on Thursday September 4th user Mini Flipper was at Gebhard's Beer Culture and noticed that on Spectrum the right flipper makes the right side playing field lights flash and the left flipper was sticky sometimes Also on Thursday, there was a bit of shuffling about in the Peter Rose Collection locations. A Whitewater was added to single-cut Beersmiths. All these updates courtesy user Ali Bissett. Scrapple Land gained a Getaway High Speed 2, a Pulp Fiction LE, a Whodunit, and a Monster Bash Remake LE. and Sunshine Laundromat gained a Space Shuttle and a Jaws Pro. Of that Jaws, user Dantasic says, 50 cents, what? What? And on Friday, September 5th, user JNS was at Barcade Fidei and let us know on TX Sector, the sound on this one is so good, it's kind of a pity it's next to Rush, to be honest. Interesting. And a frontier they said, played great, good flipper action. Stay for the glory of the wolf howl. On Banzai Run, they said, played great, strong flippers, mean like this machine always is. Go for the hill. Well, that ended on a note from Arcade Fight Eye, and that is one of the large changes to location pinball in New York City that I was referencing earlier. We've also seen a big expansion at Scrapple Land, and also the Red Hook Pinball Museum has done some bouncing around, and that's what we're going to talk about next. David, you've been raving about Barcade Fidei. What do you think of the place? Place rules. The games are all incredible. The lineup is incredible. It's a lot of pinball in a place that had none. It's in Fidei, obviously, so I get to walk past it every day when I'm going home from work. So I've been spending every day I go into the office, I'm there on my lunch break, and I'm probably also there after work. I've basically exclusively been playing the Avengers because I really want to beat it. I just want to do all the stuff. And I got really close and then I flubbed it. And just like that, I'm dropping like $5 a work week playing Avengers between the hours of noon and 1pm. So basically, it changed my whole life. Also, you have Dolly Parton and a bunch of games from Jersey City. A bunch of games. Also, right now, their menu is roughly the menu from Barcade Jersey City. There have been, I think, a couple of changes to it, and I think I have been told that there might be some more changes to it. I will also say I ate there today while I watched David play some Avengers. I'm straight up gambling. Yeah, it's addiction, yeah. But we talked about the chase for it. But while we were talking about that, I was eating a sandwich that was a Reuben, but with kielbasa instead of corned beef. And, I mean, they really are the same flavor profile, and how dare me, how dare I not have thought to make a Reuben with kielbasa in the past. Really clever food notion on that menu that I just ate today. Billy West, bar kid, bartender swears by that sandwich. It's great. It's a spicier version of it. It's great. As you say, Dali. Like, let's, let's everybody chant Dali. Like, come on. Dali, Dali, Dali. Come on. How long? How long did we have to wait? have a Dolly Parton on location. We've had a Globetrotters and we've had more than one simultaneously. Oh yeah, linked Globetrotters. Linked? But we haven't had more than one. Yeah, I mean, that'd be cool. You know what? David, if you can program the rules and the ROMs for that, you can make probably like $25 profit. Wait, for linked Fastbreak? no for two linked lobetrotters if you can figure out a way to make a rom that would connect two of them via an ethernet cable so that you could play head-to-head on a timer uh that would uh that would i feel like you could probably get like at the end of your profit and loss statement like you'd have 20 you'd be 25 bucks in the black i think that's so worth it oh my goodness i mean it would be you know a year's worth of work i'm sure yeah can't wait did you both play in the tournament there last weekend? Yes. Yes. I'm going to address the elephant in the room. Finals. I did not play in it because I saw when it was going to start and I determined that it would have to end too late for me to want to win. That is why I did not play in it. When it also happened that finals took place at a different barcade for logistical reasons, I felt good about the decision not to play because everyone who played in it said nothing but positive things about how they all made it work, I would have been the fucking fly in the ointment I would have been the asshole who was like what the no I not doing that Like if I was on the bubble and they were like OK now we go to to Brooklyn I would have been like yeah I don I get 17th See you Like, that's it. So I'm glad I didn't go at the same time. Like I said, it seemed like everyone who participated felt pretty good about what went on. And so I'm really glad that that happened. And how was the part of it that happened there? So, yeah, I didn't make the qualifying cut for the finals. So I didn't participate in the travel to Barcade Brooklyn, but I was there for the beginning. It was a smoothly run tournament and it was streamed, which was really cool. And we had good tech support from the people working at Barcade Fight Eye at the time were able to assist us with machine conditions. this is a big plus. Speaking from a tournament director's perspective. Speaking as a player's perspective, I was there today and asked someone because there was a lamp that came out on Adam's family and it was fixed in five minutes. Like, it also, that wasn't even just tournament. That's just like, there's always someone there to fix machines, you know? Yeah. And, you know, no, I can't remember if it lined up exactly when we last recorded the podcast. I now work for Barcade. I work at Barcade Brooklyn. But thinking of Fidei as a location for pinball tournaments, I'm a director. Those were some big pluses. We had to start later in the day because Sunday from noon to five is family day at Barcade Fidei, and they asked that we don't overlap with that. Right. So that was part of the reason why when it started running later, that everyone had to move to Arcade Brooklyn because Viadai was shutting down. That's less than ideal for running a tournament. It is, but it's also so many of the things that I heard that were positive about it after the fact also included that because you're not the only employee of Arcade who was playing or running this tournament. Yes, exactly. and so like i i think i also felt pretty good about when i heard that like yeah we we talked with barcade and i think we all learned something from it that there you know that there was probably actually a dialogue and there's truth to that unlike in other circumstances where i might just be like yeah sure that's that's yeah i bet it's a brand new location with a lot of pluses and any of the issues are the sorts of things that can be ironed out. As we hopefully start running more and more tournaments there, it's now the second largest location in the city with a lineup of 24 pins. The largest is now at 44 pins at Scrapple Lanes. There's still brewery equipment in the back, but it is in the process of moving out, And that pinball lineup is just going to get bigger and bigger. Yeah, I was going to say, you mentioned an expansion. I haven't been there in a minute. Did they recently put a bunch more games in, or is this a soon-to-be? Yeah, within the past few weeks, let's say three or four weeks or so, some of the big brewery vats in the back have been sold and moved out. The back line has been able to be pushed back a little bit, but also expanded further into the back area. So if you go the whole way to that back bank, you can now turn right and play pinball machines. There used to be like a stanchion that would stop you because there's beer equipment there, right? Is that how it expanded, Eric? I haven't been there either, but that sounds like what you're explaining to me. Is that the farthest back bank can now expand to the right where before there used to be two big beer vats there. So that's gone another five or six machines down that row. What are the highlights? On the very end, they just added No Good Gophers. Amazing. 