Happy Sunday, pinpoke, or whatever day you're listening. This is NYC Pin Pod, in which a panel talks location pinball in New York City and nearby surrounding areas. My name is Benjamin Furiga. My initials are BCF. And pound for pound, I'm one of the best tilters in the game. My name is Eric Sweetland. My initials are HIP. And I'm a pinball tournament director in New York City. My name is Gabe Jasnov. My initials are GC. And let's go Dodgers. On this week's podcast, InBall1 will run down local competition results as usual. InBall2 will have venue updates, courtesy of PinballMapp and its users, thanks to Eric. And we'll do our bullet journal. And InBall3 will talk with Gabe about the Harvest tournament coming up at Gebhard's this November 9th. Well, it's 6-3-9. Yeah. Let's get started. let's talk about competitive pinball results in new york city and nearby surrounding areas on saturday october 4th the annual it it's a classic not just because there are classic pinball machines but it's a classic pinball tournament for the area the catskill classic was convened at a private location in Mountaindale, New York. Howard Levine was the organizer. It was 14 matches and 24 players showed up for the day. It was drop targets all day, and we didn't really understand what that was, but we have the benefit of Gabe Chazanov, who was there, he gave us some insight into how the drop target Derby bit worked. Did he literally have everything disconnected but the drop target? No. Okay. That's what I thought it was. That is not what it was. I think that required a lot of work and also actually been impossible. Like, I don't know how pinball machines work, but I feel like if you disconnect that many switches, it might just not work anymore. No, we were doing manual counting. There were note cards and tiny pencils everywhere. It was head to head. It was almost honor code. It was like, well, okay, do you want to count it yourself or I'll have someone behind you counting it. And it was easier and harder on some games. There's one game called Triple Strike, which just has four giant drop targets that are impossible to hit. So that one is pretty easy. Let's talk about Countdown, which has four banks, which reset pretty frequently. if you're bonking into them and you're often going to be sweeping so that was probably the hardest to keep track of but yeah it was honestly like a very very cool format because it made games that you know and love completely different your strategy changes a lot um some of them it didn't really like 2001 which has two giant banks of drop targets you're shooting drop targets anyways. Air Aces was another really good one which just had nine drops just right in front of you. Theoretically you could be shooting up and around the side for a safer shot to sink a 5k lit saucer. It's like no. You're not doing that. You're counting sets, racks of nine drops that you're dropping. Was it about how many banks were completed not how many drops were completed? It was about how many individual targets were completed. Individual target. And let me hit you with some other madness. Everything was on five ball. But in the case of the tiebreaker, which when you're scoring basically an increments of one with a maximum of 20, you're going to get tiebreakers. It's five balls. And then if there was a tie, it went down to three balls. And if there was still a tie, which happened multiple times, it went down to a one ball situation. There were like six players tied for first at the end of it. Only four had the buy. So we all had to play Jungle Princess, one of the greatest drop target games of all time. and that had like multiple sets of dive breakers which was fun, it was a good time we were hanging out in Howard's lovely home incredible collection, it was also David Long's bridal flower slash bachelor party his whole family was there his lovely bride and David Long won the man was on fire it was a lovely evening great great time had by all Wesley Michalski, we got him to come on. I saw that. I saw his name on those standings. Yeah, and as you would expect, he was crushing. David Long took top honors on his special day. Frank Romero, you might know him as Towley, took second. Mike Pantino, up from New York City, took third. And Chewy David Colon took fourth. David Long picked up a beautiful bride and 13.47 whoppers on the day. on Sunday, October 5th. It was my birthday. Yeah. And I took myself out to Single Cut Beersmiths in Queens where Tommy Ortega hosted 14 players for Silver Ball Sunday at Single Cut 30. After five rounds of match play, the top four advanced to finals. Chris Dooley took home the first spot and 3.71 Whoppers. Rob Bruno got second. Tommy Ortega, third, and Gracie Carlton, fourth. I just want to point out, last week, you might remember my having said Chris Dooley was playing great on Monday night. It turns out he was playing great on Sunday night, too. Barcade Brooklyn Pinball League Season 7 did not have their meeting this week. They will meet next week. We'll talk about that in the schedule. On Monday, October 6th, in Pinball NYC's left flipper division, the fifth round of the season was contested. Our New York City Flipper Sport Association went to Skylark to face the Pin Pals, and we picked up a 10-6 road win. The two-for-oners had their bye week. The Pinbots hosted the lesser players at Scrapple Land, the home team, 9-7. And that was their first win of the season. Lion Persons went to Barcade Brooklyn to see the Deluxe Horses. lion persons a nine to seven road win they went to the other barcade to win special when lit faced off against the mutants at solid state the mutants got a nine to seven home win special winlet loses nine to seven on the road after two straight eight to eight wins at their home venue harry's hand grenades went to midway to see the balls of steel the home team got a huge 14 to 2 win. The Balls of Steel have the only blowout victory of the week, and they have not lost yet, and they beat a zero-win team. Parliament hosted the Colliders at Owl Farm. Parliament, 10-6 win. I'll have bullet journal things to say about that, but I got nothing to say about the competition. And Intermission Dolores was at Rulos against the Aristocrats. The Aristocrats, a 9-7 home win. That is their second win, but they've already played the hardest part of their schedule. So look out for this team. Two and three is maybe a little shy for what we should expect out of these folks. So look, it's five weeks, right? Four teams, or five teams rather, have each played one fewer game than everyone else. But most of the teams have played half of their games. And so I think it's really time to look at the standings here. Yeah, definitely. Balls of Steel, undefeated, 4-0. Interestingly, 47 points because they have one more to play than everyone else. They're 4-0. They're not 5-0. But they have 10 fewer points than your New York City Flipper Sport Association at 4-1. You have a loss, but you have 57 points so far. Yeah. I can expect Balls of Steel when they have played as many games as we would be able to make up that 10-point deficit in the one more game. Well, and if they make up that 10-point deficit, they would necessarily have one more win than you also. Touche. The Mutants are also 4-1 with 42. That's a good record, but they've had a couple of close matches, it seems like. if you're scoring just more than 10 per, that's pretty good. But it's also 10 to 6 is a doubles match away from a tiebreaker. The two for oners at 3-1 with 40 points, that's only two fewer than the Mutants who have played one more game. That's pretty interesting, and they've been really good at home so far, I think. I'm looking forward to checking out that place. I haven't been yet. And then here's the thing. The two for oners have that 3-1. They've got three wins, but because they're 3-1, they're in front of all of these 3-2 teams. And the top six teams in the division will make the playoffs. And all at 3-2 are Intermission Dolores with 50 points. That's more than the Mutants at 4-1 BT dubs. Parliament with 47 points. That's more than the Mutants at 4-1 BT dubs. And the Lion Persons and Special When Lit would currently be on the outside looking in in this division. but they both are 3-2 and have 39 points apiece. Parliament's 47 points is the same as Balls of Steel. Balls of Steel is still a game short. So there's eight teams with those last four tied for three spots. That's right. No, with the last four tied for two spots. Only the top six. Right. Five, six, seven, and eight. Seven and eight will be in the lower division when all is said and done. And the way that looks at this moment, the way that the flipper division looks, would be that Lion Persons and Special when lit, those two, three, and two teams would get a bye in the first week, theoretically, is the first two seeds of that. But, again, they are tied in wins with the people above them. If they played either of them head-to-head and beat them, then they will go ahead of them in the standings, very likely. but