Happy Sunday, pinpo, for whatever day you're listening. This is NYC Pin Pod, in which a panel talks location pinball in New York City. My name is Benjamin Furiga. My initials are BCF. And there's a big, floofy man-cat moving into my apartment tonight. My name is Eric Sweetland. My initials are HIP. And I'm a pinball tournament director in New York City. Hi, y'all. My name is Jose Garcia. My initials are JGN. And I'm taking a small pinball sabbatical after the harvest. On this week's pot, we'll run down local competition results in Ball 1. In Ball 2, we'll have venue updates and our bullet journal. And in Ball 3, we'll have, do we call it Mad Libs, Jose? Yeah, Mad Libs sounds right. Mad Libs, Pinball Mad Libs. Let's get started. Let's talk competitive pinball results in New York City in the last week. And it's crazy that I forgot to put this in the script. But last Friday, it was official that Zen Zopniak won the Six Games, Six Songs Challenge. And Zen, I owe you a Harvest pint glass from last year, not from this year. It's collector's edition this time. On Saturday, November 1st, 17 players came to Rolos for South Slope Strikes November under the organization of Jess Warren. surviving the night with only three in this four strike affair kate martin won the day rob wong came in second place after 12 rounds aj gould's gotten third and Janos Kiss gonzalez fourth on sunday silver ball sunday at single cut 31 was held at single cut beersmith tommy ortega is the director of record 20 players met for a five rounds of group match play and top four players advancing to the finals. Final result was Eric Wesliak. I hope that I pronounced that properly as the first place. Rob Wong, second place, two days in a row. And Gabriel Chazanoff, third place, with Sean Ford coming in fourth. Some Whopper values there. 6.73 Whoppers for Eric. On Monday, November 3rd, Barcade Brooklyn Pinball League was off this week. They will return next. But round nine of Pinball NYC's left flipper division was contested at bars all across New York City. Intermission Dolores hosted the Balls of Steel at Commonwealth, and the home team got a 9-7 win. Special win lit had a bye week. Parliament traveled to upstate Manhattan to visit our New York City Flipper Sport Association at At the Wallace, and our association got a big 13-3 win. Does this mean that you are top seed with that 13 win? We are now top seed and guaranteed a buy at this point. Excellent. Congrats. Thanks. Lion Persons visited the lesser players at Gebhardt's Beer Culture. Lion Persons with a 12-4 road win. The Mutants went to Scrapple Land to see the Pinbots, and the Mutants got an 11-5 road win. The two-for-oners faced Harry's Hand Grenades at Bar Great Harry. two for one-ers with a 12-4 road win. Wow, and that does put them in the sixth seed with that win, which I'm sure is going to come into play next week. Rolos saw the Pin Pals come to visit the Aristocrats. The home team got an 11-5 win. After a huge home win last week, the Pin Pals' loss keeps them liminal between the playoff divisions. And the Colliders visited Barcade Brooklyn and the Deluxe Horses. those horsies got a 9-7 home win. Yep, get some right in front of the Colliders and the Pinbots too. The playoff pictures are looking like this in the Orbit picture. Our New York City Flipper Sport Association has a record of 8-1 with 108 points. That's a record? It's an average of 12 points per match, which is pretty darn good. That is pretty good. I'm actually very curious to find out what the record is for most points coming into playoffs. Good question. The second through fifth place teams all have six wins with a record of six and two, Balls of Steel, The Mutants, and Special When Lit, and a record of six and three, The Lion Persons. balls of steel have 86 points the mutants and special when lit tied at at six and two and 71 points lion persons six and three with 78 that's an interesting one right because lion persons have more points than the mutants and special when lit which means next week's win for them could jump them up all the way to top three maybe even top two depending on how it goes for balls Any loss by those six and two teams is putting them into the points range with Lions persons who are doing well with the points. Currently in sixth place and the last spot of the Orbit playoffs, the two for one-ers are five and three with 72 points. But both Parliament and the Pin Pals, currently seventh and eighth, are knocking on the door. they're both five and four the parliament has 83 points and the pin pals 76 so parliament and the pin pals are currently sitting in the buy spots in the in-lane playoffs in seventh and eighth place the aristocrats are in ninth they have a record of four and four with 67 points intermission Dolores is four wins and five losses with 70 points. That's also there in the mix. The Deluxe Horses are three and five with 54, and the Pinbots are three and six with 57, rounding out the in-lane playoffs at the moment. On the outside looking in, the Colliders are two and six with 53 points. both the lesser players and Harry's hand grenades winless so far. They have 39 and 23 points respectively eliminated at this point. Right, right. I wonder, does that mean that the colliders still have a chance? I guess they do versus the pinbots, right? The colliders would have to win and then the pinbots would have to have not a good week next week. Yeah, well the colliders have two more games to go so they could conceivably get up to four wins. Oh, I see, because the Pinbots already had their bye. Yeah. Well, good luck to all the teams. On Tuesday, November 4th, round nine of the Pinball NYC's Right Flipper Division will be hosted. Was hosted, not will be hosted. Danger Danger went to Scrapple Land to go fight against Scrapple Squad. Scrapple Squad took it for 10 points versus six. Scrapple Squad keeps rolling. That's four straight wins. this time against a seven-win team. Woo! Congrats to Scrapper Squad. Editor's note, I wrote that wrong in the script. They lost by an 8-8 tiebreak four weeks ago, and they've won their last three. The Ball Drainers went to Buttermilk Bar to visit the Butterballers for a 12-4 win on the Ball Drainers' side. That's a big win for the Ball Drainers. They made up a lot of points there. They're just one win behind the Globe Flippers. The replays moseying on to Skylark to visit the Pinister Six team, where they won 11-5 for a win for the replays. Yeah, replays probably locking themselves into a higher seed in the in-lane playoffs with that win. Reston Pinball, parenthetically RIP, went to Milo's Yard in Ridgewood to visit Neptune's Treasure, where Neptune's Treasure took the night, 11 points to 5. Everybody Loves the Sunshine flew over to Birdie's to visit the Pin Babes, and they won the night with an impressive 13-3. Everybody Loves the Sunshine has been doing really well, and that is really going to knock the Pin Babes' hopes for the postseason. Harlem Globe Flippers went to