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Space City Pinball Co-Founder Phil Grimaldi - Episode 1

JBS Show·podcast_episode·17m 29s·analyzed·Aug 23, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.025

TL;DR

Space City Pinball founder Phil Grimaldi discusses building Houston's competitive pinball scene and stepping back from leadership roles.

Summary

Phil Grimaldi, co-founder of Space City Pinball, discusses his entry into pinball at Purdue University in 2011, his journey building Houston's competitive pinball community from scratch, and his decision to step back from active leadership while remaining a competitive player. He reflects on burnout, tournament preparation methodology, and the importance of community management in preventing toxic behavior.

Key Claims

  • Phil discovered pinball in 2011-2012 at a newly opened arcade across from his apartment while a graduate student at Purdue University

    high confidence · Phil's direct account of his origin story

  • Houston had no competitive pinball scene when Phil moved there for a postdoc at Rice, forcing him to travel to Dallas and Austin for tournaments

    high confidence · Phil's description of Houston's pinball landscape pre-Space City

  • Space City Pinball deliberately maintains a 'no-asshole policy' and actively removes disruptive community members to prevent toxicity

    high confidence · Phil's explicit statement about community management strategy

  • Phil has stepped down from actively running Space City Pinball operations, with a board now handling most responsibilities

    high confidence · Phil: 'I haven't run anything yeah in years... I'm just dialing back all my pinball stuff'

  • Phil built and publicly displayed a custom rethemed pinball machine called Felina inspired by Wes Anderson's work

    high confidence · Phil describes creating Felina during the pandemic, displaying it at Texas Pinball Festival and Houston Arcade Expo

  • Phil is currently ranked 118th in the world WPPR rankings but no longer tracks rankings regularly

    high confidence · Jamie references Phil's ranking; Phil confirms he used to check religiously but stopped caring

  • The Wormhole venue in Houston became the 'de facto clubhouse' for Space City Pinball community during and after COVID

    high confidence · Jamie and Phil discuss how Wormhole quarantine and subsequent opening accelerated community growth

  • Phil is stepping down as tournament director after this year's Space City Open but will continue to help in advisory capacity

    high confidence · Phil: 'This is my last one, and then I'll be running it as the TD, and then I'll kind of be helping in the future'

Notable Quotes

  • “There's just kind of this wonder to it that is hard to recreate. And that's hooked ever since.”

    Phil Grimaldi @ ~3:45 — Captures the emotional hook that drew him to pinball and kept him engaged

  • “We have kind of a no-asshole policy, and we also kind of nip in the bud any kind of bad behaviors that kind of turn.”

    Phil Grimaldi @ ~11:30 — Reveals Space City Pinball's explicit community management strategy and explains their success

  • “I don't know if I can go back at the level that i was... during the pandemic i realized how burned out i was”

    Phil Grimaldi @ ~13:00 — Explains his motivation for stepping back from leadership roles due to burnout

  • “I have a little credit card on there of everybody who helped me out. It is incredible. And it's sort of a who's who of Space City Pinball.”

    Jamie Burchill @ ~22:30 — Highlights the collaborative, talent-rich nature of the Houston pinball community

  • “I would rather win tournaments than be ranked highly.”

    Phil Grimaldi @ ~27:45 — Reveals Phil's value system as a competitor—tournament wins over ranking points

  • “as soon as you start applying some sort of judgment to it or judgment to yourself like, I suck, or that was terrible, you've lost it. You've lost the game at that point.”

    Phil Grimaldi @ ~34:15 — Core competitive philosophy about mental discipline and ego management during play

  • “Games started getting more and more complex. Like some of the games that were coming out, especially during the pandemic, like Avengers. I'm like, I don't have time to learn. This is getting out of hand.”