lion persons and special when lit would be at the top of that for now we colliders and again here's the thing just like two for one or three and one we're two and two which has us in front of all these two and three teams right now we have 28 points that's not a lot for a two and two team but the aristocrats and the pin pals both are two and three with 40 and 36 points respectively in the deluxe horses are one and three with 28 we colliders and the deluxe horses have one more game to play than the rest the pin bots just got their first win this past week so they're tied with the deluxe horses but they don't have they don't have the points to be above that line and still winless and outside looking in are the lesser players at oh and five and harry's hand grenades at 0-4 who have one more opportunity to get a win than the lesser players do because they have one more game to play. On Tuesday, October 7th, in Pinball NYC's right flipper division all over New York City, the replays traveled to Buttermilk Bar where Danger Danger hosted them and served them up a heaping helping of defeat 13 to 3 the one win replays are blown out by undefeated danger danger milo's yard hosted a classic matchup in the ball drainers visiting neptune's treasure where the legendary brooklyn ball drainers as i believe at some point gc has implored us to refer to them, bested the home team 9-7. Baldrainers staying hot with an away win there. Baldrainers remain undefeated. The team is in with Scrappy. Pinister6 visited the pinbabes at Birdies and posted an 11-5 win over the home team. Rest in pinball. Parenthetically, RIP. Went to Jack Bar where the schlubs were ready and put up a 14-2 win. Shellacked them. Harlem Globe Flippers hosted the Butterballers at the Wallace. And the home team put up a 13-3 victory. They shellacked us. The Trolls went to Scrapple Land where Scrapple's squad were such good hosts that they simply insisted that the Trolls have an 11-5 win. This was the battle of the two remaining winless teams. Trolls pick up their first win this season. and now Scrapple Squad, the last remaining winless team in this division. No Quarters for Laundry was happy to see Everybody Loves the Sunshine because everybody loves them too when they hosted them at Solid State and No Quarters picked up an 11-5 win. That's after three straight wins. Everybody Loves the Sunshine now has two straight losses. Well, looking at the standings here, for Tuesday night. Because these people haven't had buys. It's just everybody's played five here. Yeah. Ball Drainers and Danger Danger are undefeated. Ball Drainers have 59 points and Danger Danger 52. It's still technically true that the 5-0 team's magic number to clinch a playoff berth is four. You can almost guarantee both of those teams are in the playoffs. At 4-1, Shlubs have 51 points and the Harlem Globelflippers have 50. Ooh. Very close there. And then at three and two, 49 points for no quarters for laundry. Also at three and two, Neptune's Treasure has 45, and Everybody Loves the Sunshine, 42. And their seventh, they would theoretically be on the outside looking in if the playoffs started today, which is also to say that they would get a buy in the flipper division. Two and three teams just behind Everybody Loves the Sunshine are Pinister Six and Reston Pinball parenthetically RIP. They have 40 and 32 points. If the right flipper playoff started today it would be Pinister Six getting the other buy. Then we've got four teams with a record of one and four. Wow, the points are all very similar. That's right. Trolls with 29. Both the pinbabes and we butterballers have 28. And the replays have 27. So the pile at 1 and 4 looks a lot like the pile at 0 and 3 that we talked about a couple of weeks ago. Because two weeks ago, there were teams, there were, you know, four teams at 0 and 3. And then there could only be two left because they all faced each other. And this week, the two who lost faced each other. That pile is very similar. The Trolls were the last to get their win, but they've scored the most points of the bunch. And it was 11-5 this week, right? Like, 11-5 is a big win. They went to Scrapple land and picked up an 11-5 win. Yeah, but they jumped right to the top of that pile. And so Scrapple Squad is the last winless team in the division. But they've also got 28 points, same as the Butterballers and the Pin Babes. The replays also, theoretically, at 1-4 and 27 points right now would be... They would be out of the playoffs if it started today. It's going to be fun to watch the last half of this season for what happens at the bottom of this chunk, as much as it's fun to watch what happens at the top. On Wednesday, October 8th, the fifth qualifying session of Scrapple League Season 4 was held at Scrapple Land in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, directed by Greg Pavarelli and a team of his assistants. Including you. Yes. 22 players showed up to play five rounds of match play with IFPA scoring with the goal of garnering the most points to go towards their series total. Both Alex Kelly and Adam Kane got 29 points. Greg Pavarelli, Matt Grady, and myself picked up 25. Alex Kelly, Greg Pavarelli, and Matt Grady were paid out from the optional side pot that had 11 people competing this week. There are so many fun liminal storylines in these standings. Five of the six are in now, and everybody above the line in A has four meetings. But there are some really compelling people with three meetings who are close to the line at the top of B right now. These standings are really interesting. One week left to qualify. Greg Pavarelli sitting at the top at 110 points. Joining Greg in A, Zach Till, Adam Kane, Nip San Gabai, Dan Merrill, Mike Pantino, Alex Kelly, and myself right there making the line at 86. That's not going to hold. Much as we looked at in SSPL a couple of weeks ago, and I said, look at the sixth place score, that's the one. I think 90 is close here, but 90 might not be. We might be looking at 93, which is the fifth place score, as where you have to get to in this. And it might even be as high as 95, because there's enough people under that line that have only three meetings that that number might go up a bit. You got this. You can go get more than your 19. you got this. Yeah, I can replace the 19. Yeah, you got this. I hope to. You intend to replace the 19. Just below that line for A, the next eight people are currently qualified for B. Andy Hayden and Woody Richman both have 84 points. Joined by Tyler Convery, Sean Grant, Spica Geft, Richard Diamond, Christian Klossner, and Luis Veras. Tyler and Sean both have only three meetings. So at 75 and 74, they are both every point's a net positive. Threatening to be a couple of mid-90s after next week. Yeah, exactly. Right up near that cut line of 93, 95. And then we've got a set of people who have come three times only and are just off the B line. Ida Kreitzer has 60 points. Connor Fleming has 58 and so does Peter Larson. And Sam Hall has 57. On Thursday, October 9th at Jack Bar, Thursday Night Strikes was convened by Ida this time, although Gabe Chazanov is the director of record. 20 players came to Jack Bar to play and in the bullet journal, I'll tell you some of what was going on while I was at the other place, such that I was keeping up with this, and it wasn't me watching match play. Greg Fertel bested the field without a strike to his name. Woo! Woo! Indeed! Connor Kalisa came in second, Travis Rosenberg third, and Kane Bloomfield and Reed Silverstein tied for fourth. Also on Thursday night, Buttermilk Bar was the location for the finals of the South Slope Pinball League's fourth season of 2025. Directed by Kate Martin, eight players played in a Papa Style A finals, and eight players played in a Papa Style B finals, and two players played in a Strikes C finals. I believe that it was three strikes officially, but I was told that they played to five. After two rounds of three games each, Matthew Carlson emerged the victor of this season of SSPL. Rob Wong got second, Billy Vazine third, and Matthew Grady came in fourth. I played the Matthews there in the first round and they were both killing it. They were playing great. In the B-finals, Eric Sweetland came in first. Woo! Woo! Paul McHugh, second. Stephen Christopher, third. And Franklin DeFelice, fourth. In the aforementioned C-Strikes tournament, Courtney Wetzel bested Asher Weinstein. I do believe they played to five strikes because they were having fun. I pointed out in our team chat today that the butterballers were well represented in this finals of the season of SSPL AJ Gould made the A division and tied for seventh with you, Benjamin. They tied me, yeah. In addition to myself winning the B division, Steven Christopher and Franklin DeFelice finished third and fourth. Yeah, it was three butterballers of the top four in B. Yeah, and our captain Courtney Wetzel won C. Yeah, that's right. Oh, yeah, I didn't even think about that that way, but yes, quite so. On Monday, October 13th, that's