Hello everyone, it's Alan from the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. Just want to throw a quick disclaimer in front of this episode you're about to listen to. It's the first one where you get to hear both myself and Chris Rhodes on the same episode. Together we are Wedgehead. So I just wanted to get him in front of a mic so that you get the full Wedgehead experience when you listen to the official Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. We did this one live in our bar before we were open, but as I'm learning, that's a far from perfect sound environment. It's pretty noisy and echoey, and we were using kind of makeshift microphones. Combine that with I'm a total amateur and just teaching myself kind of how to record audio and edit it all in my spare time to get these episodes out to y'all, and we got the raw recordings were pretty rough and noisy. I spent a lot of time kind of editing them and really trying to make it listenable, and I think I salvaged it, so I'm still going to release this one to y'all. But if you hear some weird noises and stuff, you know why. We've had imperfections in our first episodes too, and y'all have been very kind, but this one might be, this one's definitely rougher than the first three episodes. But I hope y'all still enjoy it, that's why I'm still releasing it to you. And with that being said, we'll get Rhodesian on future episodes, but we'll get him in the studio, and we got a lot of cool stuff coming up and new episodes on the way. Please enjoy this episode, The Brief History of Wedgehead, with me and my business partner, Chris Rhodes. Hello, welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. I'm Alan, and I'm joined by the legendary Chris Ebenezer Rhodes. Yeah, I don't know about legendary. The other half of Wedgehead, the reason why we're all here. And by the way, I prefer to be called the Pinball Baron of St. John's. The Pinball Baron of St. John's, that North Portland kind of netherworld. Yeah, it's actually a self-proclaimed title, so it really doesn't mean anything in the court of law. But we're talking, we're getting roadsy on the pod. Together, we are Wedgehead, and we've been here five years. We just celebrated our fifth year anniversary. Ayo! Did you think we were going to make it that far? I mean, I thought we were going to make it this far and then quit, like was kind of the idea. That's how we're supposed to be done. That's not off the table. I want to talk about how you and I first met. Okay. You and I met, I was working at a bar. They had just put in-wall machines in. That's when I was just getting heavily into pinball. And they were like, oh, you want to meet the guy that operates these games? And it was, lo and behold, it was Chris Rhodes here, sort of a legendary man around town. What was in there at the time? It was like Nugent and- Oh, yeah. You brought in a Ted Nugent that- When they first opened, because I thought it would have been like, he wasn't quite as canceled as he is now. Yeah. And it was like, oh, Rockstar. This was kind of a Rockstar place. Ted Nugent. Yeah. They used to have rock and roll shows there. So I think you were thinking, oh, yeah. Well, rock and roll. Rock and roll bar. I mean, to be fair, the backlash of Ted Nugent- It still kicks in. It's a strong backlash. Yeah, that still kicks ass. Yeah, so I remember I was just sort of wet behind the ears, really excited about pinball. Now I'm just a jaded old man. You've done that to me. Yes. You really have a way of stomping out that fire of pinballing people. Oh, come on. I'm not happy. No, I think you're more of a pusher man, if anything. I think you're a pinball pusher man. I like to wear a lot of hats when it comes to, I like to be a cheerleader. I like to be a contrarian. I like to be just a straight up salesman too. So I mean, like, you know, I kind of wear a lot of hats. So it's fun to me. It's what keeps it interesting. And then you and I knew each other for a handful of years. You've been operating for, I don't know, what, 20 years? What would you say? I don't know. I can't put it in words. He doesn't keep track of these things, folks. So like pinning him down on these things, it's sort of like folklore. It's like tribal members tell each other about things that Chris Rhodes has done in the past. I mean, would you want to get into this? No, no. I just wanted to give a quick overview. But we shortly became, we were talking about you always wanted your own arcade. So you've run a route. You've run a route all around town and in all the suburbs. And you always wanted your own bar. Well, I was collecting games with the intent of opening up my own place. Oh, so that was always part of it. Yeah. You started your route was always. Well, I started the route because I knew people who had bars and I was like, I was collecting games in my garage and I was like, well, I need more games and there's not much more room in the garage. So I should probably earn some money on these. And they kind of grew organically. But the idea was always have games from every era and genre, you know, like and have like a be like a museum collection, you know, like so, you know, I'm definitely. my collection is not as thorough as like the real museums that are around but it was kind of like the chris rhodes museum of like what i like and what i think is good and what i felt was quality you know this kind of was my idea my collection i mean that's what everybody's collection yeah yeah i think you're i think you're unique among operators or at least operators that i've met in this town especially in the sense that you care about what makes money to a certain extent like everyone has to like if you're an operator you have to care if the games make money but your love of a game however like misplaced that may be will always trump it whether or not it makes money right like you have you and the reason