    Phil Grimaldi @ ~29:30 — Signals concern about game complexity outpacing player capacity to learn rule sets

Entities

Phil GrimaldipersonSpace City PinballorganizationWormhole PinballorganizationJamie BurchillpersonMatt QuantzpersonPurdue UniversityorganizationMark GammonspersonCreature from the Black LagoongameFelinagame

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Wormhole Pinball venue in Houston has become central hub for Space City Pinball community; group quarantined together during COVID establishing strong cultural bond

    high · Jamie: 'We just quarantined here. Yeah. Okay? I mean, eight of us, and we all quarantined together, and we didn't want to F it up.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Houston experienced massive surge in competitive pinball during pandemic and post-COVID period, driven largely by Wormhole venue becoming de facto clubhouse

    high · Phil and Jamie discuss Wormhole quarantine group and subsequent surge: 'we just answered that question right there. So, you know, again, what was it? We just answered that question right there.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Space City Pinball explicitly designed and maintains 'no-asshole policy' to prevent community toxicity; active moderation described as key differentiator from other communities

    high · Phil: 'We have kind of a no-asshole policy, and we also kind of nip in the bud any kind of bad behaviors that kind of turn. I've seen other communities turn toxic if you don't let that.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Modern pinball games becoming too complex for casual/semi-casual tournament players to learn; Phil explicitly states games like Avengers represent 'getting out of hand' complexity

    high · Phil: 'Games started getting more and more complex. Like some of the games that were coming out, especially during the pandemic, like Avengers. I'm like, I don't have time to learn. This is getting out of hand.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Phil created Felina custom retheme inspired by Wes Anderson's aesthetic after seeing rethemed machines at Bar Luca in Milan (2019); represents grassroots custom machine movement