10 out of 10. I played that Wednesday night. It was mean. Probably the one from Suntran. When they opened, it was, I think, 28 or 29 machines, and now up to 44. It's definitely a place that can hold a very large tournament. And in fact, you know, what did I do over the summer? One of the things I did was help run Brooklyn Pin Pride at Scrapple Land. And we had how many? We had 79 players. I wear the bag that I won in the raffle at that like every day. So we started last season with Scrapple Land still pending. And it was going to be the brand new when I say last season, I mean, last season of the podcast. and it was going to be the brand new venue in the season. And I was hoping that we could get there and do some kind of review. And it kind of rolled out late enough in the season that it felt difficult to do that. So we didn't. And it is now actually the oldest thing as we're talking about the changed landscape of what we're talking about. It had a big expansion upward, but the Red Hook Pinball Museum left their old location I think they had some friction with the owner, and that's probably all that is worthy of saying here. But they were the last co-panelists here with Eric and me in last season telling you all about what they had. And so I'm really glad that that was there for these last several months as like the last episode that you see if you go to any of our feeds because they, you know, they're just a couple of dudes. They're not like they don't even I don't believe that they have even like created an LLC or whatever the not for profit, you know, organizing. They rallied some some forces and the community, I think, helped when they kind of unexpectedly lost their lease. Roughly is kind of the way to imagine it. And they've popped up somewhere else now. That is in itself a brand new venue. Have either of you been to the place or have you seen anything? Anything other? I mean, look, I saw the thing on Discord where it turns out Beck might have been playing there the other day. Oh, yeah. I did just see that. You know, Beck fame. Yeah. Of like, you know, Odelay. I saw some footage that Billy West was putting on like his stories and he was showing me stuff. It looks incredible. Unfortunately, not got to make it out there yet. But maybe this weekend. I really want to play those games. Red Hook from the Bronx is hard. Red Hook from the Bronx is hard. Yeah, it would take a minute, but it's possible. I haven't made it to the pop-up yet. They will be there through Sunday, September 14th. It's at 352 Van Brunt. I think that they have a promising lead on their next and hopefully permanent or more permanent home also. I think that those machines will probably move somewhere else shortly after that date when they've said their pop-up might end. I think that's the case. I wrote, interestingly, a note that said, pour some on the curb for the Coney Island arcade because it hasn't been there all summer. And then Eric told me that it popped back the fuck up. So I don't know what to do with myself about that. I just want to point that out. Mystic has theoretically been in the freak bar for most of the summer. And so I could have gone to Coney Island to play that. But there wasn't anything anywhere else except that broke-ass Rolling Stones that has never worked since they installed it in whatever year it was made at Margarita Island. So I didn't go to Coney Island to play pinball at all this summer. Also, I feel like all the classics location have to be as far as humanly possible from where I live for some reason. Guaranteed. That probably means you live somewhere that's actually worth living. It's not around a bunch of tourists. But yeah. I mean, the Red Hook one, that's not really around a bunch of tourists. Hey, but Beck was there. Yeah, that's right. Sailors and Beck. Yeah. All right. Bullet Journal time. This is a thing that we started doing in the middle of last season in Ball 2 after the venue updates. And it is, we talk a lot about competitive pinball here. This isn't necessarily about competitive pinball. We might talk about the time that we were out playing pinball competitively and what happened associated with it. But this is just, hey, when did you play pinball this week? I actually heard a lot of really positive feedback about this segment over the break. So did either of you, David or Eric, play last Friday? We'll just run down the week as we played. David, I get the impression that maybe last Friday you might have had your lunch break at Fi-Di. Since this Friday, I ran into you at Barcade Fi-Di on your lunch break. but did anybody play last Friday? I did not. I don't think I did either. I did not either. As a matter of my employment, I played on Saturday last week at Barcade Brooklyn. I like to drop the tokens into 8-Ball Deluxe. Just play that a lot. I didn't have any very good games last week, but it was a nice, it was a beautiful weekend, beautiful Carl Weathers. Play-per-day weekend. Yeah. Did you play on Saturday, David? No. I don't think I played any pinball all Labor Day weekend. I saw Oasis. That was sick. But that's not pinball. No, not pinball. Sunday was another gorgeous day and is my only day off at the moment. I usually like to stay quiet, but it was such a great-looking day, I decided to take a nice long bike ride to Milo's Yard, where there was a tournament happening. I was on the wait list, but I figured, hey, I'm going to have a beautiful ride there, and if I don't get in, I'll have a beautiful ride back. While there, I was able to convince the organizers to expand the field from 20 to 24 people. Oh, was that your fault? I mean, doing? I was in a discussion, yeah, with them. they decided to go up to 24 which meant that three of us who were on the waitlist and there were able to join in to the cool pacer test tournament of this pace format. It's pretty fun. I mean in the case that I didn't make the pace to the first cut line after was the cut line after five or six rounds? I think the first one was after five. But in that case It was like any other regular weeknight. Five rounds. Like five rounds, and I got close, but not close enough. You were also at Milo's, Benjamin. I enjoyed myself. I had a