That's it. And then Denver has an amazing scene from Denver, the outlying areas, everything. I mean, there's so much good stuff. Like hundreds of games on location. Oh, yeah. It's ridiculous. One of the main places is 1UP Arcade. Right. They've been around forever. Like, they're one of the originals, you know. And, I mean, they have three locations. rumor is they might have a fourth one coming soon absolutely amazing you know they're slowly transferring to like the le's everything le everything special edition all the good stuff yeah we know the type why does that happen dude i don't understand why that happens looking for ways to spend more money yes it's a clout thing it's all clout yeah hold on i don't want to derail this whole podcast right at the beginning but it's like like is any okay people are impressed allen people are impressed by le's yeah like seriously people will like you'll see people on the online go and be like oh wow this place is great they got le's of everything like it grabbed people i don't get it either because all of us like playing pinball and if you play pinball it's the fucking same as a premium in i don't know the generalization i have and it sounds like this one up is different but it's like the places i've been to like when i was traveling to texas we went to the spot and all i had was le's and they all play like shit so i'm like oh this is that's most of them do when i see an le now or a row of le's i'm like oh this person doesn't know anything about operating pins like they just like had money and thought it would be a clout thing yeah i get it if it's like if you have like one or two if it's some theme that the owner of the place is fucking like all into if you're a huge godzilla fan you got a godzilla le sitting there whatever i'm like that's cool like he kind of like doubled down on something he loved but when you just buy an le of every stern coming out i really question the judgment well it seems like gets collector stuff dude it's like it's for a collector so when you see it on location you're like huh isn't this a premium that you just spend an extra what 5k for like why would you do that pretty powder coat yeah well i don't know i don't get it tell us more about this cake shop that you operate out of i want to hear more about pueblo okay and like how you start operating games before even operating so you're kind of in a pinball desert how'd you were you always into pinball or how'd you get into it? Yeah, I started real young. My uncle had games in his basement and it was like, we're kids, not allowed to play them. You know, every once in a while he's like, you know, here's some credits, play some games. I'm like, cool. So then growing up in a, with my family, like they were in bowling alleys, you know, there's an arcade down the street from my house. You know, we'd play whatever. You just grow up, you don't play for a while. And then all of a sudden you just go balls deep back into it and you're, you're playing again. the first game I ever played is Mata Hari. I have that Mata Hari, that actual Mata Hari from my uncle in my bedroom right now. Nice. Nice. It's our table for clothes. You know, we don't play it. We just stack clothes on it and it's a dresser, but it's that Mata Hari, like that specific Mata Hari. I've got my, my uncle's old, the, one of the first games I remember ever playing was my uncle's old Gottlieb Rock, like 1985 Rock. And I've got that in my basement now too. And it's just kind of funny having like those childhood games. Family heirloom. Yeah, I respect that it's in the bedroom, though. I don't think my wife would be down with that one with Rock anyway. Maybe if it looked like Mata Hari, but Rock would be a hard sell. Well, you got to see Alex's everyone. I'm going to put this on the podcast so he has to actually do it. Alex drew up an alternate backlash for Rock, but he's just he hasn't printed it yet or finalized it. And he did it all in MS Paint. And I think people would be really excited to see it. So hopefully by the time this podcast airs we can post this and you can contact alex for one of these i don't know i don't know no promises on that the arcade that i played at was down the street and i have the pinbot that came out of that place like that was like i hunted for pinbot and then we had a guy that a family friend of ours says hey i'm selling some games come look at him i'm like cool go over there and it's pinbot and i go where'd this come from he goes oh prc i'm like no he's like yeah and i bought it from him and that's the pinbot that i grew up playing like that's the one that was like that resonated with like everything the most you know i love robots and all that shit that's it so i have pinbot and it's matahari and pinbot in the house together you know and that's means a lot yeah it's pretty cool so tell us more about this your arcade is called flip a coin arcade but it's inside a bakery it's inside another business can you tell us about that business the bakery how you're related to it and then how you run an arcade out of a bakery i operated for a few years before everything and then covet hit and we had games in the bakery i operated just had the bakery six games upstairs before we had the basement covet hit and everything happened the whole world experience so uh i started me and the ones that own it i'm dating the daughter of the owners and her you know she's the owner too through the COVID time we're just kind of like we're like you know what we should do open a bar in the basement and it was just like kind of started as a joke and then it was like no like seriously we we should open a bar in the base we have the opportunity we have the games you know at that point I was already sitting like 35 games 40 games deep nice in the whole thing so I was like we don't have no startup costs besides like bar shit yeah building out the bar let's yeah half of it was already there because the building that we're in was a pizza place that had a comedy club in the basement oh yeah yeah so like the bar was there we just had to get like the kegerator the sinks a fridge you know like very minimal stuff we were able to do it out of our pocket and we started rolling with this we got the landlord to sign off and it was like what do you guys need to do he worked with us a little bit the next thing you know we're like loading games downstairs oh shit this is happening and then when we started loading games up there was uh still a lot of restrictions from covid like you had to wear the mask still you had to have be spaced apart so far and all that stuff and it just everything worked out absolutely perfect next year you know we're almost three