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.052

0:00
Hi, welcome to the Wormhole. I am Jamie Burchill, and we have a very special guest with us this evening. I've been trying to do this for about six months, Phil Grimaldi. Finally got it on the calendar. I appreciate it very, very much. So welcome to the Wormhole. We are a private club here in Houston, Texas, But we are open, and you can check us out at SpaceCityHouston.com or SpaceCityPinball.com.
0:37
SpaceCityPinball. SpaceCityPinball.com. And WormholePinball.com. And you can see when we're open to the public and go from there. So a couple of months ago, we had an interview. Travis Moseman did an impromptu interview, if you will, with Steven Silver from Metamorphic. And it really was a fun interview. And Travis did a really good job, and we said, well, we're on to something here. Steven's a fun guy. Yeah.
1:04
He is. He's good. And we were like, hey, this is something we can do here. When people come into the wormhole, let's interview them, and let's interview interesting people in pinball and put it out on our channel and go from there. And then I think we'll do this as well on a podcast.
1:21
Sure. So we'll go from there. Sounds good. All right, let's start with the easy questions, right? These are layups. I even printed everything out so that I could look professional like Teolis.
1:32
All right. Okay, obviously, how and when did you get into pinball? Sure. Let's see. Graduate school. This is like 2011, 2012, somewhere around there in Lafayette, Indiana. I was a graduate student at Purdue University, and randomly a pinball arcade opened up right across the street from my apartment. and of course I had to go in and check it out and something about it just immediately clicked with me. I loved all that. Were you a gamer before? I liked video games and things like that and I dabbled in pinball every now and again but it had been many, many years and I started playing Creature from the Black Lagoon. Yeah, great pin. I loved the kitschiness of it and the sounds of it and then at some point in time, I was just, like everybody, flipping the ball around, just trying to stay alive as long as possible. And then just by looking at what was going on, figured out that there was actually rules. And I started reading it and, oh, try and spell film. What happens then? And then you keep playing and playing. Eventually you unlock it and it's amazing. There's just kind of this wonder to it that is hard to recreate. And that's hooked ever since. I love that story because it happens to so many of us, right? Especially if you came from a gaming background or a sporting background, you go, all right, it's not just keeping this alive. There's ridiculous skill in this, but there's also a game in there that I've got to learn to play. So how did you move to Houston? Fast forward, you move to Houston, and there's no competitive pinball, but you know you're good at pinball. So how did you get into the competitive side of it? I was playing competitive leagues in Lafayette prior to moving to Houston. Oh, wow. so there was a I ran a league there Lafayette Pinball League for a few years before I left and so I was running tournaments up in Indiana and then I moved to Houston for work took a postdoc at Rice and a job shortly after that there was yeah nothing as far as competitive pinball in Houston occasionally there would be a random tournament here and there at somebody's collection not a whole lot of location play there was the game preserve they occasionally had tournaments there but they were kind of interesting you know they weren't really pinball tournaments even at the time some of the events they were like arcade slash pinball like so you had to be good at arcade games so you could get like popeye and then you know i would do really well the pinball and just get smoked at the arcade games um and um eventually so i was i was traveling up to dallas over to austin to go play in tournaments and stuff all the time i met matt quants along the He had a huge collection of pinball machines We ended up being roommates for a year and then we awesome somewhere in there we decided to start running our own tournaments and start the space city pinball started with tournaments up in game preserve and we were doing some stuff out of the house and then somewhere i talked to charlie collis of joysticks and he agreed to bring in games from joysticks into 1820 lounge every week and we started the league there and that was wildly successful and it's just been kind of snowballing ever since then so tell let's talk about that because i think you've seen this league go bananas i think you've seen pinball go bananas as well pinball's gone bananas but i think um you know not everywhere has experienced the growth that we have And I think that's a testament to the community that we have. We kind of, by design, have built in. We wanted to make sure we had a very good community. We have our Discord. We do a lot of community building stuff, events with our members. And we kick out the assholes. Yeah. That's a very big, important component. We have kind of a no-asshole policy, and we also kind of nip in the bud any kind of bad behaviors that kind of turn. I've seen other communities turn toxic if you don't let that. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. And I think you've done a really phenomenal job at doing that. And I understand that you're not rain, but you're stepping down. Is that true? Is that what we're hearing? Well, yeah. We won't release this until it's official. No, no, no, it's fine. It's not, you know, I'm not stepping down from anything. At some point in time, you know, Mark Gammons approached me. He's like, hey, you should stop, you know, you don't need to be doing everything yourself. You should set up a board. And I was like, yeah, it's a great idea. At the time, I was running the monthly at Game Preserve, the downtown league, a couple other random stuff. I was doing all that myself. then I met you know my now wife and she's like what is going on you're you're doing this pinball stuff constantly so yeah you need to dial that back a little bit um and so since then the board has really taken over um running all the stuff I haven't run anything yeah in years well Space City Open Space City Open that's it and and honestly um and people still give me all this credit for Space City Pinball but I haven't really been doing very little for several years um so at this point yeah i'm just dialing back all my pinball um stuff i dismantled my my workshop at some point focus on other things and and get in you know just playing okay so are you gonna play competitively still or okay okay so that that's not gonna stop just uh at some point you know it was really during the pandemic i realized how burned out i was you kind of like yeah you get into this rhythm of doing stuff and you're doing and doing it at some point you stop even realizing why you're doing it and then once it was gone like oh my gosh this is great yeah and then when it came back again i was like i don't know if i can go back at the level that i was i think it came back in houston pretty bigger oh yeah i mean we we definitely saw a massive surgence here uh and you know a little bit of because of this place you know oh the wormhole has been you know huge Huge boon to the league. It's become like the de facto clubhouse for us. I mean, can you imagine a better place to hang out? No. Well, you know, the story, everybody knows this, I quarantine here. Yeah. Okay? I mean, so how do you get better than that? There were eight of us, and we all quarantined together, and we didn't want to F it up. So we were careful during COVID because look at this place and what it's become. So, you know, again, what was it? We just answered that question right there. So as a designer, as a good, I have a design question for you. But as an interviewer, I'm getting better. So we'll see from there. But you built a pinball machine called Felina You totally redid Has anyone It a re It a re But I mean you don get to see re often nor do you get to see that beautiful re Where is it and when are we going to ever see that again It's in my house and I doubt I'll ever see the light of day outside of my house again. I live in a three-story townhome and so all my games have to get lugged up upstairs on the second floor. So I brought it to Texas Pinball Festival and Houston Arcade Expo.
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Space City Openevent
Steven Silverperson
Travis Mosemanperson
Game Preserveorganization
Lafayette Pinball Leagueorganization
Joysticksorganization
1820 Loungeorganization
Cleveland Pinball Openevent
Wes Andersonperson
Bar Lucaorganization