tomorrow if you downloaded this podcast right when it came out, Barcade Brooklyn Pinball League Season 7 will be convened. the third meeting, that is to say, of six, will be convened at Barcade Brooklyn. It'll be five rounds of group match play with 7-5-3-1 scoring, as most of the leagues are, and your best four entries will count. So even if you haven't got out yet, you can get a full score if you participate these next four times. They do it every other week, this week, then in two weeks, etc. Also on Monday, October 13th, in bars all around the city, Pinball NYC's left flipper division will have its sixth round. The two-for-oners will host the pin pals at Scruffy Duffy's Tap Room. Two things are true here. One, both of these teams have been in this league since the beginning. Two, the two-for-oners at their very new home, which they had been at this other bar since the very beginning of this league. But in their very new home, they're undefeated. So this will be interesting with the pin pals going to Chelsea or Hell's Kitchen. I don't remember how far uptown it is. It's on the west side. The lesser players will have their bye week. Intermission Dolores will come to see our New York City Flipper Sport Association at the Wallace. Rulos will see Balls of Steel come to visit their special when lit. This one, if it goes one way, it can really flatten out the division. If it goes the other way, if Balls of Steel wins, they're going to be 5-0 and special when lit is going to be at 3-3. It's not going to look as pretty for them for the top half of this thing as it would otherwise. but if Special Win Lit wins and Balls of Steel comes back to the pack they're looking at 4-2 versus Balls of Steel's 4-1 that's a pretty big move that Special Win Lit can make at home. They have won their last two meetings at their home venue in a tie break 8-8. This might be a really, really exciting thing and you know, cool. The Mutants will travel to Bar Grade Harry to see Harry's Hand Grenades. And the Pinbots will host Lion Persons at Scrapple Land. The Aristocrats will face the Colliders at Buttermilk Bar. What makes me second most happy about that, no, what makes me third most happy about that is that I will go over to Rulo's to see the end of that other match because we're at home and we'll just be catty corner to the other bar. what makes me second most happy about that is that the aristocrats who are also from rulos are coming over to buttermilk to play us and so what makes me the most happy about that is that we're going to be so fucking cute and parliament will host the deluxe horses at owl farm probably try to see the deluxe horses while they're in the neighborhood too on tuesday october 14th all over the city. Pinball NYC's right flipper division will contest round six. Therein, Danger Danger will visit Everybody Loves the Sunshine at Sunshine Laundromat. Rulos will play host to the matchup between the replays and rest in pinball, parenthetically, RIP. Scrapple Squad will host No Quarters for Laundry. at Scrapple Land in Greenpoint. The Pin Babes will go from North Brooklyn to South to visit the Butterballers at Buttermilk Bar. Looking forward to seeing our friends, the Pin Babes. Pinister Six will host the Schlubs at Skylark. Will there be another shellacking? Neptune's Treasure will go from Ridgewood to Fidei to visit the Trolls. And I got to say that M train is actually really convenient to get downtown. So that's not that bad of a commute. Even though you're like Ridgewood and Fideye, that's actually a pretty quick jump. Trolls looking for their first home win here. Picked up their first win last week. Yeah. The world famous Brooklyn Ball Drainers will host the Harlem Globe Flippers at Jack Bar in Williamsburg. Ball Drainers 5-0, Harlem Globetrippers 4-1. This is a big match. Yeah, that could flip a lot. On Wednesday, October 15th, Scrapple League will have the sixth and final qualifying week of its fourth season at Scrapple Land in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, starting at pinball, 8 o'clock. I think that it might be roughly the harvest moon of pinball for Thursdays because I believe that it is both the third Thursday of the month and the interim Thursday between SSPLs. So I think that there might not be competitive pinball in New York City on Thursday night. There is usually something of a medal ceremony and like a split flipper thing or something like that on Thursdays, on the off Thursday of SSPL. There is sometimes something on the off Thursday at Thursday Night Strikes. I think that this is the weird Thursday that lines up where both of them aren't happening. That is to say that the next thing after Scrapple League on October 15th is Stern Army's RWI at Rulo's on Sunday, October 19th. Sign up at 4.30 with a 5 p.m. start and some sort of tasty spread put out by Bart. Yeah, Bart's going to make something. Bart owns the bar. It used to be a restaurant, a club car, and it was very good then. I take a lot of pride in knowing how to make me some food. Bart knows how to make him some food. As of October 10th, 2025, there are 348 pinball machines in New York City at 80 public locations. Thanks to the creators and users of Pinball Map for this data, here are machine updates from the past week. On Saturday, October 4th, it was noted that a gold strike from Gottlieb in 1975 has been added to the lineup at Scrapple Land. That is actually the thing that I insisted was El Dorado. They're the same game. It's just one of them is the Ataball and one of them is the special version or something like that. But they are the same play field. They are the same cabinet. That's the thing that I was saying was El Dorado. I was wrong on the exact title of the game. I was right about how the game plays and what the play field is. And the side cabinet art is the same. Also on Saturday, a grand lizard was removed from Milo's yard. a getaway was added to Milo's yard. And on Saturday, user Bonsai went by Barcade Fideye, played some Baywatch and said, this game is better than you think it is. They're wrong. On Sunday, October 5th, user Nudgee was at Gebhardt's Beer Culture. Of Pulp Fiction, Nudgee said, right flipper is a little sticky, but otherwise plays well. And of King Kong, they said ball is getting stuck on the spider pit shot. On Monday, October 6th, user Mr. Faust was at Gebhardt's Beer Culture and said that Godzilla was off. Also on Monday, user Hitchhiker let us know that the Cactus Canyon at the Gutter Bar LIC has just gotten the Lyman upgrade kit installed. Cool. Also on Monday, the Shadow was taken out of the throwback and a World Poker Tour was put in its place. Where's the throwback? On Amsterdam between 94th and 95th. So way up west. Yeah. Shall we talk a little bit about our around pinball moments in the past week, our bullet journals? Did you do anything on Friday after we recorded or Saturday? No, no. Neither? Did you work on Saturday? I did work on Saturday. I did get to do a neat little pinball repair. Near the end of my shift, I was walking by dialed in. oh actually I started a game on it and I drained my first ball but the ball didn't end I peered over and I looked down into the trough and I could see the ball hadn't fallen into the trough yet it was stuck on a translucent lightning bolt plastic piece oh that had fallen out of the hands of the QED figure the quantum electric dude which is the mick on a stick the Dracula target Yeah, it moves back and forth and you bash it to charge the phone to start your modes. And then I looked up to realize, oh, the QED guy was hanging off of that mechanism that moves him back and forth. And it was just sort of hanging by one elbow. Oh, wow. And I hadn't even noticed while playing. Well, you were looking at the ball on the flippers. You had your focus in the quadrant you needed to have your focus in, not in the quadrant where there was a toy falling apart. Just so. I took off the glass and got in there, took a look at that figure. The figure is just attached by two screws in the elbows. And then the lightning bolt is actually just held in its hands. It's not attached in any way further than little grippy hands hold onto the shape of that lightning bolt plastic. That's fantastic. So to get the lightning bolt back, all I had to do was wedge it back in there. but then to get the the figure back straight up on the post and attached there was one screw still in there a little loose but the other screw was long gone uh i looked you know in the trough i looked down in the bottom of the cabinet i looked all over the play field it wasn't there and as billy west pointed out to me a little later on when he came in and i was showing him what i had done that hole that long slot yeah that the qed figure moves back and forth that slot is directly over the uh the subwoofer speaker that points down in the bottom of the cabinet and it's very likely screw fell into you know the the metal casing of that speaker and down onto the cone maybe hit the magnet, but I wasn't going to go messing with the