years in to the basement so everything's based off base and covid you know so you really sort of launched like really hard launched the whole arcade after covid or during covid oh yeah that's wild that's a wild time we're talking COVID ended, like the whole restrictions ended and we got our liquor license and it opened up. It was the absolute perfect timing combination. Yeah, that's sick. That's so different than like almost every other arcade story you hear revolving around COVID. So that's kind of encouraging. That's cool. Yeah, it was just like you couldn't ask for better timing. It just worked out and it was, you know, we didn't have nothing like that here. It's been, oh man, 10, 15 years since any type of arcade besides like the few places that i operated out of had games and now i'm just i'm 100 here you know full dedicated here me and my girlfriend's dad have the bar you know everybody's involved it's a family affair true family business you know that's all we're surrounded by is family businesses it's cool how was the local scene how you know and in pueblo like how have they reacted to having an arcade like have you seen good growth have you been able to get people into pinball Like, were there pinheads that are like, oh, my God, thank God, you know, I've been in a pinball, but there's been nothing around? Or is it still like you got to teach people what pinball is? It's a little bit of everything. When we started, like, I was running tournaments at this place at a bar down the street with, like, three games. You'd have, like, eight people show up, if that. And it was all, like, friends and family, you know. And then you'd have, like, the casual players, and everything was, you know, just kind of whatever. And then things happen. Put games in the bakery. we started running tournaments like a few months before covid hit and we're getting like off six games 18 people show up in tournaments nice that's cool but it's so it's like now there's two places that we were able to play at besides like the the bowling alley down the street that has a busted ass you know world cup soccer that every time you hit replay it resets you know right what do you mean that's well adjusted by the operator there right like oh there must be an error here reset Yeah. You know, there's a monster back that had a hole, you know, the scoop. Oh, yeah. There's a hole that you could see into the speaker in the bottom of the cabinet. You know that. But that's that's whatever. We started like slowly growing with these two locations. Everything, you know, died. Stupid COVID. And then we come back and you see these people like, oh, this is a pinball place. oh this is a an arcade oh you have tournaments oh you you do this and it's just growing and growing you know we're averaging like 25 people without trying at a tournament which is relatively good for a town of 100,000 people you know I'd say that's really good I mean there are weekly tournaments in Portland that don't draw that so really really and you guys have I mean everything up there you know it's like a different thing though it's like we have a thousand machines on location around the Portland Metro, there's a tournament or multiple tournaments every night of the week. So it is more of a like, there's a lot more players and a lot more tournament players, but there's, they're getting, you know, spread across more. Well, you have your people that pick your place. That's, that's their home place. Right. Yeah. And there's people that go to only certain spots or whatever. They live in certain parts of town and they don't go to other spots or whatever But so do you still have your route Like do you still route at that No Oh so you I 100 here Yeah I all in here What made you lose the route if you don mind me asking like what was the just it again it all coveted i could have went back the bar owner wanted a 50 50 split and i was like no i'm not even i would even like i would even think about it 60 40 at that point you know i totally the way everything is i don't need that place i have my own place now you know why can't do what i want my hours right uh what games I want in there, how I want to run things. I could focus all my time into one place. It actually made things a lot easier. Yeah, it makes sense. Running a route's hard. I mean, my business partner still runs a big route, but I just handle Wedgehead essentially. He's there sometimes, but I handle all the maintenance there. I'm the day in, day out guy that's there running Wedgehead and he still runs his route. But running a route is hard. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work and you have to split i want to touch on what you said a little bit there where you said 50 50 split for the listener maybe what you think you're hearing which is when an operator has games at a business that's not their own like they don't own the arcade or they don't own that bar but they have machines there what they do is they do a split with the business that's why the business owner like oh okay you can put these machines in here or whatever and we'll turn them on and off every day and we'll give quarters to patrons that come in or whatever and but they want a split the old school operator thing across the board was 50 50 meaning 50 for the business 50 for the operator i've been hearing that that's changing in certain regions yeah like i know in portland like roads won't even do it for less than 60 40 his way so the business gets 40 he gets 60 but i've talked to other operators off the record i won't blow them up here but they some people are getting like 75 25 even 80 20 so i know people who won't even talk to people for less than 80 20 which is interesting because like the thing is is like i understand it like as we do it it's like even if you're charging a dollar play for a new game and if you're only getting 80 cents of that dollar if you only get 60 cents of that dollar all of a sudden like and you're giving away free games and matches and all that kind of stuff if you've got the right location it can always i mean it can always be worth it if it's in like the perfect spot and you get in tons of volume game right like 100 it's like if you're a small margin place like not getting a ton of plays and it starts mattering a lot well not only that but if you have new games i mean when you're paying we're paying seven to say twelve thirteen thousand dollars for a game yeah trying to pay that it takes a lot of quarters to pay for that you know like you have to factor all that stuff in there too you basically can't i mean it's very rare to see anyone charging more than a buck a play anyway and so then it's like if you're making 