high · Phil visited IFBA World Championships in Italy 2019, saw Wes Anderson-themed rethemes: 'I was looking at the retheme, and it was like, I was looking at it, and it looked really cool, but it wasn't like professionally done. I'm like, I could do something like this.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Phil Grimaldi stepping down from active tournament direction and leadership roles in Space City Pinball after years of burnout, transitioning to advisory/player-only capacity

    high · Phil: 'This is my last one, and then I'll be running it as the TD, and then I'll kind of be helping in the future... I'm just dialing back all my pinball stuff'

    • 9:07
    And you lugged it down, yeah. That was it. And that was the tour, the public tour. And then it's going to be in my house. I miss Felina. It is a really cool machine. And I didn't really know you then, so I didn't really get to play it. And there was such a line at TPF, and so I was like, oh, shit. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. I mean, it was really cool. I mean, I was really happy with how it came out. I mean, the story behind it was it was during the pandemic.
    9:31
    And I don't know, it was right before the pandemic. We were in Italy, 2019, for the IFBA World Championships. and we went to a Bar Luca. It's a cafe in Milan, and it's designed by Wes Anderson, the director Wes Anderson. And in there, he had these rethemed pinball machines that were rethemed after stuff from his movies, and one of them was like Zissou, after Life Aquatic. And I was looking at the retheme, and it was like, I was looking at it, and it looked really cool, but it wasn't like professionally done. I'm like, I could do something like this. Wow. And we were going to get married soon. So I'm like, wouldn't it be cool if I did something like this for the wedding and we could have like something themed after ourselves and it would just be something neat to have. It's wicked cool. And we need to post some pictures. I'll post it on the wormhole just so that you can see it because it's really done. And we're also very fortunate that you have some very, very good friends that are really good graphic artists. I mean, it was a team effort. I have a little credit card on there of everybody who helped me out. It is incredible. And it's sort of a who's who of Space City Pinball. There's just a lot of talent in our community. All right, shifting to more of the competitive questions here. You're currently ranked, I wrote, at 118th in the world. Okay. Do you look at that? Do you ever? I used to. Like religiously look at it? Well, I mean, it was always a goal of mine to qualify for the world championships each year. That was the goal. and I kind of prided myself on being the player that does the bare minimum to do that. I don't travel a lot to tournaments. I don't go to the – like TPF is the big one. I used to go to Pinberg. Those are my two big tournaments a year. Pinberg is dead. But, yeah, so you kind of need to be in the top. You know, for a while it was the top 60-ish, and now it's the kind of top 70-ish to get in. and then they started, I don't know, stopped caring at some point and they changed the rules. I used to look all the time and I was in the 3,000. And now I'm 2,018 or some bullshit and I just, I don't know. I'm just curious if I have this joke where I call myself the amateurs and the pros and when I'm playing with pros, I always wonder if they check it as much as I do. I mean, I would rather win tournaments than be ranked highly. And so if I'm ranked highly but I'm just doing mediocre at tournaments, it's not that fun for me. I have fun when I win. I mean, I have fun when I'm just playing. But if I take it too seriously, it really kind of digs. It's not as fun anymore. So I try to not care too much about the point. Because at the end of the day, just like any competition, One of the reasons I quit golf is I was obsessed with golf. And I was obsessed after the kids got older of getting back down to the two handicapped that I used to be. And guess what? I'm almost 50, and I can't do that. And so then in golf and in pinball, I started doing the same bullshit of the competitiveness in me. And then I stopped having fun, and I said, all right, I'm only going to commentate. Well, I mean, at one point in time, like I would, before tournaments, I would study the rules. Right. I used to make flash cards before tournaments to like remember the rules for them make sure I know every single game in and out that going to be in a tournament Beforehand I would try and scout things out find the skill shot for everything At some point in time I like this is way too much energy And then the games started getting more and more complex. Like some of the games that were coming out, especially during the pandemic, like Avengers.