pork bun. It was really good, even though I ordered it and then went and played pinball, and the bartender told me they would bring it to me, and then a whole lot of people came into the bar, And so they were totally overworked for several minutes, during which time, like, you know, my thing had been just sitting in the oven. And I came up front after I had finished my game and then gone out back and hung out for a little bit and realized, like, wait a minute, I paid for I might have had a few drinks, which would have caused the wait a minute portion of this. I was like wait a minute I paid for a pork bun I haven't eaten a pork bun and when I went up front he gave it to me and I was not optimistic because it had just been sitting in the oven the whole time but it was in foil and apparently also there was like a timer on the oven and you know the door was closed and so like when we pulled it out I was slightly put off that it was stuck to the foil but not it had no effect It was fucking delicious. So I had that. That was great. I had a couple of Chicago-style hot dogs while I was there. That's one of the things I appreciate about Milo's is that they are some of the better Chicago-style hot dogs that you can find in New York City. Do you eat tomato wedges on your Chicago-style hot dogs? Yes. Okay. I met the owner and operator of the bar whom I had not met before. I've forgotten their name. I thanked them and they were gracious and friendly and I appreciated that. I saw Daisy. My little friend Daisy was hanging out. She was a terror running all over the bench around the back seating at Milo's with her little tongue sticking out. And Pony. And I read about Milo, the dog after whom the venue is named. and that actually all of that is that on a plaque or something somewhere? when you walk in there's like a flag or a tapestry a piece of fabric art on which there is a story about Milo you know about Milo's passing that sounds very sweet it is very sweet it was also very it was also very touching to me because I was hanging out with these other pets. And I also, the reason that I did not play at all over the weekend until then is that my cat had surgery on Friday. So I was a little bit upset when I read the thing about Milo and was just thinking about the mortality of the people in my own family. But I did. I had fun. I think that format doesn't need finals i think you have already built in the finals by increasing the like it's already a ladder format people will get eliminated if you just keep playing yeah i i agree with that i also like find it odd when you have uh a finals after a strikes yeah exactly yeah right right right right it's this felt like and and that's no criticism of jose and jonah by the way shout out to jose and Jonah who ran the tournament, but that's not a criticism of them. We could not have known until we did it what it was going to be. It's a neat format. I'd like to do it again. Yeah, it was also over. I mean, I left 6.30, 7-ish, and I think the finals were not terribly far from starting, and it has to have been over by 9 o'clock. The tournament on Match Play was marked completed at 8.56pm. It was a good day of pinball. It was short enough for my attention span, but long enough to be interesting. Did you play on Monday? I didn't. I didn't play again until Wednesday. Oh, me either. I didn't play until Thursday after that. I only competed this week, pretty much, Until we talk about Friday earlier today, I'll talk about that for a minute. Wednesday was an off night for Scrapple League. The next season begins this coming Wednesday. Right. It'll be session one. Took the first week in September off as Greg is in Schaumburg for Papa. But in its place, Scrapple Land hosted the Pinball NYC League opening party on Wednesday evening. Right. To which any players could attend and captains could pick up packets from Chris. So I went on up to Scrapple Land, picked up my packet, played a few games of pinball, chatted with some of the folks who showed up. Kept it a relatively sane and early evening and headed home. Cool. I stopped at Gian Famous Foods and got some spicy nudes. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Those are pretty good spicy nudes, just like what happens on my only fans. I mean. And then I saw you again on Thursday. That's right. We were both at Buttermilk for South Pole Pinball League. That's right. I'm going to sell myself out here and point out that I started at Rulos as I do a lot of Thursdays. I is no secret to you if you listen to me speak on this podcast. And frankly, if you've just run into me in public, you might just notice that I am somewhere between socially awkward or so fucking well adjusted that I have to be socially awkward. I don't know. I'm one of those two things. But I'm whatever I am. The buffer of I left my home and I had a great like 40 minute walk alone in my head with my headphones in. And then I need to come into the sphere where I have to interact with friends. That buffer of like I go to Rulo's and play a couple of games by myself before I walk into Buttermilk was great. it had this week there was one thing about it that was uh funny which is that i played a few games i had hoped to play a king kong when i walked in but there was another dude who had walked in right before me got on the machine he was on it for a while he you know i was not going to ask him to play with him because i was purposely there to play pinball by myself not with someone else so like i was not going to ask him to play with him but i was kind of hoping that i might be able to sidle over and jump on a game before I went over to Buttermilk, where there's also a King Kong. By the time I walked up to the game and had a quarter of a beer left, as I was about to money up, the guy who had been playing it walked back and he was like, oh, hold on. I was like, yeah, what's up? He was like, there's a ball stuck here. Just like, heads up. I don't know if you want to. And I looked at it and was just like, okay. And I picked it up so that the ball dropped off the wire form and put it back down and he was just like oh cool i think i used to think that people who would be willing to do something like that just at some random bar were even more arrogant than me and i i now think i understand that just like look the owner of the bar is sitting right there and he is totally unafraid of me doing this the owner of the pinball machines if he saw me doing this he might walk over and be like hey what's up just because he was in the space when it happened but if i showed him what i just did he'd be like of course that's what you should have done but like it just you know this dude like walked up and was like oh it was a funny moment for me as someone who felt completely comfortable in that that there was someone there who was like, uh, yeah, right after I got that ball unstuck, I looked at my watch and realized it was 802. And so I ran across the street without playing a game of King Kong. That was actually the end of that story. I ran across the street without playing. Yeah, Thursday, it looked like it was going to be another beautiful day for a bike ride. But right before I headed