why you and i became friends was i was super into pinball and you put games out on location that nobody else would like you would put old 70 solid states out you'd put ems out well i mean the idea that i've always had is if i have a location that has more like you know four or five machines or if it's more it all depends on the location too but i would always kind of try to mix it up a little like you're saying like i would put the oddballs out just because portland market is so deep where you could play those games anywhere on location and in portland it's like i want to give you something a little bit different and i always like i'm trying to give a little bit of a history lesson when i have like like if i have five games i'm definitely gonna have a game from 1980 like 80 or before yeah mixed in it like i i very rarely will have like five sterns lined up which i could do but i try not to i purposely mix it up yeah that's that's sort of the easy way to do it not the easy way operating them all by anybody is hard uh i don't want to downplay that it's just that what people do now is you can buy sterns because you can buy them brand new they're reliable they have themes that people recognize and like they earn well on location right yeah um and when you put in older games they're they're not going to get on average they're not going to get the same earnings in sometimes sometimes not though i mean right well there's i think that there's always room to kind of zig where other people zag and i think you've always done that and that's why you and i became good friends is that i would chase your games around town because that was the only place i could play a big game and i fell in love with that game and i just want to play it over and over yeah and now we have it on the floor And so you and I became friends And then at some point we started talking about opening up a business together since I have a background in food service and working in bars So I was going to handle that side of it And you had all the games and you know everyone around town So this space came up, which we're in. Yeah. And I want you to talk about how that discussion went and why you wanted this space in particular. Well, I didn't want this space in particular. it's the opportunity came up for an affordable place where we could have started a place with the budget that we had which was was no which was which was probably i would say 25 of what most people yeah spend on when they open up a bar or a restaurant yeah so and and the way that it came up was there was i i mean this is kind of a long story but uh just give me a try version i'm gonna to give you the bridge version yeah you don't need to get into the history of the previous yeah just talk about the space in general over the years in portland like so i had a location that was called the no and it moved into this building that we're in right now where wedgehead is and the no move from alberta to the hollywood district and when it did it didn't quite have the same management when it moved over it kind of ran for maybe about eight months and then the wheels came off the operation and as the wheels were coming off the operation the owner of it was like because the no I've always been like hey if you ever want to stop doing rock shows let's make it an arcade a pinball arcade because the amusements had always done well in there and it kind of always had like a little bit of a punk rock fucking vibe to it that I think lends to the pinball like look like kind of what a like a cultural experience to playing pinball instead of just like going and playing the games so the wheels came off and he's like hey I'm thinking about maybe making it a pinball arcade. You want to be part of this business. And he asked me that. And then I was out of town. And by the time I got back into town, the wheels were all the way off the business. And it was on the rails. And then I just offered to buy the business from him. Yeah. So there's more to the story, but we don't need to talk out of school about what happened with that business before us. But it was a legendary Portland bar. and it was sad that it went down. When this space became available- It wasn't sad that it went down, but it presented an opportunity for us. It presented an opportunity for us. And we're in a flat iron building on Sandy Boulevard in Portland. And for those that haven't been, it's basically like a big diagonal thoroughfare that cuts across the city's grid. And so we get this weird triangular shaped building, which is great for putting rectangular pinball machines in. It works out really well. But we decided, and do you remember what I said when you first showed me this space? Oh, yeah. You were not into it. I was not into it. Well, okay. So when we first moved in, the ceilings were all falling in. Yeah. All the windows were boarded up. It was carpet. There was carpet on one half of it and this crazy red tile on the other half. Yeah. The kitchen was a biohazard. Yeah. It was bad. it was really bad yeah where the bar was like it was it needed like a lot of cleaning like like i said that the ceilings were falling in like or about the ceilings that well i guess the ceiling the ceilings yeah the roof wasn't falling in but the ceilings were the roof was nice and new the ceilings below them had been rotted out yeah late plaster lathe and plaster and like chunks of it falling and stuff like when when when rodsey showed it to me i made a i think he could tell when he showed it to me, Rhodes is the optimist of the two of us. Would you say that's fair? Yeah, definitely. So Rhodes, he's an optimist. He's a dreamer. He's always like, ah, yeah, man, check it out. Like, just think about it, man. Like, it'll be cool. And I was like, oh, my God, this is going to be a lot of work. And so I went on it. Well, to be fair, I think a lot of work is what makes shit good. You