50 cents per credit on a 12 grand labyrinth yeah like and you're listening to every customer going why is it a dollar play and you're right man i just like people just really don't understand it that's part of the podcast and part of these operator series is that i want people to understand better i tease it a lot on the show i am working on it but i have a pinball economics thing that i'm going to do that's going to dive deeper into numbers and give examples and give kind of thought experiments to put people in the shoes of like here's you buying a game here's you finding somebody here's you agreeing to a split here's number of plays that you would need and how long you would need to pay that game off here's how often you would expect to go out and fix this game all that kind of stuff and then be like does this all sound worth it for what you're getting yeah people don't understand that no it's a very strange thing where I hope it's changing because there are businesses, arcades around the country that are beloved and they have a scene. And, you know, we try to talk to some of them, like I know the Pops guys in Boston, they're beloved. Like I know the Electric Bat, they're beloved, right? We just talked to Waltz in LA, massive there. And, you know, like we have our following at Wedgehead. There's a lot of people out there. You see it on the forums and stuff. People will come out and they'll be like, they just think that operators are crooks. Like that's the biggest thing but look at back in the day back in the day sure yeah like i understand it's not that way anymore like most operators now are hobbyists as well yeah we're all pinheads but you have the people like we were talking earlier that have all le's no man you're not a just a dude with money yeah like we we care about it you know and it shows in our locations that we care about it because our games will play good you know if like here if i have a game go down i'm fixing that shit within like five minutes like I'm not gonna let it go down I'm I don't care if there's people around glasses coming off I'm fixing it you know but it also shows that oh well that's cool because they care they there's a problem and now they're fixing it right away you know I'm not gonna let that I'm not gonna let it go for two three weeks that's awesome especially I feel like it's important when you're kind of like the one growing the scene like you are and it's like you got to kind of represent pinball well it sounds like you do and I think that's a big reason that you've kind of found success, found a footing there. Because it's like, if you're the first barcade or whatever in a city where there isn't anything, and everyone's initial impression is games that don't play right and are breaking and stealing quarters and stuff, that's not fun. So I think that is really important. I think it's super important. You can always tell a good operator by how well the games play or how quickly they're addressed. Like, I do the same thing. Like, what you're talking about, we just actually got a puppy, my wife and I. So I've been changing my schedule a little bit but usually i work nights and like somebody sends me a message about a game or somebody tells me i'm right there with the soldering iron i'm opening up the glass in the middle of a fucking friday or saturday night fixing shit and then people look at it like it's a fucking magic trick dude i can't believe i just messaged this guy like two minutes ago and he's down here working on this game and fixing it that's the standard that's what i want that's what i want our bar to be when i go and i travel and i go play pinball it's like i look at places and i go i want to go play that game they have a quicksilver when i show up i want that quicksilver to be running dude it's right you know what i mean like like we choose where we go based on the games that they have so it's so bad when you show up to a place to play one or two games specifically especially if you've gone out of your way to go there and they're not playing i mean it sucks when they're down but we know that happens with everything what sucks worse is when they're just playing like shit and they're still up and you're like right it sucks yeah not giving it like fair shake it's i'm not gonna say my games are perfect but like we they're all running like there's not going to be a game off it's it's there's not going to be a dark game like it's if there is if it's bad enough we're pulling that shit out and putting something else in that's how we do it too i think that's the way you need to do it if you if your game needs serious work like brain surgery you need to do the thing where you need to move it on and right sort of like that's something that we have a huge location out next level who we mentioned on the show everyone already knows if you're listening to this podcast you've heard of this place massive great arcade full of hundreds of games and everyone goes out there and go wow there's no games ever turned off and i go yeah because they have a whole back room and you'll see a game go down and they'll wheel that fucker out and they'll put a new one in so like you don't ever see games down and that's like part of the owner's thing and i admire that about that space oh it's amazing you know what i mean because it's like it's so again it's like a magic trick dude they're doing a magic trick it's not that the games never break right because of course they break they break all the time but it's that you as the customer don't play broken games well it's you don't get the customers back if there's broken games like if they're not having a good time in those games they're not going to come back exactly if the game's constantly broke or pinball is not a get rich quick scheme like if you're operating games you have to love it Because to do all the work, like to clean it all the time and to do everything, like maybe the flippers work, but maybe they're not great. Like maybe one of them sticks a little bit every five or six flips. Maybe one's not strong enough to make the side ramp or something. Yeah. That level of like going in there as an operator, preemptively being a player in your own space and going, now got to rebuild this and prioritizing and taking the time to go through and do all those little things. That's not financially directly by coin drop. It's not financially motivating because you're going to get a couple extra quarters or whatever. Nobody's going to care. Right. Like the average person doesn't know. Yeah, they don't know. You could have a flipper dragging a little bit or sagging or whatever, and they're going to be like, oh, cool, but this thing pops up.