up to Buttermilk I saw that it was going to rain at some point in the night So I wound up taking the subway instead I can say having started to walk home that feels like a good choice Matt Carlson keeps selling me on reactivating my city bike membership for cases like this, when I would have biked one way. Yeah. It's a good move. In the competition, I wound up getting four second places and a fourth place, which is, eh, okay. I thought I was playing pretty good on most of those second places. Just somebody else would then blow it up after me. Right. Yeah. Good time. Yeah. Yeah, it was a fun night. I had two really good games, and that was most of my night. But my so-so games got me a couple more points than so-so games sometimes do. so I did okay. In general, it was a quiet week, pinball wise, and I was looking at it as the calm before the storm. That's right. Because here we go. The season's coming up. I'm going to be playing Monday night and Tuesday night in Teen League. I'm hoping to run Scrapple League on Wednesdays. I'm playing in South Slope League on Thursdays. On Fridays, we record this podcast. on Saturdays I work at a pinball location on Sundays there's a lot of good pinball tournaments there's a lot of good pinball tournaments I very often work on Monday holidays and then take the subsequent Fridays off for operational reasons that are related to my employer's business and so today I was observing Labor Day and as such i went to fidei where as david pointed out we saw each other i went there with collider ben h who hadn't been yet so that was it was cool to be able to you know point out the things that we that i knew he was going to be interested in there and like that you know that we were going to enjoy together. While I was there, I ran into David. I ran into Zanzacniak, who I had also seen on Thursday night, who popped in very late afternoon. I ran into Matt Grady, whom I had also seen on Thursday night, who popped in slightly later afternoon. I would generally like to say that I hate how well that Medieval Madness plays because I hate wanting to play medieval madness but i've now played two games on it and in the first one i defeated the king of pain and in the second one i completed royal madness and i was a couple of shots on the castle away from completing from beating the king of pain so i like it just plays too well for me not to want to at least occasionally stand in front of it and i hate that because i don't like that game very much. I spent so much time in multiballs banging on a castle because multiballs aren't worth it. I also was standing in that bar at about 4.30 when the Pinball NYC schedule was posted. Ben and I were playing Elektra downstairs, and Zen and someone that he was hanging out with, who maybe came from work or something, were playing maybe TX Sector or Special Force, which by the way, what the hell is that game? I really like it, but what the hell is that game? But they were playing one of those games and we were playing Elektra when I heard Zen's phone ding or Ben's phone ding and Zen was like, schedule's posted! I don't want to say that it was chaos, but I do want to say that it was it felt like Christmas morning. I very quickly moved here so that I could add those bits to my script and make sure that we could talk about that. And that was my today pinball. I don't think that next week I will tell you about anything, any pinball that happened on Friday after we recorded. Maybe Eric will, but I at least had some Friday pinball before we recorded that I thought it was worth rapping about. If you haven't already heard about it, if you're listening to this, there's a good chance you have. this month on the 21st at Jack Bar there is a Stern sponsored tournament Godzilla championship we got Toho sponsorship we got Super 7 figure makers I think we already have like 60 people signed up and a few on the wait list I'm just saying if you're listening to this you probably play New York City Pinball and you haven't already signed up there's a good chance there might be a couple more games coming so we can maybe bump it up like eight players so get on the wait list and that way when we do it you can come play with us and get your chance to win a hotel and flight paid for to Pinfest and you're going to play the winners of two other tournaments across the United States be there, come hang out participate if you'd like try to win become king of the monsters, all that stuff. Is it only on Godzilla? We will have two Godzillas. There will be two of them. Will it maybe take forever? Maybe. Come find out. Good question. Make the tilts tight on them. They're going to have to be not fun to play. Yeah, that seems right. Let's talk about our summer vacations. On June 8th, Monica won the women's division at Stomp 7 at the Rochester Pinball Collective. She beat Stephanie Traub, who's the number seven woman or was number seven at the time. I think she's number eight right now in the women's division in IFPA and is presently ranked 275th in the open division in the first round. She beat a fellow troll in the semifinals. and then she beat Amelia Connelly who has won a lot of the recent bells and chimes events there in order to win in that same month but at the end of the month and in a different direction David won pin mania at Arcadia National Bar owned and operated by my new homie Dave Aceto he beat Zoe Vrabel who's the 531st ranked player in the world in the open division and the 14th in the women's at the moment, head to head to advance to the finals. And in those finals, he beat Bowen Kerins, the 23rd ranked player in the world, and the reason that you know the rules to a lot of games. Two wins over Bowen in the finals. Monica, what was your favorite thing about winning Rochester? Oh, wow. Oh, my God. That's such a big question. This was my first time up to RPC. In addition, it was my first time at Stomp ever. So really the whole experience was incredible. I think that was my biggest win of a tournament so far. And so I think one of my favorite moments, although it didn't seem like it at the time necessarily, was the realization that I had won. So I'm up on Arena with Amelia Connolly. She had picked the game. I was very nervous going into it. And I was player two on ball three. And my moment of realization hit when I hit a spinner, saw that, yes, okay, my score is higher. And my brain refused, and you could see this on stream on my face, my brain refused to comprehend that I had actually done it. It said, look, the number's higher, but no, that's not possible. Keep playing. And so you see me keep playing. Amelia herself said like, okay, you got it. And even then my brain said, I don't know if you do, keep playing. And so it took me a full minute for that realization. But I mean, that was It's just like a sort of surreal moment that I've never experienced before. David, what was your favorite bit of Pin Mania? The whole thing rocked. The vibe was just immaculate from start to finish. Everyone was having a lot of fun. Agreed. That tiebreaker with Zoe was crazy. What did you play? We played Mata Hari. And I really was convinced, because the last round didn't go that great. I