    13:23
    I'm like, I don't have time to learn. This is getting out of hand. I don't have time for this. And I started to resent it because I was not playing well because I wasn't putting in the energy anymore. And then it kind of got old.
    13:39
    You do look calm when you play, though. Do you get nervous? Are you nervous? Like I get verklempt, if you will, if I'm not hitting the shot and I can't hit it and hit it and hit it. I just notice.
    13:55
    I'll go on to something else. I'm not hitting that today. There's a great book called The Inner Game of Tennis. It's about tennis strategy, but it applies to all walks of kind of competition really. And, you know, one of the main things that it emphasizes is you need to just accept, you know, what happens happens. It's neither good or bad. You need to kind of let your automatic self kind of take over and not, you got to get your ego out of the way. Oh, my God. How hard is that to do? Get your ego out of the way and just let yourself play pinball. So you take a deep breath, breathe in, and just play. I like to do, I'll repeat little mantras in my head. Yeah, good. To prevent my ego from thinking out loud. Okay. For kind of taking over the thought process and just letting my muscle memory kind of take hold. So I'm watching this thing on, that's the next round, and we'll wrap it up in a little bit. But I was watching this Netflix special on full swing. It's kind of like the F1 for golfers, right? And, again, I like golf. But after the round, they would go, and I watch you guys, you would go and practice the shots that you weren't hitting. And it is repetition. It is getting comfortable with the machines. It really is. It's very impressive that you guys do that. If you miss a shot, it's like it's either early or it's late. And it's not good or bad. You either flip too early, you flip too late, you flip right on time, but as soon as you start applying some sort of judgment to it or judgment to yourself like, I suck, or that was terrible, you've lost it. You've lost the game at that point. Yeah, you're right. Just shake it off and move on and go from there. That's pretty damn good advice you guys just got there from one of the best players in Houston, if not in the United States, so in the world, 118, pretty damn good.
    15:52
    What are your pinball – you kind of touched on this a little bit, but any major pinball goals coming forward?
    16:00
    I'm looking forward to tournament director retirement. Yeah, at Space City Open. Is this your last Space City? Or you're done? This is my last one, and then I'll be running it as the TD, and then I'll kind of be helping in the future. And then, you know, I happen to be in Cleveland coming up in September, and I'm going to play in the Cleveland Pinball Open, I think it's called. the Cleveland Pinball Show. Great. But other than that, no, I have no big goals. All right. Now, but, I mean, one of the things that you've been really great, and I wanted to thank you on camera here, is that you've really helped us make these pinball machines harder because it was taking forever. 4X was taking 12 hours. You've also really helped us set up the rules on not only the machines but how we should do these two-day tournaments or how we should, you know, get certified and all these great things. and you've really helped the wormhole become what it is. So I want to thank you very much. I really appreciate it. None of this stuff is easy, and it's not obvious. And if it's not for people helping each other, nothing gets done. And putting up in my ass with the streaming equipment because I was the worst pupil. And now look at it. Look at it. It's amazing. It does look really good. It really looks good. So that's it. Thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it. Phil Grimaldi, Godfather of Houston Pinball, one of the Godfathers, him and Mack Lantz and everybody else. and I just wanted to do this. I think it's important that when important people come to the Wormhole, we sit down with them for 15 minutes. Sounds good, man. Thank you, man. Appreciate it. I really do. Thank you.