Deep Queens to visit No Quarters for Laundry at Solid State with a close match of nine points versus seven in favor of the Harlem Globe Flippers. That's a big battle at the top of the standings. The Globe Flippers have all but clinched a bye with that. No Quarters for Laundry are now slightly at risk for missing the Orbit playoffs. And finally, the Trolls went to Jack Bar to visit the Schlubs, who won the night handily with 12 points versus four. Looking into the attendance, here is how the Orbit is looking like. Harlem Globe Flippers has eight wins and one loss with 91 points. Not quite breaking that 100-08 that NYC FSA has, but... On both Monday and Tuesday, the top teams from at the Wallace. Yeah, there it is. Harlem is kicking everyone this year, or this season, rather. The Bald Raiders are very close behind with seven wins and two losses and more points. Not by a lot. 92 points versus 91, but still very much in the mix. Also with seven and two, the next three teams, Danger Danger with 89 points, Schlubbs with 88 points, and Neptune's Treasure with 85. So very much all in contention for the top two spots in the buys. No Quarters for Laundry has six wins and three losses with 90 points. And Everybody Loves the Sunshine, six wins and three losses as well for 80 points. So those are our top seven teams there. Yeah, Everybody Loves the Sunshine and No Quarters for Laundry, same record but split by 10 points. And that's also the split between the Orbit playoffs and the Inlane playoffs. But with a game to go, a win becomes very important. Yeah. Looking at the in lane, the next couple of teams, everybody loves the Sunshine. We just mentioned six wins and three losses. But then comes Scrabble Squad with three wins and six losses, a massive change. A complete flip, a giant line between the edges in this division. Right, right, right. Certainly guaranteed to be in the in lane at this point. Everybody loves the Sunshine being the only team that's in between both. well and no quarters for laundry of course three six for a scrapple squad with 65 points and three six for the replays with 62 points the next couple of teams all have two and seven pinister six with 59 butterballers with 57 trolls with 56 and rest in pinball parent parenthetically rip with 52 with one win and eight losses the pin babes are almost certainly outside of the picture. They're a win and 14 points behind Trolls. So they would need both the Trolls and R.I.P. to lose. And they need to score 15 more points than Trolls and 11 more than R.I.P., which is a tall order. Yeah. I mean, good luck to them. That would be an amazing comeback. And I always root for the underdog. On Wednesday, November 5th, 25 players came to Scrapple Land in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for the first qualifying week of Scrapple League's fifth season of 2025 under the direction of Greg Pavarelli with the assistance of myself and Woody Richman. Ten of those players were brand new. We played five rounds of match play with IFPA scoring with the goal of garnering the most points for our series total. In this first week, Sean Grant won the night with 31 points. Greg Pavarelli got 29. Adam Kane, 27. And both Peter Larson and Peter Jorgen picked up 25. Seven players participated in the optional side pot. Sean Grant and Greg Pavarelli were paid out. Also on Wednesday, Pin Disco was held at Jack Bar directed by Andy Hayden, a four-round match play tournament to celebrate their 30th birthday. Eder Kreutzer and Alex Weisenberger both got 26 points. The field cut to a top seven amazing race style finals. And Alex Weisenberger was the eventual winner. Second place, Eder Kreutzer. Third, Gabriel Chazanov. And fourth, Zach Till. Congratulations to the Disco Divas and congratulations to Andy. On Thursday night, November 6th, Nobro Presents Thursday Night Strikes was convened at Jack Bar under Sam, apparently, according to the description. Ten players met, and Mike Pantino won the night, followed by Alex, again, two nights in a row where they make the top four, as well as Ida and Andy. It was back-to-back nights for them all. Also on Thursday night, the third qualifying week of South Slope Pinball League was held at Buttermilk Bar under the direction of Kate Martin. Five rounds of match play with IFPA scoring to get the most towards your series total. Zen Zoknyak did it the best this week with 28 points. Matthew Grady got 27. David Barber, 25. And Janos Kiss Gonzalez, John Chase, and Steven Christopher all picked up 23 points. After three weeks of SSPL, the A-Finals is topped off by both Billy Vazine and Rob Wong with 70 points. Janos Kiss Gonzalez, Stephen Christopher, Thomas Milburn, AJ Gould, Rob Adler, and Caitlin James Rees make out the rest of the top eight after three meetings. The B-Division has Kate Martin with 57 points, only one point behind Caitlin. Matthew Carlson, David Barber, Matt Grady, Zen Zokniak, Courtney Wetzel, myself, and Paul McHugh, also in the 9-16 slots. And congratulations to everyone that won some Harvest entries. Yeah, at Scrapple League, Thursday Night Strikes, and SSPL. The top four people who were registered for the Harvest got some extra Harvest entries for their efforts. Next week on Monday, Barkay Brooklyn Pinball League meets for a fifth time. This is the on and off league that is happening at Barkay Brooklyn. Whenever the D-Block sources have an away game. Night starts at 8 p.m. We'll see you there. On Monday, November 10th, round 10 of NYC Pinball's left flipper division will be held. This is not the last week, if I get this correctly, for Monday, but it will be the last week for Tuesday. So this is very exciting. The Deluxe Horses will visit the Mutants in Deep Queens at Solid State. The Colliders will head on down to Scruffy Duffy's Tap Room to visit the Two-for-One-ers. Colliders looking to play spoiler here and force the Two-for-One-ers down to the top of the in-lane playoffs so that they can reclaim a spot at the bottom of the in-lane conversation. Intermission Dolores with the Bye-Bye-Bye Week. the pinbots will their way over to owl farm and visit the parliament team. Parliament's looking to stop the bleeding and get themselves back into the orbit picture while the pinbots are trying to hold on to the last spot in the in division Special One Lit will head on over to Skylark to visit the pinpals Pinpals trying to get above the line into the orbit. Special One Lit can put themselves into a position for a buy if they get a big win here. Harry's Hand Grenades at Bar Great Harry will be visited by the lesser players. One of these teams will get their first win. The Lion Persons at Barcade Fight Eye will be visited by the Aristocrats. And the New York City Flipper Sport Association will head on over to Midway to visit the Balls of Steel. If we get at least six points, our association will clinch the top seed. On Tuesday, November 11th, in Pinball NYC's Right Flipper Division, Round 10 will be contested at bars all across the