was like, this is probably the end. but we both played an insane game of Mata Hari and I managed to just kind of squeak by and then I was kind of like oh this is nuts I might actually be able to win if I keep doing okay I mean you were in the final four after that right? yeah two games away one future spot one Godzilla is that right? yeah I think so I think there's maybe a gay 90s in there as well now you've won now you went out of town and won this was the first time for both of you is that true to have gone out of town and won a thing yeah oh yeah what's the difference because you'd won in new york both of you what's the difference i think the difference for me is just the expansion of players so i play all my friends in the city all the time and similar to being living in a new york city bubble you literally start to live in a New York City pinball bubble as well. And so the extra sweetness of that win, I think, was that it considered all of these incredible upstate players as well. A win in general means a lot to me. And the fact that I got to play even more competitive players meant even more. Cool. Yeah, I agree with that wholeheartedly. I kind of recognized immediately who the local killers were. And I was like, oh, I'm probably not going to do that great. Everyone was also practicing super hard the day before and they had practice tournaments. I had none of that. But I think that helps you kind of lock in a little bit, just walking up to a game that, I mean, obviously you haven't played that one, but you might have never played the game at all before. I'm sure you can relate. At least at Arcadia, it was like 55 games and we don't really have that many locations here with that many games, let alone a bunch of classics. So it's kind of like, oh, well, walk up and figure it out. Ask someone if you can. Yeah, yeah. And And I mean, RPC, they still have about 80 on the floor, Monica? Yeah, yeah, just over 80, I think. Yeah, big venues too that you went to to win these tournaments. I don't know if it helps or what, but I think it helped me. Yeah, it was nice for the other tournaments. Our women's bank was only 12 machines, I will say. In a way, I liked that better because you still get the variety from the other tournaments that you participated in. And so I did pretty well in classics, and I liked having to and getting to play those machines. But for the sake of the women's tournament, I liked that it was more localized because I got to focus on the games that I needed to focus on. Monica, you said that was your first trip to the RPC. David, had you been to Arcadia before? I hadn't been in the state of Maine before that. And Benjamin, you also went to Pin Mania, and it was your first visit to Arcadia. No, it was my second in the same year, though. I have been to Portland, Maine twice in this calendar year. I guess I should say so far, technically, although I don't yet have plans to return. But so in both of your cases, Monica and David, you know, not only is it a whole new crop of players, it's an entirely different set of machines, ones you're not practiced on. That's really impressive. I don't know if I had a question to finish that with, but that's like, wow. Thank you. Luck was on my side, for sure. and I will also say I think feel free to if you don't want me to name drop I won't cut them out but like Robinson and Greg P who I'm sure we all know these people they both have like the hangover theory which was absolutely the case for me like I was at Arcadia the night before drinking more than I ever do normally which was a lot of fun and then I got like zero sleep woke up feeling terrible got really good breakfast and then just kind of showed up. And then you're just in this arcade all day. Yeah. Did you eat the food truck breakfast? Or did you get breakfast somewhere else? We walked to some local diner. Gotcha. They brought local food trucks. They brought in a few great sort of breakfast-y items from local, I think, refugee food trucks at the tournament. It was great. Yeah, so sick. Did they do anything better about food in Rochester or is it still a desert up there? It is primarily a desert. For food, we often ended up ordering from Taco Bell and getting that delivered. What I will say is that the snack selection at RPC is actually very nice. Oh, yeah. I asked people, hey, do you have anything for me to mention on this podcast? And Steen said, please mention the seltzer selection. And that actually is a very valid point. And it reminded me that they also had specifically Diet Dr. Pepper, which I feel like is the sign of a good venue with good snack variety. It's a top tier beverage, top tier. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's, uh, I, I also, I drank several Mexican Cokes when I was there, uh, that, that they just always have the, the Coke made with sugar, not high fructose corn syrup out of the glass bottle in the back is nice too. It's good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. What are your trophy shelves look like now? so mine is a windowsill uh it has been since i got my first trophy and it has changed dramatically since i got this new trophy it stands about a one and a half times bigger than any trophy on my shelf right now so before i had my shelf kind of going up in a triangle style where the tip of the triangle is in the middle and now i've had to rearrange it such that the rpc trophy is all the way at the left and the trophies go down in descending order um yeah so sick cool david from pin mania mine didn't change at all i got no trophy is that right that was right got no trophy I was told, this is serious, this is actually what I was told. I was told a painting will be hung in my honor in the men's room. I fucking love that. I don't know if it's a picture of me or just a picture. Some picture. Something's going somewhere. But in the men's room, where it belongs. But I will say, what I did get to do is I took the prize money, and like me and the car that we drove out with, we all went and got lobster rolls on the waterfront. Nice, nice. That was my trophy. That's awesome. It was awesome. That is awesome. My spies, i.e. Dave Asito, told me that y'all closed down the bar that night too after you won, right? Oh my God, we were there so late. Yeah, it was awesome. You had won by 10 o'clock or 10.30, right? I had no concept of time. It all goes away. It all goes away, right? It vanishes. but we were there till the bitter end. We were politely asked to leave. And we were actively hanging out with, one of the people we spent a lot of time with was someone who normally bartends there but wasn't bartending that night. So he was just with us in Hammer. And we were all politely asked to leave. It's a beautiful moment. Yeah, yeah, that's great. That's great. Yeah, it was a great time. Well, Mark, how long was your drive? What is this, Rochester, like four hours? I had to do that drive once. Oh, no, it was like six hours at least, maybe a little more. Yeah, and so we did good, though. So a bunch of the trolls went, and we ended up renting this car from just like an Avis or something in Park Slope. Everybody showed up there, and then we broke up the