subwoofer trying to find a screw in it. I'll tell you, because I am 99% sure as a former sound designer that I know how that speaker is mounted inside that box, that if it dropped down there to the subwoofer, then the magnet of the subwoofer is holding the screw onto it. The magnet of that subwoofer is powerful enough that it's holding that screw there. If in fact it fell there, that screw is there. Unless it is a plastic screw, in which case you're screwed. It was metal. Judging by the one that was remaining. They were extremely small screws. Oh yeah, and you might have needed a rare earth magnet to get it off the powerful magnet at the back of that subwoofer too. I don't know. Yeah. I was able to find a suitable replacement in one of the drawers of tiny little pieces that Barcade keeps on hand for fixing all this stuff. Super cool. Yeah, that was a fun little repair. Yeah, that's cool. I went on Saturday to Owl Farm because I was going to go to Owl Farm on Monday. This is going to be maybe a really boring repeat thing that you keep hearing from me is that I play the same three days of pinball every week, which is the time I go practice for Monday night, Monday night and Thursday night. But I went on Saturday to Owl Farm. Usually I go on Sunday after I finished editing the podcast. I went on Saturday this week. That's how fucking crazy I am. You can't stop me. I thought that Adam's family was playing great on both of the legs that it was standing on. The game that has been in that corner, and it doesn't matter if it's Adam's family or the Machine Bride of Pinbot or whatever's been standing back in that corner at Owl Farm, the tilt bob must be set so that it can play perfect on two legs because it will be on the back left and front right leg 100% of the time. and only nominally on one or the other of the other two legs, but never on four. That's how the floor is. It's not the game's fault. Max has somehow masterfully conducted a symphony of gravity back there and set all of the tilt settings appropriately. I thought the Addams Family back there played killer, and I played a couple of pretty damn good games on it, which is why I thought it played killer. I played a so-so maiden or two and so I thought it was okay and I just simply could not get a hold of Avengers while I was there I had a nice beer I like Owl Farm fine I like the painting of Weird Owl Yankovic oh yeah that's good, Weird Owl is good there's a lot of owl artwork around this place and I also just want to point out two really important things They painted the walls over the graffiti at some point, and someone went back and put in all of the stuff that they had done before, which includes like someone had written on the walls, life is pain. And someone added mid life is back pain to like added to the graffiti to make to convert it into a very different sentiment. at someone had quoted Coco Chanel on the wall. And sometime recently, someone went through and has attributed every quote that anyone has graffitied on the wall to Coco Chanel. And someone else has asked them, who is Coco Chanel? And they've responded very clearly and accurately, the most famous Nazi sympathizer in history. What is still my favorite though, is that there's a Dr. Octagon quote on the wall, which no one has attributed to Coco Chanel, and someone has pointed at and said, you win. So I'm happy about all of the graffiti in the bathrooms at Owl Farm. I noticed all of that on Saturday when I was there. I noticed it again on Monday when I was there, but I won't talk about it again on Monday. Did you play? You did play on Sunday. I know you played on Sunday. We talked about it. Yeah. As I said before, it was my birthday. Yeah. And it was a nice sunny day. It was pretty brisk out, if I recall. Yeah. For my birthday, my parents reactivated my dormant city bike account. Oh, that's nice. That's a great gift. I took the N up to Astoria, and then I hopped on a city bike for that last mile instead of the 20-minute walk. Yeah, that's a great gift. That was really fun. It was nice. Some of the aggressive drivers up there made it slightly unpleasant. Yeah, they drive in Queens. Yeah. But it was really nice. And then I was touched, Tommy the TD gave me a label in Match Play. It says, Birthday Boy. It was real nice. I branched out, tried a breadth of the beers that they have on tap. I usually just stick with one. I decided to try a variety. I got a burger from the kitchen. It was a nice day hanging out with pinball friends. at our match we lost 10-6 which was I think better than we've done against this team a lot in the past recently they had only 5 players I think maybe 4 show and we were 9 strong I had the complete and utter opposite of my arrogance trend here usually I am telling you a story where I'm like I was like dude dude, I'm going to fucking blow this shit up. And I then am humbled by the machine. And in this instance, I had told the team at large, I feel least good about Avengers. I came here on Saturday. I couldn't get a hold of it. I played it once tonight. I couldn't get a hold of it. I feel least good about that. And my Ryan Policky is always I enjoy playing pinball. And so wherever I fit, wherever you're like, that's the right slot for Benjamin that you feel is right, that everyone can agree makes them happy. They can play the game they want to play, and Benjamin can play whatever the other game is. That's the game I want to play. I like pinball, man. So I told them that as usual and had also told them I feel least good about Avengers. and I walked away from the team meeting probably to go to the little room thinking that I would not play Avengers in round four in doubles. I only played doubles. And I came back out of the bathroom and was told, nah, you're playing Avengers. Go ahead. And in the way that, in the complete opposite manner, I was the only person in that four-player game who got a hold of Avengers. Apropos of the opposite arrogance effect. I then after our match was completed, walked from Owl Farm around the corner and crossed diagonally at the corner of 9th Street and 5th Avenue because it is actually set up. What's the name? A Barnes Dance. Okay. It is actually set up in terms of the traffic pattern as a Barnes Dance, but unlike everywhere that it happens in Boston and everywhere that it happens everywhere else, They've not painted diagonal crosswalks. The fact is that every piece of moving traffic inlanes where you have wheels other than wheelchairs are meant to stop for a significant period of time so that everyone crossing in any direction can cross. And so you should be able to cross diagonally. And we did. Nice. and then and in fact we talked about it while we were doing it and talked about our frustration that there wasn't a crosswalk there and that there wasn't a messaging campaign about it and yada yada yada but we crossed diagonally and walked two more blocks then to Skylark where we ran into Eric and Alex and Philippe and Adam and also the pin pals when I walked in you've heard me say here, one of my favorite bartenders works at Boat Bar. That same favorite bartender was working at Skylark this night. And so when I walked into Skylark, there was a commotion, which frankly was started by the bartender, though it would have been started by me if I had noticed Steph before she noticed me. I should have known she was working at Skylark that night. But just like she screamed and came out from behind the bar and gave me a giant hug. What happened before I got there? We had a good night. That was a 10-6 win for our association. Interesting, we only chose Foo Fighters and X-Men, and they only chose Paragon and Fishtails. Yeah, that story checks out. Yeah, we managed to pick up all eight of the points available on our choices, and they got six out of theirs. That's what swung the match. and y had won fish tails in the final round by the time I walked in I think because I think I was told it was over they swept the final round we picked up two points on fishtails in the second round on Tuesday the Butterballers went to at the Wallace which is fun to go up there as a pinball team I do it many Mondays right right right what uh how was it as a visiting team oh man though the harlem globe flippers are seriously good there they uh they really got us that night 13 to 3 are they also seriously most of your monday night team there i went i went and checked. There's a crossover of five people. Okay. Only two of them were there on Tuesday. Gotcha. Did you get any rubber duckies out of the machine? There were numerous rubber ducks retrieved from the claw machine over the course of the evening. And I had a nice conversation with some sort of manager working there who recognized that pinball was going on and asked about the trophy that was hanging on the wall right above him where we were standing. I gave him a quick primer on Pinball NYC Team League. That's my trophy, sir. Yeah, that's right. I brought that here. Wednesday was a lot of fun let me predict that you biked up and just barely made it there on time I took the subway but as I often do I get off at Nassau to visit one of a couple of restaurants to have dinner this week I stopped at Jian Famous Foods for some spicy noodles and then I used my new city bike membership to get from Nassau up to the tip of Greenpoint and that was great as as I was coming out of Xi'an I instinctively took a right out the door to head north on Manhattan Avenue and then quickly remembered oh wait no I was I wanted to get on a bike now and try try doing that so I turned around and just as I started walking the opposite direction, Mike Pantino let me know I was going the wrong way. He and Adam Kane were walking up the street. And I said, oh yeah. Well, I'll see you guys there. And then I grabbed... I grabbed an electric city bike. I zipped up there real fast. Yeah, I had played a game. I had a beer. I was standing around chatting when Mike walks in and goes, Hey! Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing what you can do on two wheels instead of two feet. I feel like I've been in a little bit of a slump for a number of weeks, but I'm hoping maybe Scrappleland on Wednesday was the beginning of a turnaround. I got 25 points, which is pretty darn good for me on a league night. Sure. Also... I mean, that's second place all night. If you're playing five rounds of 7-5-3-1 scoring, that's second place all night. Only five people beat you of the 15 that you faced. Several lovely people offered to purchase me beers in celebration of my birthday just passed. Nice. And I had a great time. I hung out a lot later than I had expected to. When I first came in, I got in a game on Dune. That was cool. It was my first time playing that game. Sure, still haven't touched it, yeah. Yeah, Gold Strike was turned off at the beginning of the night, but by the end, it had been turned on, and people were playing it. Yeah. I didn't want to wait in the... It was a long line of people who were waiting to get a shot on it, so I decided to skip it this week and head home. Drizanna shockingly revealed to me that she had discovered there are more kegs of Bud Light. So our attempts to drink through it quickly to get back to Narragansett may have to go on longer. Oh no. I had a lot. I decided to get a four hire vehicle home. Seems like it would have been a good choice at that point. Yeah. Well, we saw each other last night. I did that thing I do. And I started at Rulo's. I had one beer, which I knew was going to be a little bit rushed because I got there at like 7.30, 7.35. And when you're drinking a beer while you're playing pinball, it's not the same as if you're drinking a beer while you're waiting for people to play pinball or while you're even playing four-player pinball. If you're just playing one-player pinball games and drinking a beer, it doesn't come down that fast. That's one of the reasons that if I go to play pinball alone, there's no such thing as a hangover from that because I can't drink beer fast enough to be hungover tomorrow if I just go play pinball alone. But if I go play four-player pinball, I can do some damage to my liver. When I was in one-player mode over at Rulo's, I played one big Lebowski, and it was so-so. I had a couple of big bonuses and hit a couple of the scoops on the upper play field in a couple of multi-balls, so I had some elevated jackpots while I was playing. It was a pretty decent game. And then I played Simpsons Pinball Party because I feel like I need to get a hold of that game sooner or later. I've got to get back to knowing how to play that game. There was a point at which I sort of understood how to play that game, and I almost got back there. I left the pity extra ball I got. I was on ball three of, I played one game of Simpsons pinball party that went horribly fast. And I was not having that bullshit. And so I dropped another dollar in it and played another game while I finished my beer. And it was on my analog watch, which I was not able to make out the individual minutes on. It was somewhere between 7.55 and eight o'clock when I finished that ball before the extra ball and looked down and was just like, that's it. Went and basically chugged my beer at the bar, put it down, thanked the bartender, and walked to Caddy Corner to walk into Buttermilk where when I caught up with Kate, said, hey, I'm here. May I please have a beer? Do I have time to play a game? She was like, you have 13 minutes. and that's where the origin of the pinball of the phrase pinball 8 o'clock comes from that I walked in and I went to the bathroom and I came back out and it was 8.01 or 8.02 and she was like you have 13 minutes left what are you talking about I was there on time but I had 15 minutes left I did particularly note you rush in and awfully close to the expected start time I did it on purpose. I did it on purpose. I guess next time I'll do it at 8.15 because if the tournament director looks at me and is like, Rob isn't even here yet. Well, like Benjamin can be not even here yet too, I suppose. So it might be closer to 8.15 next time. We'll see. you got through the first round, I did not you were playing in B, I was playing in A but you won B you weren't just playing in it, you won B I was playing in A and was ignominiously eliminated in the first round my intro this week spoke to this after I had played a bad ball bad ball one of Ghostbusters I had 600 some thousand points before the bonus counted up and I had made a really nice slide save that was like several inches to the left the ball drained it was done I couldn't do anything about it and so I put it back we were on stream and I was playing against other people so I put the pinball machine back and after that happened I overheard Janos Kiss and Zen, Janos Kiss I was playing against, Zen was playing in B. I overheard one of them say to the other, pound for pound, he's one of the best tilters in pinball. That is where my intro this week comes from. Credit to, I think Janos Kiss said it and Zen was the receiver of the comment, but either way, credit to both of them for having when I was just like, hey, did I overhear that correctly? They were like, yep. I was in the background there. That was a great moment. Pound for pound. One of the best. You won. And I think you were slightly sweating your having got out of the first group, if I remember correctly. We were talking while it was happening. I don't remember the exact specifics here. I came in with a plan. Yeah, you were driving a bus. I was. I was driving the bus as the second seed in B. I was the fourth boss. At the very beginning of the tournament, both of the groups in A chose their games. Then the top group in B was being driven by Caitlin, and she had her choice. And then finally I could choose. But I was happy that my choice for the first game, Metallica, was open, so I could take it straight away. I started off with a good ball one enough, you know, nine, I think, but I I played my multiball and the other players didn't on their ball one. But it all went wrong from there. And I came in last on that Metallica. And I was afraid, like, oh, no, you know, the good result at Scrappleland last night was just a fluke. I rallied and did. I got through the first round. Did you choose all the games? I chose all three games. Okay. I was stymied in my attempt to choose Kong. Got it. I had modified my plan to include Kong based on the results of Metallica and who was in my group. I stuck with the original choices, Metallica, Maiden, and Twilight Zone. We went to Twilight Zone second because Maiden had been chosen as a second game by Caitlin. But I won that Twilight Zone. I had an amazing bit of luck when I stepped up as player one. the Powerball popped into the shooter lane. Nice. So I had an immediate Powerball payoff of $10 million and started Powerball Mania, during which I did not score a jackpot. I had a ball up on the upper play field, but didn't get it. It was very short. But went on to play a regular multiball, got a couple of jackpots in that, won that game. The third game, I got to choose Maiden then for that round. and I only needed to stay ahead of Zen on that game. And I did. I got third place, he got fourth. And that was enough for me to be one of the two people advancing. Cool. Did you choose games in the second round too? Since Caitlin was eliminated, I think, right? Yeah, so I hadn't been planning on it. My plan went my first three games. I figured there's probably a slightly better than 50-50 chance that the bus driver of the upper group will get through. Right. That they're the highest seed. Right. And having the advantage of choosing the games, you know, two of the four will get through. That'd be 50-50, but it's slightly better because it's the bus driver. It's also a place where you have to choose six if you're going to choose all night, and there are eight games. Yep. so I mean it's also it's a place where you might be able to defer and get the game you want better than choosing all your games so there's also you should be prepared as the second bus driver