city. Penister 6 travels to Buttermilk Bar to see Danger Danger There's a lot of 7-2 teams and Danger Danger has a shot at a bye with a win so there's a lot of the teams but you know all of them are going to be looking for a big win That's the one in this match Neptune's Treasure will host Everybody Loves the Sunshine at Milo's Yard Everybody Loves the Sunshine is 6-3 with 80 like we said earlier. Neptune's Treasure is 7-2 with 85 so you know there's some swinging that could happen in this in this uh in this matchup butterballers and rest in pinball parenthetically rip will meet at arcade brooklyn with a big enough win rip could get into the inline playoffs and they could also knock out the butterballers oh boy scrapple squad goes to at the wallace to see harlem globe flippers scrapple squad's already in a pretty good spot for in-lane playoffs, but Glow Flippers need to clinch the win for top spot in Orbit. Schlubbs and the Replays will face off at Rulos. NoQuartersForLaundry goes to BarcadeFidei to see Trolls. If NoQuarters wins, they will guarantee an Orbit playoff spot. If Trolls wins, they will all but guarantee an in-lane berth, so if they lose, they could easily fall out of playoff picture. and Jack Barr will see the Pin Babes come to visit Ball Drainers so the Pin Babes have a very interesting low chance thing that could happen here right but they have a chance they need to do really really really well next week so good luck to them what they have going for them is that the two teams that they have to beat by a serious margin are both playing teams that are currently in the upper orbit playoff picture but unfortunately for them so are they Ball Drainers looking for a big win to make sure they get the bye good luck to all the teams next week it's going to be an interesting one especially on Tuesday on Wednesday November 12th the second qualifying meeting of Scrapple League's fifth season will be held at Scrapple Land in Greenpoint Brooklyn at 8pm on Thursday Nober Presents Thursday Night Strikes held every Thursday at Jack Bar at 8 p.m. strict. 8 p.m. strict. Also on Thursday, South Slope Pinball League 5, meeting 4, is going to be held at pinball o'clock, 8 o'clock. At Buttermilk Bar, normally at pinball 8 o'clock, but on Match Play this week, it specifically says that it starts and ends at 8.11 p.m. That's funny. I guess pinball o'clock is now 11 minutes after the start time is set? We have determined the mathematical portion of what pinball clock is. And on Friday this coming week, November 14th, Red Hook's own Max Match Play Melee number two will be held at the Red Hook Pinball Museum at 362 Van Brunt Street in Brooklyn. your tournament director, Gabe C., look for 10 matches of max match play. On Saturday, Gabe finally gets some sleep. On Sunday, RWI is going to be held at Rulo's. Start time, 5 p.m.? Yeah. Sign-ups at 4.30, start at 5 o'clock, and there's always a tasty dish provided by Bart. As of November 7th, 2025, there are 354 pinball machines in New York City at 78 public locations. Thanks to the creators and users of Pinball Map for this data, here are machine updates from the past week. On Sunday, November 2nd, we saw some movement of machines into Gebhardt's beer culture in anticipation of the harvest starting this week. On Sunday, Judge Dredd, Embryon, and Farfalla were moved in. Also on Sunday, user Entic was at Milo's Yard in Ridgewood and said of their jackpot, Bill Acceptor isn't reading bills correctly most of the time. Quarters usually work, though. and user pinash visited a couple of barcade locations at barcade chelsea they said the cactus canyon periodically will kill flippers and drain the ball for no discernible reason and that stranger things is malfunctioning but playable regularly shoots a second ball into play after plunging you can let one drain to keep playing single ball as intended stranger things being weird but functional seems like all the stranger things I've ever played. Pinnash also stopped by Barcade Fidei and said that Dolly Parton, in great shape, just leaning left. On Monday, November 3rd, more games going into Gebhard's beer culture. Godzilla, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Atlantis, and Big House were added to the lineup. User Banzai said of Big House, shit house. Also on Monday, user Flipper Eric was at Barcade Chelsea and said of Cactus Canyon, Goldmine Multiball is only releasing one ball. And user Toenuff played the attack from Mars at Scrappland. They said, played it last night on a whim and it was playing perfectly. on Tuesday user Flipper Eric also had a comment for Stranger Things at Barcage Chelsea they said left Flipper is sticky sometimes get a multiball off plunger so you need to let one drain but then you lose a ball save also on Tuesday an uncanny X-Men was re-added to the lineup at Scrapple Land I love X-Men I'm sorry I appreciate this being added to Scrapple Land. It's been in and out. It was, yeah. The lineup's moving around a lot. It's getting big. They're up to 56 games now. Yeah, that's impressive. On Wednesday, user LT Video went by Scrapple Land instead of their Cactus Canyon remake. Lasso Ramp automatically triggering skill shot select at beginning of ball before plunging. I can confirm that actually was an issue during Scrapple League on Wednesday night. I had to make a ruling there. Yeah, no, that used to happen at the Barquet Brooklyn as well. It just seems like these machines will just get that every so often. LT Video also said of the medieval madness at Scrapple Land, left coin slot eating quarters, castle trigger intermittent. And on Friday, November 7th, four machines were added to the lineup at Scrapple Land, they got an NBA Fast Break, a Bram Stoker's Dracula, a Cyclone, and a Machine Riot of Pinbots. Very nice. All of those are excellent. Cool additions. I have an extra ball announcement as well. Now that the NYC Triborough Series matches are done, which by the way, thank you all so so much for attending we had 112 unique people play into the amount of nine tournaments all throughout this year to get some some some points you know whether they knew they were competing or not in the nyc tribal series they're definitely in there we have our top 32 but to make this tournament Whopper allowed, it's not just invitation only. It's priority based on being higher on the list. So if you are in the list of people that have played the NYC Triborough Series and are available to join us for the finals, which are going to be December 21st, please head over to pinball.fyi and check in on the matchplay.events page for the finals. That's the way that I know that you've RSVP'd, yes, and I can count on you being there that day. It's going to be at a private location, so I will contact people as they become available to let them know where it's going to be. But please, please RSVP on pinball.fyi. It'll route you to a matchplay.events tournament where you can check in if you are already registered. and after a couple