trip. It was primarily Caitlin and I driving, and then it was really nice. We got to stay at Casa James Rees with Caitlin and her family, and all of us were spread out amongst the rooms. Caitlin's mom, who I keep calling Mrs. James Rees and have to start calling Kathy, made us this incredible spread of breakfast every single morning. I mean, oh my God, there were these veggie burritos that Caitlin just gave us the recipe for because they were so good. And we had avocado toast and we had orange juice and coffee. And I was just in complete and absolute awe. It was fantastic. and the drive up itself was really not bad. Six hours there, six hours back. I split the first part of the drive with Caitlin and then we split it up a couple ways going home, which is good because we ended up leaving, I want to say at like 8 p.m. and we all got home. I want to say I finally got home at about three and took off of work the next day. One important thing to note is you want to center, if you're going to do that, you want to center your trip around food. So we didn't do that And we ended up calling up a rest stop Burger King to say, hello, we're eight or so, maybe six women who are just really hungry and want some chicken nuggets. Do you think that you could just stay open, like including at nine o'clock for us? And they said, yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem. Like we got you, girl. And then we get there and there's two people at the Burger King, including a guy who tells. us uh we're closing in 30 seconds order now and morgan speed runs her order like picks like the first thing on the menu goes to turn it over to someone else and the computer shuts down on us so no yeah our backup option was a bunch of like gas station food um which like at the time when you're that hungry, gas station pizza is not bad. But that's something that we'll certainly plan for next time. Yeah, that's brutal. I think it's still bad. It's just you can live with it. Yeah, yeah. David, how was your trip? It was good, pretty long. It was like we had a pretty packed car, which was fun. And I didn't start driving, so I just got to sit and read, which is the best. Yeah. Yeah, you know, you eat a lot of combos. You just kind of stop where you can. bathroom breaks turn into getting whatever's rolling on those weird hot grill things at the rest stop. But the drive, I don't remember the drive being that bad or anything. I did some of it on the way back. So I guess it wasn't too bad. I barely remember anything about it. I mean, that's great. Yeah. We had an extra day, too, so we actually got to spend some time in Maine before leaving, which was super sick. That's funny. I don't think I remembered that y'all were going to be there. We were also there the next day, my wife and I. Very funny. Great, great, great food city, Portland, Maine. That's why I've been there twice this year, and I'm not ready to commit that I won't be there a third time this year. Oh my God, yeah, everything I ate there was crazy good. And it was nice, because I kind of treated it like vacation. Even though you only have so much time to eat the day of the actual pinballing. Yeah, although that's one of the things that was nice about that That was an out of town event that was one day That it Oh yeah So you don have to sustain multiple days of serious unhealthy eating Right. I'm just like McDonald's. McDonald's. Monica, you getting home-cooked breakfast multiple days in a row, that's like a serious buff. Yeah. I'm not going to say that's why you won, but it helps. Portland is a fantastic food town. Lots of great restaurants there. and I just don't want to let this segment pass without pointing out I used to live in Portland, Maine and go to Arcadia and Dave Aceto is the person who introduced me to competitive pinball. That's awesome. When I said my new homie Dave, that's Eric introduced me. When I knew I was going to Pin Mania, I was like, hey, send me a phone number, would you? So I was appreciative that Dave took some time to chat with me while I was there. yeah, cool, cool dude and why Eric is sitting here or at least part of why he's a big chiller, he was partying with us the whole time yeah, yeah he also was great at herding the cats between the rounds Zoe Vrabel handled all of the pinball pieces of it, but he was like on a microphone shouting about what needed to happen and was like he kept that tournament moving uh it was really it was something were you how many days were you in rochester monica i want to say we got there thursday night and then went back down sunday night cool cool and that was that was all related to stomp and associated events? Yeah, we didn't do a ton outside of Rochester. I know Morgan went to a theatrical event with some friends, so we dropped her off for that. But primarily it was just hanging out at the venue and it goes by so fast, you don't even realize. Most of the times when I'm at venues or events like this, it'll be 11 p.m. and people will be like, all right, everybody clear out. And I'll be like, I could keep going. Like, are we done? No? I thought I could be in the queue for another hour. Right, right, exactly. It was good because rest, I feel like, is also so important when it comes to these events. Literally, just like on Sunday, I qualified for the Classics finals as well. And I had to get up at about 7 o'clock in the morning for that. So for me, who can't operate without eight hours of sleep, there is no question about, oh, should we go out or anything? It was nice that we were all in agreement about this, that we were kind of like, yeah, let's go home. We'll get some sleep. We'll wake up the next day. We'll play more pinball. Yeah, that's the antithesis of what I did in May. But fun stuff happens, too, I guess, at the venue. You end up breaking out into these groups and just hanging out with each other. At one point, Steen and Amy had a race because this RPC is in an old piano factory. And so the campus is huge. And at one point, I was making a phone call and I looked to my left and the two of them are sprinting across the piano factory. I can't even remember who won. I wish I did. But little things like that. Past the School of Rock and all the artists in the hallway? Yeah, yeah. That place is really cool. There was good music coming out of some of the classrooms, too. We were like, oh, wow, these guys are like, you know, they're not just students. They sounded really good. So Ron and Bruce ran the tournament, and I think both of them did a really, really good job. In times I felt like where we needed Bruce's help on certain things, he was very quick to come in and give his help, even if it was a tough situation to make. So I really appreciated that personally. Just to fill in blanks there for anyone who mightn't immediately know this, I presume that you would if you're listening to any pinball podcast. But Ron and Bruce are Ron Hallett and Bruce Nightingale, who are the hosts of the Slam Tilt podcast. And in fact, the tournament, Stomp, the Slam Tilt, oh my, pinball, I think, tournament is the... And I know Bruce has claimed to me in the past that he refuses to play, by and large, in tournaments that