to have a game well we can say I was unprepared I made a bad guess didn't think about it enough so I didn't know necessarily what I wanted to do in the finals as an unexpected bus driver Kong was finally available I was feeling good on that I had a nice warm up I said let's play Kong I won that one handily that was great now I'm down to oh boy what machines are there left for me to choose Walking Dead I like Walking Dead I know my opponents are all very good on Walking Dead also but I like it let's play it and yeah I got third place there and where that left me was with five points on the round and Paul McHugh on six ah Steve and Christopher had lost both of the first two games had zero points and Franklin was at three so zero three five six he got wait he got first on both it was three two one zero wasn't it no y'all did four two one zero interesting yeah twist on the night kate took votes from all the players in a finals and the players in a finals decided they wanted three two one zero scoring and she took the same vote from all the players in b finals and we voted for four two one zero i had to be clear abstained ah i voted for four two one zero she gave me two options and i did four two one zero seemed slightly more appealing to me as a greedy person who hoped he would win one game But I opted for I don't care because what I wanted was to start sooner than to have to resolve a tie in that vote. So at that point, I had chosen five games. And I seriously considered deferring. Franklin was the next seed in the group. I just asked him, hey, Franklin, you had a choice. What games in here would you pick? and he told me. I believe he would have. I think he said NBA and Ghostbusters. Right. So the two you already hadn't chosen. Those were two that I had not chosen. I also had not chosen Attack from Mars. So I had my choice of those three, or leave it to Franklin who will choose likely one of those three. And I was like, you know what? I'll take it myself. And I'm also weighing how can I get more points than Paul, who's my direct competition here. He crushed The Walking Dead. I saw him. He came in second on Kong. This is how he got his six points. He was playing strongly on those. And I took a gamble and was right enough that he wasn't such a fan of Ghostbusters. So I chose Ghostbusters, which I'm handing a lot of points to Stephen and Franklin. They both love that game. I figured they can both outplay me on Ghostbusters. I just need to outplay Paul by two points and I'll cleanly beat him or if I only beat him by one point, it's a tie. That's another shot at it. That seems like a good outcome. I was right. Coastbusters was not kind to Paul. He came in last. I managed to get second place. It gave me the win. Seven to six to four to four. Franklin and Stephen had a tie-break game. Cool. yeah i i really enjoy uh this the style the the papa finals yeah i i was happy enough with three two one zero i'm happy enough with four two one zero also i i had a couple of things i did after i finished competing i my intent was to go home matthew carlson who won the night he and matthew grady both took me out of the top group or out of you know the second group and he went on to win. Just after it was over, I was not more than gently bellyaching, such as it were, outside. And Matthew was like, but you get to go home. And I was like, I know, I do. That said, I walked back in and I noticed Morgan Levinson playing NBA and she had everything but alley-oop. done on the way to the championship game or the MVP, whatever the thing is that makes you put your initials in for MVP. And I didn't think she knew the game all that well. And I just sort of stood over her shoulder until a moment that I thought I could butt in and was like, do you know how to do an alley-oop? just asked that question from a foot behind her. She was like, no. It was like, look at the red lights in front of each ramp. One of them says alley-oop. It's like, okay, I see it. Hit that and then the center shot. She did it and the championship game started. She was like, oh my god, what just happened? We talked about it afterwards and I explained that you were... Yes, probably so. It goes all the way around. Yeah, probably so. To the best. Yeah. But like, which I just like, I don't know what it is off the top of my head. And I wasn't close enough to be able to read the inserts, which is why I was, you know, and I did not. I also didn't want to be right up on her shoulder in her ear screaming. I was just sort of like a foot or two behind her just trying to be a gentle voice and she recognized my voice and understood what was happening and let me coach her through it but it was awesome to be at that moment where you are about to fucking blow this game up and you don't quite know it you are right there but you just have to do because also on that game you're in jail if you aren't like once you've completed everything but the very last thing and in particular if that very last thing is a combination shot and not some really good scoring mode you're in jail and so like i was happy to be able to open that up for her at that moment just because i i was walking by and was just like holy fuck she's beating this thing up and saw the inserts and was like, I have to jump in and explain this if it's possible for me to do it. It was her last ball. It was great. They came, Grady chose it in the next round, and they came and set up the rig behind her, and she finished with 144. She turned around and bemoaned to me. She was like, man, I chose the team I was already the champion of. Well, now you're going to be the champion of it and have a ring. Got a ring now. I was happy to be a part of that. I then went and had my one revenge game that I was going to play at Buttermilk after the tournament on Twilight Zone. And I got lost in the zone and put my initials in as the number one high score, 1.5, 1.7 billion, something like that. I had three multi balls, and this time on only three balls because extra balls are turned off on this one. I also had four Powerball multiballs. Four times I released, in a one-player game, wow, four times I released the Powerball and put it back. I was very proud of the way that I played that game and wished that I had played anywhere near that well on any game other than King Kong in competition. We both yapped at the stream throughout the evening. Matthew Grady streamed the night at NYC Pinball, and George Underwood was watching the stream seemingly at Jack Bar and chatting with us about what was happening at Thursday Night Strikes. That's where it came from. Yes. We were both yapping into the microphone at least here and there, and I appreciate that Grady sets that up to stream it. I do not mind, in a lot of ways, lending my voice to it, slash enjoy doing so. I also the very moment that I was out of the competition was not going to stick my head back into it other than to say like hey thanks everyone Have a great night I had fun at that I hope you had fun at that Yeah I did I had a nice interaction with a person who I think was there playing pool. She stopped me to compliment me on my outfit and we talked about our skirts. I did not clock the full outfit, but I certainly noticed the leggings. Yeah, pink and black stripes. Yes. Also, Pat and I talked about this when I came to visit Eric at Skylark on Monday. I omitted this before, but I'll just add it into this note. Pat threatened, and I would love to hear this, to release a reaction podcast two hours, wherein he effectively reacts to each of my statements by doing roughly this. I think it would be a great success. It would probably be better than NYC Pinpot. Yeah, I took a city bike there again. And then I took a train home. Okay. We didn't talk about the Creed sing-along at Skylark either, did we? Was there another one? They happen so often. I just tuned them out, I guess. let's talk about the harvest the second edition of the harvest you know the wonderful thing about the harvest is that it comes around every year it's this great thing that seasonally it's fall it's friday october 10th and if you're in new york city if you were in new york city today it was the first day that it just like barely got above 60 it was a wonderful fall day and it's a wonderful day to talk about the harvest. Gabe, it was great last year. Do you want to talk at all about what was awesome about last year, or do you want to go straight into what's going to be awesome about this year? I'll talk about last year a little bit. We didn't really know what was going to happen when we decided to run the biggest tournament that Glenn or I had ever run up to that point, but we had some guiding principles. Make fun the priority, not necessarily whoppers or cash, affordability. and what ended up happening was just like you know 60 people hanging out in the same space for 96 hours straight it felt like a long sleepover we ended up you know running qualified hours way past what we thought we could because I didn't realize the bar was open until 2am so we were