of days, I'm going to reach out to people that haven't done it so that I can confirm with them if they are RSVPing yes or no. I don't have everyone's contact information, so that's why I've asked Benjamin and Eric to let me use some time here to mention this, but I will try my darndest to reach out to people that are in the top 32 to get their yeses and nos. And then as nos come in, because I assume that close to the holidays, people are not going to be available sometimes, more people from the waitlist are going to become available and um i will reach out to them as well so for now for those of you listening pinball.fyi is where you can go check in if you're in the top 32 and rsvp yes for your spot in the nyc tri-bureau series finals and anyone who wasn't in the top 32 or maybe didn't play in any one of the series qualifiers at all. The finals is still open for that? Technically, yes, but we will always give priority to those that are on the list and higher on the list on the NYC Triborough Series standings. Is there a registration limit? Right now, I have it as a closed registration, which is only the top 32. And then after some time, I will clear out those people that have RSVP'd no or that didn't get back to me. And then I will start putting in more people and adding a wait list so people can actually get themselves on there. And again, I'm trying to get this as evenly to 32 as possible. So I will reach out to people that are wait listed or that haven't RSVP'd yet. but for right now let's say for the next week or so only the ones that are in the top 32 will be able to check in and rsvp yes that's definitely my intention to make it sounds like a lot of fun i'm just unsure about my holiday travel plans at the moment that is my concern i suppose i can check in as yes it's my intention but right yeah and then you know yeah exactly yeah yeah please everyone that is listening as well. Yeah. If you intend to attend, please RSVP, regardless of whether you have figured out your plans or not. I will have a potential wait list as well to make sure that I can still fill in those 32 spots as best as possible. That pinball.fyi, that's pretty clever. How'd you get that? I was actually looking for pinball.nyc, but someone has registered it since 2014 and has nothing in there. If you go, it's a GoDaddy basics page. That means that no one has actually used it for any website. And I actually tried to contact the owner through GoDaddy and they said, nope, sorry, can't help you. So the pinball.nyc owner is still a mystery. But if you're listening, I'm very interested to buy that domain from you. I think that would be a really excellent landing page for events held in NYC that are pinball related and I will open it up to people to have their own landing page for for any events that they want you know the harvest would be one NYC PC if it happens again could be another one you know stuff like that cool because I couldn't get that one I went for pinball.fyi so shall we talk our pinball bullet journals did anybody do anything last Friday not on Friday not me I like I said at the beginning of the intro. I'm taking a small sabbatical from competitive pinball. I'm still going to be doing NYC Triborough Series stuff and playing here and there. But I was supposed to run a marathon this year and then I got hurt. So I'm trying to get back into the healthy running lifestyle. And some of that is to spend less time at bars. Sure. That's probably smarter than I've ever been what you just said uh probably smarter than i've ever been so i went on saturday well eric you did you work on saturday and have fun pinball repair stuff i did work on saturday at barcade brooklyn uh not a whole lot pinball involved at one point i had to clear out a jam of several balls inside the catapult on medieval madness but that's just sort of a recurring issue if two or three get in there, the kicker's not quite hard enough to shoot one around that catapult ramp so that'll just be an ongoing situation After work, I swung by Rulo's to see the end of South Slope Strikes and hang out with people That was a good time, stayed out a little bit late on Saturday night What'd you do on Saturday, Benjamin? well i went to charlene's and totally failed even though we talked about it a week or two ago like it's listed as a remake but i think it's the original or it's listed as the original and i think it's the remake i was too stupid to actually even pay attention and figure out which one it was but i played it was the only one that was working uh my wife was getting her covet vaccine at the duane reed right down the street so it was it was a good time for me to just be there doing that before she and I went to run some errands. I didn't really love the way that the game played, and they didn't have the beer that I prefer there, which is a Stillwater Insetto. It's an Italian plum sour. It's really, really good. It is something that usually Peter keeps at least at Sunshine. I presume I could get a can of it at Scrapple Land as well. I was about to call it Scrapple League. But yeah, I played only a little bit. I paid for every single game. This is the first time in a very long time that I have gone into a coin drop place and paid for every single game I played. But that's how badly I was playing or maybe how badly the machine was playing. Although adaptive difficulty should have really brought it down so that I could get a pop there. That was my Saturday. That was it. Just real quick. Were you saying that they were those Peter's machines? No, they're Max's machines. I'm saying that Peter has the beer that I like almost all the time. But those are Max's machines at Charlene's. It's Mandalorian, which was out of order, and Attack from Mars, which was in some kind of order. I was going to say, if they were Peter's, I could tell you why you weren't getting any replays. Oh, yes. Yes. No, I would expect that there to some degree. Yes. That's actually a good point. Yeah. yeah I think I have probably walked into Peter Rose operated joints and not and paid for every game in the past year or so what about Sunday do you play on Sunday You competed I did not No Oh I decided to uh stay home on Sunday I was feeling a little rundown and as it turns out it was a good move to stay home Sunday because I was experiencing the beginning of another diverticulitis flare up. And that kept me home for the next several days. Oh, sorry to hear. Sorry. Yeah, it's painful, but it passes. Well, I played on Sunday. I went to family day at Barcade Brooklyn. And let me say, I went because I was going to play on Monday night at Barcade Brooklyn. And Eric and I had talked just the day before, two days before, about how all the games had switched around at several of the barcades. It wasn't really quite that dramatic, but a few of the games in this lineup had changed. I wanted to go there and touch that medieval madness because it was great when it was set up at Fidei. I think it needs some leveling