he is directing. And I think that's very clever of Bruce to do and also very selfless of him to do that. He runs all these fucking pinball tournaments and he never seems to play in a lot of them because, you know, he's running them. Yeah. And he's got such like a jovial mannerism while he's running these two, which I really appreciate. Like, it's just like a step above and beyond. You don't seem to need that to be a TD, but it adds another level of fun to the tournament. He loved repeating the machine callouts. So whenever Surf and Safari, which was my favorite game, was played, you would get all of these fun callouts from that dino alligator guy. And Bruce could not help himself, but to every time this machine talked, go, one more for the whirlpool. and then when it would end, he'd have to, he watched him, he couldn't hold himself back. He would go, later, gator, ah, ah, ah. And it was just the most fun thing, you know. When one gets delirious at a pinball tournament over the weekend, this is how one behaves. Yeah, yeah, I've been there. Benjamin, have you ever played in a tournament with that format before, or qualified? Oh, no, that's a great, that's actually a great thing to talk about, that format, which is... Let's hear about this tournament. Yeah, so I had forgotten. I kind of had that in the back of my head as something we should wrap about. I'm glad you brought it up. I saw that the New Robert Englunds Pinball League did this in the past, and I think the New Jersey Pinball League, I think NJPL does this as well. This is something that I think used to be a common thing in bigger tournaments where you divide into divisions before the tournament's over. I'm just going to say there were 64 players, which is how many they the max that they were willing to to put in the tournament. And so after a certain number of rounds, I think it was eight. Does that sound right to you, David? Yeah, it was like eight rounds and they locked in a division, a division and B division. The top 32 were the A division. The bottom 32 were the B division. It doesn't matter if you are number one in the world. If you are 33rd, you're in the B division. You can't place out of the B division in this kind of tournament. But then, so I, for instance, was above the line and then ultimately came in 18th. And so I did not have any finals to play in. I got 18th in the A division and walked away. but there were 16 people in that division went to the finals and 16 people in the B division went to the finals if it was 64 at least that was a really strange thing what did you think of it David? how did you feel like I remember really wanting to be above the line at the end of round 8 but then once I was and where I was I kind of felt like okay but now I can't get there Like now I need to just barely crest the peak of qualifying for the finals in order to do something here. Yeah, it can kind of put you between a rock and a hard place for sure. But I think it's really fun. I like how there was like with the banks and you would play the same group twice. I just think that's interesting. You really kind of get to know people a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah. That's also I didn't even think about that, too. So each round was two games, not one game, a modern and a classic. Yeah, so I'm actually looking at some. So you got Genesis and Scared Stiff, Gay 90s and Guardians of the Galaxy. That's a good one. Right, right. So yeah, that was really fun. And I think it moved pretty quick, all things considered. You obviously had the laggard group every time. Sure, sure. It was cool. It was a good way to meet everyone. and unfortunately, I mean, I guess fortunately in my case, I started off pretty strong and I kept going pretty strong. So I was up top all day. Yeah. So I was like, I was feeling good all day. Yeah, you and I played somewhere very close to the time that the divisions were going to split and you kicked my ass and everyone else's on Led Zeppelin. And I think you had also had a pretty good Playboy or Matahari or something right before that. Yeah, Zeppelin rules. Yeah, I don't like it that much, but I appreciate your opinion. it's weird I'm going to have to talk about Led Zeppelin I'm going to leave it up to Pete Zeppelin if you want it really? we'll talk also another funny thing about my tournament at least if you look at the standings on match play right now there are two David Potlocks one in first and one in last that's right I forgot about that one also first four rounds, five rounds I was Rachel Grimm too shout out Rachel Grimm Yes. So there was a point. Did very well in the B division also of memory serves. Did great. Yeah. There was a point where some guy looks at me and he was like, I've been wondering who Rachel Grimm 2 is all day. I was like, yep, sorry, it's me. Yeah, games rolled. Everyone there was super cool. Shout out. Sam Hall, Gabe Jazz, Wes Ulfig, everyone who rode up there with me. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Fisher, Matt Fisher. David reminded me of this when talking about the format. I had never played a hybrid model tournament before. And this, as I understand, is something that's becoming more of a thing. So the way that our bank and tournament worked was it was similar to best game, but it was hybrid in that you were given only a limited number of entries. So everybody got 40 entries and you tried to spread that out over your top, I want to say eight or 10 games and then got points from that. So that was really nice because I never had the sort of fear that, oh, I'm dumping so much money into this. And I certainly didn't think like, okay, maybe what's my personal budget going to be for this? It was just like, nope, like 40 off the bat and you're good to go. And it becomes worth a lot of whoppers too, as long as I want to say only 10% of people play all of their entries. I want to say it was the opposite where 10% of people didn't play their entries. Most people did. So there was a high participation rate for that, too. There were even discussions afterwards in the IFPA, I think in the Raymond Davidson Discord channel, where some of the organizers were asking about how the Whoppers were given. and they were able to then get some IFEA representatives to go back and give us more Whoppers because they hadn't seen that rule about, oh, whoops, we didn't take into account that, yeah, definitely more than 10% of players had played their full entries. So my Whoppers went from like 12 to 25 or something like that, which was significant. Yeah, I saw there was 24 or something. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. That almost has to, with that win, that almost has to put you in the state championship. I would imagine as long as you play the rest of the year, I would imagine that gets you real close. Definitely. At this time, and probably as of about a month ago too, I have the same amount of Whoppers in New York State Women's that I did at the end of the year last year, which is a nice big jump for me. Did we talk about favorite and least favorite games also? Oh, please tell me what you have to say on that matter. The Rochester Pinball Collective has so many games that you can love and so many games that you can hate. Absolutely. Surf and Safari, without a doubt, my favorite. I mean, it was just so much fun and so cute. There's no accounting for taste. As a kid, I was so intimidated by, and honestly still am, games with intense artwork like The Walking Dead or anything like that. I was just kind of like, that doesn't look like a machine that I'm supposed to play, so I'm just going to walk away quietly. And Surf and Safari was like, ooh, a cartoon. That's me. Like, I'm still a child inside. So that was a ton of fun. Really enjoyed that. Rules are simple, you know, all around really great. That was the favorite in the women's bank. Favorite in classics. I didn't really have one, but like there were just a ton of really good ones, even some that duplicated themselves. Least favorite in the women's bank was Old Chicago. I just, oh my goodness, couldn't get a feel for that one. Um, I had a moment on the last night of qualifying where I was just trying to get a good score and it's so bad. And it was just me qualifying. Nobody else was there. My friend Terry from Rochester, who was a volunteer for scorekeeping. And I just kept telling her like, Terry, let's go again. Terry, let's go again. And she started to look at me like, oh man, this girl is crazy. I didn't even get the high score that I was looking for. In fact, I think at the end of the night when I finally stopped, Caitlin found me and said, hello, I love you. You look miserable. And that's how I knew, OK, I think it's time to stop. And we went home after that. His favorite of classics when I was playing finals for classics was Fireball EM. I don't know if you guys have played this. This is the game from hell. on stream, Ron had said while I was playing it, it looks like this is Monica's first time playing this game. And then about six minutes later, he had said, it looks like Monica never wants to play this game ever again. I probably do never want to play that game ever again, to be fair. But it was a good experience. My partner calls this the RNG game, by the way. that's a random number generator game ah now i understand yes interesting games at arcadia they had the p3 with princess bride uh oh that's right i wish i wish it would have been portal because portal had just come out that would have been super super cool uh-huh but that was the first thing i played because i i think the first night everything was on free play already oh yeah that sounds right that or yeah i don't know i remember but it was cool at one point it It was free. Played a lot of it. Have no idea what's going on, but it looks cool, and you watch a lot of Princess Bride playing it. They also had the Labyrinth. New Labyrinth game. Relatively new Labyrinth game. That was cool. Anything stand out to you? I mean... Electra's cool. Yeah, Electra's cool. Shout out to Barcade Fidei, which now has one, and I sent one to Monica. text about it earlier today and I was standing next to David playing it earlier today. Yes, Elektra is a good one. There's a cowboy one downstairs that I'm forgetting. It's actually maybe where I ran into you that first night, David. I ran into Rachel walking down the stairs and followed her to y'all playing the EMs down in that bank downstairs. I don't remember what that was, but I think that was my favorite thing there. Yeah, I think that was my favorite thing there. And I also think the number of big time arcade games, there's a Killer Queen that you could have a tournament. There's a giant screen with N64 or a PlayStation or something. I think it's an N64 because I think it was the Mario Kart for that. I think they were playing Switch. They had Mario Kart 8 projected up on the ceiling. That was super cool. Yeah, that was cool. And they had a bunch of coin pusher redemption games. Eric and I talked at some point about the Simpsons one. There's a coin ski jumper thing. Those things are cool. All of those things that they have are pretty cool. The game we were playing, I'm pretty sure it was Bronco. yeah that sounds right which is a very cool game and another game the last one they had a Transformers 2010 2011 Stern Transformers oh yeah that's right they don't really see it anywhere I love that game so much I don't remember if it was Rachel or Sam who was playing it and I walked up and I was like do you know what you're doing here and they were like what are you talking about it was like the left side controls the purple the right side controls the red and they were like what I didn't know that look again press the buttons a couple of times you're trapped up press the buttons a couple of times and see what happens with those lanes. See how all of this happens. And they were like, oh shit. Because that game is, if you don't know that, stepping up to it, that game is impossible to understand. We used to have one up at Apple Wallace. Oh, really? On occasion, I'm haranguing Philippe to bring it back. Let's get that. I love that idea. Oh, that's so sick. I will get on him about this. are you going to Maine for the IFPA state championships this year? If you, if you qualify, which I presume you will having won, what will be the biggest Whopper hall tournament in the state. Even if you don't go back, I presume you'll qualify. Will you go to, to Maine to play? Everyone is telling me to go. I did. Everyone is telling me to go. I think, but I would rather that spot go to a pure blooded Maine killer in ball killer than me. Also, it's kind of far. All due respect. It is kind of far and you'd have to go in January. I'd have to go in January, which does sound sick. I mean, I'm down. Don't get me wrong. But I think a local player who's working hard and playing they deserve to play. It's a dog-eat-dog world. Think of the lobster rolls. Oh, that's so true. You know what? I'll say it. They're just okay. Holy Donut is a recommendation. Oh, Holy Donut. Get potato donuts for God's sake. Yeah. yeah I could go just to do a food tour yeah pinball doesn't even need to happen for me to return to Maine that's right I could sure eat there I mean man I'll eat anything people cook for me there it turns out yeah I would go broke eating there too many good options too much stuff to try and then you spend the rest on pinball one final shout out to all the women who supported me and just generally had fun with me over the weekend it was awesome like you know y'all know who you are uh but it was great that's all for this week's pod join us next week when jgn will sit in my chair and he and eric will talk i'm sure they will run down the first week's results from pinball nyc as well as probably some other local competition results. I imagine that they'll give you updates and a bullet journal in Ball 2, and Ball 3 is completely up to them, and I'm not going to try to speak for them. But between now and then, I want you to have just the greatest time this Monday and Tuesday night in Pinball NYC, and I want you, whatever you do this week, whether it's pinball or something else, I want you to go get them, pinfolk. That'll be the title of the episode. Exposure of my neuroses. But... Can you move your sex tape? Oh, it's definitely that.