just you know taking entries taking scores down until like 1, 2 in the morning on Thursday Friday and Saturday it was a very cool vibe definitely less like sweaty, I think, in most of those Pumped Up tournaments I've been to. It wasn't aggro sweaty. It was just a lot of people in a place that isn't exactly an event space, which is kind of what was cool about it. As you say, it was like a sleepover. It was like we were in the Gebhardt family's upstairs big loft area and occasionally interacting with the riffraff downstairs also. Like Tyson fights and all. That's right. I forgot that Tyson-Roy Jones fight was that same night, right? Yeah. Tyson Paul? Tyson Paul. Whatever is happening that weekend at the Beacon Theater is actually a very important consideration for us when it comes to scheduling. Sure, yeah, it has to be. Yeah, the owner's concerns like, oh, it can't be, you know, some big thing. And I forget what's happening at the Beacon the weekend of the harvest, but apparently it was judged by the owner of Gebbard's to be not that exciting. Okay. A perfect opportunity for us to sneak in with our event. All right. Well, Beacon Theatricals and MSG, we aren't hating on your programming here. Just saying. We're not hating on that. But we don't think that there will be a big overflow from whoever is at the Beacon that weekend. I'm going to guess that probably means that Seinfeld isn't doing a show there that weekend. Because I imagine they would think there'd be a lot of folks around. Yeah, no, Seinfeld is two weeks before. It turns out it's Trevor Noah. Trevor Noah. I love Trevor Noah. I could say. Louis C.K. is the weekend after, which I guess he didn't want to do. He's doing a three-night residency. I also didn't want to be on the Upper West Side when Louis C.K. was there, so we have that in common. Yeah, I'd rather not be at the overflow crowd and get parts of the Louis C.K. crowd. That would not be the kind of sleepover I would like to go to. Last year was fun. We're hoping for this year to be bigger and better, figuratively and literally. We've increased the cap to 80. So we may or may not hit that. I think we're sitting at around 76 right now. I've done a little bit more advertising outside of New York City. Last time I was like, this is our first time. Let's keep it local with the local crew. I was doing a little bit more publicity this time up in the Hudson Valley scene, the Orange County scene, the Albany scene, getting on those Facebook groups. I was also talking to some of the main people some of the Baltimore people because the cross scene whatchamacallit hybridization let's call it cross pollination even since we're talking about the harvest I might love that it's big and a lot of us go out there so it'd be cool to see some of them come out and hang out with us we'd like to have a date I noticed you made a couple of format changes for this year you want to highlight some of the new things yeah so one concern that some folks had was last year heavy Whopper Hall with the new Juiced certified tournament style but the cash wasn't necessarily there because the only income basically for the pot was 60 bucks out of which came like trophy costs amongst other things that Glenn had to pay for. So this time, we're having a small price for entries with the hope that it will do a couple things. One, it'll just make it worth folks' time to be there for 96 hours and get something other than Fun and Whoppers. I think it's a good incentive for out-of-towners. Yeah. Yeah. To help defray some travel costs. It doesn't matter who's playing at the Beacon on the weekend. you're not getting a room at Hotel Beacon right above that theater a couple of blocks away for less than 500 bucks a night over the weekend. If you were coming in from out of town and trying to do that, it'd be nice to take back a couple hundred bucks if you placed well. And we'll also be able to pay out more people which is important to me because it was a bummer to only pay out top eight and top four from B. So we should theoretically have a much larger pool to pay out from. That being said, affordability is still top of mind. So what we landed on was $10 for 15 entries, which if you do the math is about 60 cents per entry plus coin drop. And when we say plus coin drop, that's a dollar for new games. Is it also a dollar for older games or is that still TBD? Do we think it's roughly a dollar a game or maybe something different? Last year, coin drop for older games was closer to 50 or 75 cents, I think, depending on the game. Right. but I haven't spoken with Jeff about it but presumably it's going to be about the same standard with this pricing we don't think the per game pricing is going up when we say there's coin drop the coin drop is going to be the usual coin drop for these games right? yeah coin drop remains the same and one of the unique things at GebArts is a lot of the machines that are in there all the time have pay range on them which you can pay via Bluetooth on your phone instead of using cash. I think it's neat. I like to do it. It is like 10 extra cents on each game if you pay through PayRange. But yeah, I like it. Save my singles for other bars. On top of that, we're going to have free entries just flying around. So I'll list some things that we're giving out free entries for. One, volunteering, which is another big thing. We didn't necessarily have as many volunteers as we would have liked last year, but we now have an incentive for volunteering. Do you know what the compensation level will be in that? Yeah, it's 10 entries per shift, but then also one shift, one glass, 10 entries, two shifts, two glasses, 20 entries, three shifts, 30 entries, two glasses, and a shirt. We didn't have shirts last year, but one incredible operator, incredible person, and also incredible visual designer has made a very cool updated second level insignia for this harvest. So that's going to be going on shirts and glasses. Is there a prominent snood this time? We've got Waddle. The snood may be hidden in the voluminous reaper robes that Harvey the Harvest Turkey is holding, wearing. I know you just sent out an email with lots of details this past Monday. I was wondering, are you seeing a lot of activity on that volunteer response form? We're definitely doing some. We could always use more. I want to. I need to wait a little bit before I can schedule it personally. Honestly, one could sign up to volunteer at the day of or what have you. And we may end up needing to do sort of a similar thing to what we did last time where we had less concrete scheduled scorekeepers, but just a critical mass of scorekeepers floating around the tournament at any given time, able to take scores. Though hopefully we'll have a little bit more structure this time. We'll see. When you say a little more structure, there was something kind of charming about the... New York City came together to have our tournament, and while there was not... It didn't have the sort of depth of structure that when you go to a giant pump-and-dump tournament that there are people who have scheduled volunteer shifts and they have all signed up in advance and they have bright orange shirts or whatever. All of that was a little bit loosey-goosey. I felt like we all came together and did this thing anyway. I felt like I was involved, even though I was the asshole who didn't volunteer. There's always a zero. Indeed. There's even more ways to get free entries. If you send me money by October 15th, which is five days from now, next Wednesday, that's 10 free entries right there just for signing up just to be fair that will be 3 days from the day that this episode drops so I hope you listened early in the week you've got 3 days 72 hours to get free entries additionally on Thursday night Thursday night strikes will still be occurring which will be run by my lovely partner Sam Paul we had 7 folks last time I think show up for that strikes tournament because the harvest had already begun but this time the winners of that strikes will get free entries to the harvest Oh, cool. So some more cross-pollination between the scenes. And also, if the organizers, like Kate over at South Slope Pinball League, want to give out entries for their Thursday night tournament, they're welcome to. Okay. Yeah, I haven't spoken to Kate about it. And finally, just signing up for the Harvest non-binary and femme edition, a.k.a. the Harvest, will entitle you to another 10 entries or so, just because they're going to be doing more qualifying, so they shouldn't necessarily have to be locked in to pay more money, so they'll have just some upfront more entries. Sure. So entries galore. The entries you have to pay for will be pretty cheap. Hopefully it'll still be a pretty affordable experience while still giving, like, more back to the players who have been there for, 96 hours. Yeah, right. You just mentioned the harvest. That's another one of the new things this year. Tell us more about that. So we kind of didn't have the wherewithal, capacity, preparation to