work in its current position. I think the machinery is still working the way that it was at Fidei, but it's... When I walked up to it at Fidei, I felt like King of Pain was all... But I'm going to at least be attacking the King of Pain whether or not I beat him. And I think I'd played two games on it. And once I beat the King of Pain and once I got Royal Madness and was a shot or two away from beating the King of Pain or something when it was at Fidei. But boy, it didn't play that way. Or maybe I didn't play that way when it was in Brooklyn. I accidentally bought a kit of Shirley Temple because it was family day. I walked up to the bar right when I got there, and this kid walked up and butted his way in front of me. And when the bartender came up, I pointed at the kid like, take care of this joker before you take my order. And then I think she charged me for his Shirley Temple. Like, fine. I bought a kid a Shirley Temple. We always talk about wanting a bigger tent. You got to start sometime. And if I don't like, please don't take this. I hear you right wing people saying, he's a groomer. but it ain't like that. It's just I'm grooming kids to play pinball. I'm grooming people to understand physics, man. You definitely played on Monday, didn't you? No, you said you were laid up for a couple days. I stayed home and cheered on our association from afar. Were you getting updates? I was in regular communication with my co-captain Adam up there. Well, I, of course, played on Monday. Since I had gone to Barcade to prepare, I certainly needed to go follow through on that. I tried to go to H&H Reserve first for the Polish sausage. They've got a little Chicago-style hot dog and sausage stand inside in addition to a couple of pinball machines. And so I thought, like, oh, I'll go play whatever's there now and get a dog. But unfortunately – well, actually, I would have got a Polish. But unfortunately, the window was closed. There was a sign up that said, like, hey, I'm on my break. and also only one of the two pinball machines was working, and it was 007, and so I just didn't give a shit. There was no reason for me to stay there. They didn't have the solid calories that I wanted before my pinball match. They didn't have a pinball machine I wanted to play. There was no reason for me to stay. So I went straight to Barcade. I had dinner at 11 o'clock at night. Uche had run the marathon that day, or the day before, and Uche showed up on Monday night to play pinball, and I mean kicked my ass kicked our butts at Theater of Magic like first thing I don't think he played a warm up game I don't think I saw him play a warm up game he walked in pretty close to the start time we talked a little bit about how he'd run the marathon and how he was exhausted and like you know was he still wearing the metal? no and in fact he told me that he wasn't wearing it because he took it to get inscribed oh very nice You can get it etched with your name and your time or something like that once you've finished. But I was shocked. I actually didn't know that Uche had run the marathon. But when he came in and told me, I was like, what the fuck are you doing here, dude? You should be sleeping or something. Yeah, you should be doing something. You just put your body through five months worth of exercise in six hours. You got to rest. but he was playing great and seemed to be having a fun time it's always good to see you Jay of course I feel different I would not it's sleeping for the rest of the week for me right right right he did point out when I said something about it that he was like you know it's sort of the big they in the sky you know whoever advises you about what to do after you've run a marathon they're sort of split it's really good if you move a lot and it's really good if you rest a lot and i think he was also of sort of of the stance that like there's not there's not one or the other of those positions that hurts less right now so might as well go play pinball yeah yeah like so i may as well go play pinball uh but look it's always a riot when the colliders and the horses get together i also saw wesley molchowski when when I was out of Red Hook Pinball Museum fame. He dropped by and when I saw him walk in, I wasn't even sure that it was him. And I asked Billy, the bartender at the time, hey, is that Wesley? He was like, yes. Wesley and I had never actually seen each other's faces outside of these Zoom screens that I'm looking at Eric and Jose on right now. So like I walked up and handed him a drink that I had bought him and said, hi, you don't recognize me, but I'm Benjamin. And we did the podcast together last spring. And he was like, oh, my God. Yes, of course. And we got to talk about he played that drop target derby tournament and just how his experience was at that. That was he seemed to really think it was a super cool experience. I think he might have also expressed something to me about the difference between, you know, playing pinball for fun and and the just like the stamina required to play a big pinball tournament. He was geeking out on a bunch of the games that he got to touch up there that he had never touched before, wanted to play sometime. That was cool. And like I said, I saw Billy and Grady showed up for a little bit at some point. It wasn't clear to me whether he was starting his manager shift, starting the late manager shift, or if he just dropped by to say hey. But I saw a bunch of people at Barcade. It was cool. Always a good time. Yeah. I'm guessing you didn't play on Tuesday either, Eric. No, I also stayed home Tuesday. I did get to watch the Hellgates live stream election night coverage. That was pretty fun. Yeah, I actually, there is actually one pinball adjacent thing for me to mention on Tuesday surrounding the election, which was about five minutes after it was called for Mamdani, or after certain outlets started calling it for Mamdani. Collider's Captain Emeritus, Alyssa Newman, who now lives in Hawaii, called me and I saw, we hadn't spoken in a couple of months and I saw the phone ring and saw it was them and I was just like, what? I answered and said, hey, what's up? And they immediately were just like, is it real? I said, yes, it is real. And then I paused for a second because again, we had not spoken in months and the first words they said to me were, is it real? I paused for a second and said, I mean, it's real if you're saying, did Zoran Mamdani win the New York City mayoral election? And their response was, don't ask stupid questions. Of course, that's what I'm like, just like, of course, that's why I'm calling you. So that is pinball adjacent and at least a little bit funny. What about Wednesday? You played Scrapple. So I did return in the standings. Yeah, I returned to pinball on Wednesday evening. I took it easy that night. I was only purchasing Topo Chico's. I was giving my stomach a rest from the alcohol. I'd spent a couple days eating liquids and mushes. But I wanted to be there for our first qualifying night. We had 10 brand new to pinball people. That was pretty cool. Or 10 new to Scrapple League. There were a couple of visitors from afar who were pinball players. We had a player from Norway and a player from the UK. Wow. Both in town. Later on in the night, I was wandering around. I noticed something caught my eye. The Fun House, which is a relatively new addition to Scrap-O-Land's lineup, last couple of weeks. It actually has two custom shooter rods on it, as the Funhaus machine has two shooter rods. These custom shooter rods were familiar to me because I'm familiar with what Stern produces as the custom shooter rod for Elvira's House of Horrors. Uh-oh. I hate them. Those things look awful. Eric is showing us a photo of these clowns. Evil clown heads. They're like evil clowns. They're like bright green eyes. They have sharp teeth. It is. And their mouth is open with their sharp teeth. It's not just like sharp teeth. It's like they want to bite you now. Yeah, it's like a vampire clown, I guess. Wow, that is unsettling. Two of those guys right there on the fun house. Hopefully that was just for Halloween. That's a little, yeah, unsettling is just right. Thursday night, I decided to forego South Slope Pinball League so I could head up to Gebhardt's and start qualifying at The Harvest. Oh, cool. So you did some qualifying last night. I did. How'd it go? Okay. I was there for about three and a half hours. I managed to get 14 games in. The queues were fairly short, but there were a lot of people up there jamming on the stuff. I expect it's going to get tougher to get so many games in, and I'm worried about finishing out my card. Oh. As it turns out, I played four games in main out of the ten bank, seven being a complete entry. Because, actually, I spent most of my time, I played the entire bank for the non-binary and women's tournament, the Hervest. Nice. Oh, were they calling it that before? I thought they were calling it the Harvest Femme Edition or something like that. It's also called the Harvest Femmes and Thames Edition. Or the Harvest, question mark, is how Gabe put it in one of the emails. I like the Harvest. The Harvest is pretty good. Yeah, so I got one game in on each, and I would probably need to try to strengthen those scores. They were just the first game I played of all the games. basically, if I was hoping to make finals. I just wanted to play it. Sure. Oh, and while I was there, two different people stopped me to say, oh, hey, is there something you could mention on the podcast? Oh, what's that? Both Tommy Ortega and Kate Smith, or Kate Smith NY, as you might see on the IFPA results, wanted to make sure everybody knows that the next edition of silver ball sunday at single cut which is coming up on december 7th is also going to be a charity event for project pinball oh cool very nice excellent very cool i think that's great news and yeah i said i obviously I will mention that on the podcast. Yeah, of course. And we'll be talking about it again as it becomes one of the events of the week ahead in a few episodes. Project Pinball, for anybody who doesn't know, puts pinball machines in children's hospitals as roughly the, I'm not doing their mission justice, but that's roughly the thing. I remember having met Daniel Spolar, who ran the organization at some point, probably still does, at Papa 20. where he had a dialed in, which I don't think had yet been released or was just starting to be released into the wild at the time there, so that you could pay whatever amount to play it. The high score at the end of it, I think, took the pinball machine home. Oh, wow. And when I took a pinball, it might not have been that one. It might not have been the one that isn't released yet. But it took some kind of pinball machine home, I'm pretty sure, or had the ability to. I don't if I had won, I wouldn't I would have deferred my prize to someone who could get a pinball machine home from Pittsburgh because I was going home on a bus. Just strap that puppy up on the roof of that bus. Yeah, right. Exactly. Can I check this? Can I? It's all wrapped up in this plastic. Yeah. Can I just can we just check it? Put it right in the undercarriage. But I will never forget him saying to me when I walked up and was like, so what do you do? and he explained to me roughly what they did and then his pitch for why it's important was just think about the way you feel when you play pinball. Don't you want some kid who has who like just can't see any ability to control what's going on around them and is just like in a bad place. Wouldn't you like them to be able to feel that way? That seems like a pretty good pitch to me. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. It'll be a larger buy-in. I'm not sure if it's exactly the same format. It's a $10 day. Cool. Looking forward to it. Alright, excellent. So I actually messaged Eric and Benjamin earlier this week because I was having a fit of fancy. As I normally do sometimes, I just kind of think about what type of pinball machine I'm actually interested in building or I'm interested in playing or what type of theme would be the best one. And it made me think, I don't have to do this alone. I could grab some people to help me design a machine. And even more so, we don't have to actually figure it out ourselves, or rather, we don't have to specify the rules and what we want this machine to look like automatically. Maybe we could do it in a fun way, like Mad Libs. So I have come up with nine categories. None of them is the title, because I think we should leave the title to the end to figure out what best title fits this machine, but it's going to be several mechanics or attributes of pinball machines. And I want each of us to fill in each of those spots and then we kind of maybe discuss what sort of machine this monstrosity is going to look like. I'll leave it up to y'all. Do we want to do it as a group effort or I could send each of you three attributes individually and then you can fill them out and then we bring them all together, whichever you'd like. Let's go through it as a group. Okay. Unless Eric, you were... No, I was leaning group also, but what I was going to answer is, Jose, you built it. Whichever one you think is fun is the way we should do it. Yeah, exactly. Totally agree. No, no, no. I think doing it as a group makes a lot of sense. Oh, cool. I know what some of these numbers are going to mean, but I'm going to keep it back until until after you know similar to mad lips where you say give me a give me an adjective or color whatever and then you find out oh you gave a color for this something really weird um right yeah let's go through it but yeah yeah yeah exactly i think i want to get the quote-unquote um boring ones out first which are all going to be numbers so i'm going to ask you for five different numbers and each of these have like a different range of low and high and then maybe we can um together just kind of reach consensus even though we don know what it going to be All right We'll collectively choose five different numbers right now. Correct. Yeah. And the highest one is going to be a five, like the highest ranges of five. So, you know, the numbers are not that big. All right. First number for category mystery number one. And this one should be between two and five. I'm going to recuse myself for this one because I know for what it's going to be. I'm deferring to Eric on this particular number. The instinct is to be wacky and just shove this machine full of however many of whatever these things are. Let's say three. All right. Three is good. Now this one is going to be between zero and five. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is a good time for 5 okay this is a good 5 alright another 0 and 5 let's swing it to the far end 0 this one's shorter range now it's between 1 and 3 let's go right up the middle with a 2 okay i like it final number between one and five please yeah it's gotta be uh four we haven't done that yeah there you go all right we haven't done that yeah that's true all the numbers but one are represented all right all right what the first of the fun ones genre and i have examples as genre here horror sports music but you know like stuff like that you know you got your music as you like your bands horror for like evil dead and spooky stuff um and sports of course you got your your doggy soccer and everything like basketball games all the basketball games and etc right we can keep the genre um for for whatever i'm not proposing this but i was just realizing a genre that's underrepresented is food but the only thing that jumps to mind right off the top is Barry O's Barbecue. Right, right, right, yeah. I'm not sure that represents under-representation. As I was thinking of it, also, Wonka is kind of all about candy. And then I also just had Weird Al in my head because all of the songs are about food. Oh, sure. Yeah, I mean, Oktoberfest is adjacent. It's food adjacent, right? Almost any time you get into some of the alcohol. Food doesn't sound terribly exciting. Diner? That's true. You're right. I mean, look, it sounds exciting to me. We need a third service industry pin, don't we? We got diner, we got taxi. Oh, sure. Where's bellhop? Service industry pin. Service industry pin. Yeah, porter. Teamster, the pin. That'd be good. I've written it down. I've written it down. Which one did we write down? Service industry. Service industry. Great. Great. I like it. I like it a lot. Good. Okay. All right. All right. Now I need a genre, but for the music. The soundtrack that's going to be playing while you're playing this machine. Rockabilly. Rockabilly. I love it. I mean, I'm down. I don't think that I listen to a lot of rockabilly in general. So I feel like that fits a pinball machine. All righty, two left. I've decided to include era or technology that's included. So I'm thinking EM, solid state, DMD, modern, LCD, you know, maybe virtual. If y'all want to include a virtual instead of a physical pinball machine. I know what my preference is in terms of virtual or not virtual. but you know we could yeah we're just we're all saying right from the start not yeah i think we'd all say that same thing i did have it as an option but i very much left it at the end because i didn't want anyone to pick virtual what do you think taxi and diner are charming alphanumeric displays but let's go full lcd okay completely modern i like it i like it lcd and then this last one i meant to have each of us suggest one if we were going to be doing kind of like the everyone keeps it to themselves. And this is a secret feature. And what I mean by secret feature, I guess I mean stuff like well, I guess it's not secret. Eventually someone's going to figure it out. But let's just say feature or gimmick. Yeah, exactly. It's something that happens while you're playing. Have you seen what happens when you drain down the left out lane on the labyrinth? No. There's a funny little creature jumps up out of the apron and taunts you. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Stuff like that. Stuff like like the Tommy fan that covers your eyes or. Yeah. Like Evil Dead having like a little thing that pops up and like is how you get into like the basement. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Like that. Yeah. I was that that's sort of I think I think if if I'm choosing one, it might be something like i was thinking of the led zeppelin thing which is a similar like if you get the led zeppelin premium there's this thing that pops up out of the play field that you shoot the ball into and like i think a magnet holds it there and then it goes down onto the subway and gets transferred there that's which is not entirely it's a little bit higher tech perhaps than the evil dead thing but kind of like that right right exactly and i and i i'm calling it secret but again it doesn't have to be secret maybe just kind of like a feature gimmick thing yeah it might be a better description of it yeah i like the idea of something that just kind of like falls down into like something so similar to that let's have one that you're describing i'd like that idea a lot oh i would like to propose a mechanically animated backbox ah uh in my um you know idea of a theme that's like bellhop then i started thinking of uh hotel based movies the grand budapest hotel is one of my absolute favorite movies but i was also thinking of that one where tim roth is playing a bellhop and there's three different it's a tarantino movie that was a ripoff of a lynch movie uh the lynch movie was called hotel room i don't remember what the Tarantino movie was. Yeah, I don't remember it, but wasn't it like three different short movies? The mechanically animated backbox would feature elevator doors that open behind which a different zany scene is happening each time. Oh, sure. Sure. I like it. I like it. Like a cuckoo clock type clock. Yeah. So you went modern. Oh, our elevator. And also, you went modern LCD and also this, which I kind of like as the idea of, like, the LCD is the surprise. You walk up to this thing, and it looks like some old machine. But then the door is open to reveal the screen behind where there's something happening in this room. Where there's information that you can learn. Yeah. I like it. All right. And I guess that's two already. Something falling down. Elevator doors opening and showing us the LCD screen. um for me i actually kind of want something like i want a toy um i like a good toy that doesn't break that never happens but in a pinball machine i want something that is actually on the field like you know something that's moving maybe even just moving the ball or blocking the ball similar i guess to like dialed in but like a little bit more uh useful than just blocking the ball coming from one place to the other. I don't know exactly what that looks like. Maybe it's something on a track. I'm thinking, you know, if we're going to go with bellhop, which, you know, we haven't decided yet as the title, but if we're going to go with a bellhop, it could be like those like carts that hold the luggage. Oh, yeah, sure. Transporting like the ball from one place to another. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's cool. I think that would be something interesting. That's cool. I'm going to say a transporting mechanism. Yeah. That doesn't break. Dracula's is pretty good, to be fair. The magnet on Dracula is pretty good. I was just thinking, what if you took the missed multiball effect from Bram Stoker's but then also had Dracula from Monster Bash moving around? I don't know how they interact. Oh man, that's complicated. Alrighty. So now we're going to build this machine. and I am going to try to read it as a story even though I did not write a story a Mad Bob Libbe style so we are going to be building a pinball machine that is based in the service industry that has the background music of sweet lullabies of rockabilly with a modern LCD that features a mechanical animated backbox some sort of transporting mechanism that will not break and a ball that gets dropped down after being held by a magnet or some sort. This game is going to feature a main multiball that has three balls. That was one of the two to five. So it's a regular multiball. That's good. It's going to feature at least five magnets. That was the zero to five. It will have zero ramps. Oh, no. It is going to have two playfields. That's either the regular payfield and an upper or a lower. And the number of balls that will be played per game is four. I love the four piece of that. I also have to say I love rockabilly for this, and I think I want to call it hoedown hotel and have it be like a hotel in Alabama full of hits, if you'll excuse whatever part of that was hate language. Whatever part of that was hate speech, please excuse me. But that is generally the idea that is in my head now that we've talked through all of these possibilities. No ramps is what I wanted to immediately start laughing. Like, wait, this is a modern machine with no ramps? I guess we're just going to have to use all those magnets to take the ball to the upper playfield. Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, exactly. We have so many magnets to play with. How is the upper playfield going to work? I guess it could just jump up like an elevator style. Ding, ding, ding, ding. And then you get dropped into the upper playfield. Yeah, you take the elevator up. This is interesting. So two playfields. Are we keen on upper playfield? I feel like going up an elevator makes a lot of sense at the Hotown Hotel. It does. Yeah, you have to visit the front desk and check in. And then you take the elevator to your room. So I wonder if the elevator, if the first elevator is actually that toy that I'm talking about that pops up out of the playfield. You shoot the ball in, it goes down. And now a magnet maybe pulls it somewhere or maybe it just goes somewhere on a subway and magnets start pulling it up from the subway first to the playfield, then to an interstitial space and then to the upper playfield. I guess we haven't talked about how we're going to get to this main multiball. Maybe those magnets are just holding the balls in place, either up there or in the upper play field until you get to your three. Sure. So you take the elevator first down to a subway, and then it pops one up on the back on some wall or some toy that has these magnets up on the top one. And now you do it again, and it puts it on a middle one. You do it again, it puts it on a third one. And then you got something like the mechanism on Avengers when you get the multiball where three balls all drop down at once. And that's where the rockabilly is really blaring. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was going to say the theme for the multiball. You've mistakenly checked three guests into the same room. Oh, boy. Oh, quite so. Yeah, yeah. Quite so, yeah. Then they are right now at the multiball. Yeah, now it's a showdown at the Hoedown Hotel. Yes! There's the name of the multiball, the Showdown Hotel. I love it. I think the last thing we need to talk about is how are we using that fourth ball, right? This is now no longer a regular three ball per game machine. It's now four balls instead of three. Are we changing anything? Are we, I guess, are we being objective or maybe not? Last night at the Harvest, we were discussing a certain era of pinball game where after you play your three balls, there's a fourth ball that's a bonus ball and it's timed. You earn the time throughout the regular game and then can spend it on free flipping on that fourth bonus ball. Oh, that's interesting. Not unlike Electro where you build up time for the lower play field thing or whatever. Yeah. Interesting. Lightning has that too. Come up with some sort of crunch time mode theme mode for the fourth ball. And also, to be fair, we have two playfields, and we haven't actually dealt we've talked about the magnets pulling the balls up for locks, but we haven't actually talked about them being released onto an upper play field. So maybe our second play field is that lower play field and that's how we use our fourth ball. Aha. There it is. That sounds logical, but that doesn't mean it's right. Yeah. What's in the hotel basement? Is it the kitchen? Oh, probably. Or, I mean, man, I used to work in hotels, and I got to tell you, you do not want to be anywhere in back-of-house spaces in hotels. Hmm. At the Hoedown Hotel in particular, is it like, are they like raising chickens in the basement? Or are there people whittling down in the Hoedown Hotel's basement? When I think about hotels, I think about how like some rock stars just kind of trash their hotel rooms. and I was thinking it could be something like you have 30 seconds to trash this hotel room. And check out before 11am. Right, yeah. Check out is what I was thinking. But trash it and then check out. And if you check out on time, you get to continue your ball. Oh, cool. I like it. You get to go to the next hoedown hotel. You made this amount of damage the hotel and you checked out, you get your ball back. Yeah. Congratulations. You did it. Thank you so much for going through this adventure with me. Oh, that was great. This is a real winner. I think we can push this to Jersey Jack or Barrels of Fun and see if they'll go with it. That's all for this week's pod. I'd like to thank Jose for joining us this week. I would like to congratulate Zen Zokniak for both winning the Six Games, Six Songs Challenge and for qualifying at the top of the B division at The Harvest. I'm sure we'll tell you who won all the bits of The Harvest next week. That'll be part of Ball 1. Ball 2 will be, just as usual, the venue updates and the bullet journal. And I think in Ball 3, we will finally have the BCF goes to Fideye. segment. Between now and then, whatever you're up to, go get them, pinfo. Pinball math is hard. Heh. Heh. Heh.