run a women's tournament last year. We would have really loved to. If we're going to run a huge tournament, we might as well also run a huge women's tournament at the same time. And it was going to be a problem just because you can only really fit 15 games in there. So if you need five for classics, let's say you want to do at least a four-game bank for women's and only leave like six for main or open. So that sort of is constricting because you'd really like more games in the open bank. So as it turns out, a recent innovation by one of the pinball players in our community is that they've found a way to interweave the queuing system within match play such that someone from a different tournament, like a women's tournament, can queue on a game in, let's say, the Open tournament. So we can actually have the same 10-game bank for Open and for the Harvest, which will allow us to do both. so it's all one queue but if I were playing in the harvest and also playing in the main I would have to declare which one my game was before I played the game right? Yeah that's a very important step is you need to make sure you're in the right tournament because unfortunately let's say you put up a huge score in open where you already have a huge score but you meant to schedule that game in the harvest there's nothing we can do it's all got to be done beforehand So it's actually when you queue up, that's when you're making the determination. Okay, very good. So players in the harvest, pay attention when you're queuing up, whether you're queuing up in the harvest or the harvest at that moment, right? Yeah, it's crucial. I'm going to make sure the scorekeepers, if they're putting someone on a game for the harvest, say, you know, I need this person on this game for this tournament. So hopefully we don't have any unfortunate issues. Yeah, that's cool. that's cool from the uh players point of view is it still going to be the same interface just match play yeah it's all done through match play cool new cat to the new york city scene name of zach till from detroit uh started playing pinball in atlanta which apparently also has a robust scene has a friend out there who i think is a huge tournament director and also in tech to some degree and so just saw the need and built it. What's his name? Tommy V on Discord. I've seen the handle in pinball forums, yeah. Yeah, I think he's on the Matchplay Discord server because presumably he worked with Andres to make it happen. Cutting in while editing here, Gabe sent me a text to confirm that this person's name is Tommy Vernieri. Thank you, Tommy. Matchplay, incredible stuff. Like last year they were sort of like shaky about whether or would work. Not a lot of people have run this style of tournament through Matchplay. It works great. I think it's being done more widely and it's even being updated to have this sort of functionality where you can run multiple tournaments through one bank. Yeah, we actually talked about setting up tournaments in Matchplay in Ball 3 last week and we had no idea, in fact, or at least I did not at the time, that this might have been something that someone was running presumably with an API script crossover somewhere like, you know, crazy. Point something like that. Yeah, crazy. And cool, and really cool. I mean, look, it feels like you're going to innovate it. Whether you're going to innovate it in the world or not, you're going to innovate it in New York City, it sounds like. I've not heard of anything like this happening in the city, right? Well, great things happen. Not in the city, yeah. In Atlanta, I guess, but out of here. Speaking of the arenas, last year there were a couple special brought in, I think, especially to make up the Classics Bank, I recall. Is that going to be happening again? Yeah. Jeff and Glenn are reaching deep into their bag of mysteries to pull out some weird games, which I'm happy to announce here for the first time on the MSC Pin Pod, the games coming into Gabbards for the tournament. Now, some of these might be in the main bank, some of them might be in the classics bank, just because we'd like to spice up open with some classic games. But as far as I know, these are the games coming in. we've got Gottlieb's Big House, which is it's a premiere game, so think Black Hole, think Genesis, that era of very unique, very stupid, arguably fun Gottlieb game. But a little bit lesser known. The theme is a combination of humans and anthropomorphic animals escaping from a jail, I think. Yeah, I mean, Big House, jail. That's what I was going to ask. Is that a jail theme? I played at Pinsonati a few years ago. That's a weird one. I think it's pretty weird. In the family of big games, big flipper, big game, big hurt, all great games. Making a Return, Quicksilver, which was there last year. Oh, yeah. Great game. That's a great one. Dangerous, but fun. You know, stand-up bank right at the center. Multiple strats. You can go saucers. You can go spinners. You can go multipliers. Embryon is coming. Oh yeah. It's so wide though. Yeah. There's so much going on. I think correct me if I'm wrong but it's the same company that did Paragon. I think they're both ballets. I think it's a ballet, yes. And it has that same it feels like there's a whole universe under glass that you were traveling around to the different sectors of. There are effectively three separate playfields on the thing, but it's a street level game. 50 Great. And then Atlantis, which is a, I'm not sure who made it. There's two Atlantises. It's the newer one. Okay. So the Gottlieb, I think. Yeah. The saucer up top. There was one at NYC PC, the last, the most recent NYC PC, right? In the Women's Bank, maybe? There is an older Atlantis, I think, which is also a pretty fun game, but that's, I think, like a wedgehead with just a... Yeah, like score reels and late 60s, early 70s, maybe. A whole bank of drops on the left side. Also a great game. And finally, Dune. I just got to play Dune for the first time this week. Cool. And I think there should be one more game coming. I think Glenn and Jeff still need to work it out, though. Cool. What exactly is it going to be? also some games that have come into Geberds that are not going to be new to Geberds as of right now but will be new as of last year's harvest King Kong is there now which was not there previously, Ami is out but replacing it is the Watt and Dead which is very exciting and Glenn's game just plays like a dream it's like unbelievably smooth the lighting is very cool it doesn't seem as like grey or drab but more like starkly black and white. I don't know why. It's in the sunroom, isn't it? Yeah. It's real hard. It's got direct sunlight on top of it. It doesn't have that awful bright flashing blue light in your face. It's great. I think that Godzilla left, but is back. Because the owner of Gabbard's wanted there to be only one game in the sunroom, but Acquiesce to having two games in the sunroom. So Godzilla left and came back. I think Deadpool's gone. I think that's pretty much it. Yeah, the King Kong is the pro version, correct? It's listed as the premium on Tinder. Oh, yes, you know what? It is, because one time I was there and the arm was off. If it were the pro, there wouldn't be a reason for the arm to be disconnected. Yes, it has to be the premium or the LE, yes. Yeah, only the best for Glenn, with the gong. Yeah, and that Indy 500's still there, right? yeah so playing fast as all get out yeah I love that game all like flies too fast to flip I'll miss hot dogging oh yeah I asked and they were like no we're going to bring back Quicksilver which is fine Quicksilver is good I like Quicksilver we will hot dog again for sure I hope to see as many people as possible in even if you think you're on a waitlist waitlists always move you can always sign up. Let's say if it's happening on Friday or even Saturday, come on down. If there's space, you can qualify. It only takes 10 games to qualify. Come on down. We're trying to get the tent as big as possible to get as much of New York City in one room as we can. The biggest collection of New York City pinball players outside of Baltimore. Sometimes that's Delaware. Yeah. Delaware. and uh you know if you can volunteer it would really go a long way to making the tournament i think as fun for as many people as possible so if you're thinking about it stop thinking about it just do it that's we've got stuff for you shirts entries classes everyone will be rewarded that's all for this week's pod i'd like to thank gabriel chazanov for joining us and Gabe and Glenn for the work that they're doing to prepare the Harvest Tournament at Gabbards this coming November. Join us next week when we will do the usual things in Balls 1 and 2. And I'm not too sure what we're going to do in Ball 3 just yet, but I'm sure it'll entertain me. I hope it'll entertain you, too. Whatever you're up to between now and then, go get them in the boat. Butterballers be winning on Thursday night. Unfortunately not on Tuesday. That was the unsaid shade. Yeah.