know, like, that's why I'm a pinball operator. I mean, obviously, I've not showed it to you for that work. But, I mean, like, I just saw that it could be something that could be presentable. you know like by no means is it's like you know like a premier restaurant like well i mean you know like it's not like it's a fresh build or anything like that no yeah it's it's an old building it's been many many many things in its lifetime it's known as the sandy triangle people always think that no business will ever survive there uh because it does have its challenges we get a lot of traffic but there's no parking i've driven i've driven by there yeah people always We get that all the time. I mean, probably the amount of cars that this is one of the busiest intersections. And it's a huge intersection, but there's nowhere to park and there's nowhere to make turns. So people get confused and it has all these all these sorts of things. It's got this lore through the years and just in the level of decrepancy it was when we took over. But you and I spent the summer of 2018 sort of raising the barn. Like we basically went in here and dug everything up. we did all the work ourselves and with just the help of friends like we just had people show up we paid some people to help us yeah like we we we did plumbing and maybe i shouldn't admit to all of these things that we did because i don't know if they're all completely on board but uh they're all it's all safe but i think it really has lent itself to a very eclectic space and it feels it feels comfortable and worn in let's let's put it this way it was a rock and roll space and there was a stage we tore out the stage and there was a stage underneath the stage yeah that that kind of like describes like the the kind of sweat and tears we went through to make it happen i mean we peeled up carpet we ground the floors we peeled up tiling you know like we've you know put put up you know like uh sanitary board in the kitchen like we did all that crap ourselves like we didn't hire a crew to come in here to get that done no yeah it was it was our blood sweat and tears and the blood sweat and tears of our friends uh that would help us and some of them still work here too which is to the testament of you know like what makes a good place in my opinion you know yeah we're we're very fortunate that we have a great staff and yeah it's it it feels lived in wedgett feels lived in we're not one of those big corporate arcades that are popping up we it were we feel like if you ever come to wedget it'll feel different i mean that's the goal at least well i mean when we when we first opened like we were kind of trying to come up with a little bit of the identity and i one one day i was like you know like just thinking about analogies and i went to alan i was like okay so if wedget was a car what kind of car would it be you remember when i said that yeah yeah and you're just like what the fuck are you talking about it's like come on what kind It's like Corvette. This is true of Rhodes in general. Like Rhodes likes to speak in riddles sometimes. And I'm a very logistically driven person. And Rhodes, he's like, no, we got to think about what kind of car we are. But we ended up deciding that we're a work van. Yeah. Well, I mean, you were like kind of hemming and hawing and kind of like, what kind of fucking question is this? And I'm like, we're a fucking van. Yeah. We're a goddamn van is what we are. Yeah. And that then that true You can have a lot of fun in a van You can do a lot of work in a van A van is utilitarian and fits everybody Yeah So but I will say that in the middle of our opening we were open about a year and a half Right And we had to deal with COVID just like everyone else did And that struck at a bad time for us and a bad time for everyone We weren entirely sure that was we were just getting our wheels about us like starting to get really steady numbers and you know like established not as like oh they in the cursed building you know are they still the same owners like all that kind of stuff like all that it started finally falling off of us and to the wayside and then kind of covid hit which was you know like i don't know at first at first it was like mopey time yeah we got real mopey it was a bad times but uh we we had to be closed for about eight months um we had to go back and forth with the city on how open uh multnomah county where we are was and we had to do we kind of have people inside we had to do to go uh and then they would let us have 25 capacity so we we relied on on for like t-shirt sales and to-go orders yes yes and you would rent games out for the home market yes and i was right that's when i started renting out games after probably like two or three weeks of the pandemic i had locations that shut down and never opened again so i've had a problem of warehousing all my games first of all yeah you had to have all of them in one spot yeah so so my warehouse space was like whoa dude like it was an occupancy so a lot of the games came here to wedgehead and kind of sat in every corner of wedgehead and then i started like i need to figure out something to do with these games to make some money and i started renting them out and uh which was proven to be something that i still do to this day yeah that's that's that's a good that's a good opportunity to make some some extra money uh and and luckily some people had some cash that yeah i mean everybody was at home they had just fundable income they were like bring the game so i kind of worked all the way through covid like renting out games but then you know like we kind of found out that you could be open and you just had to be socially distanced like so yeah so we we came up with a strategy that we called the pod strategy yeah um and that's where we sectioned off because we were only allowed to have 25 occupancy and we had to spread people out so we took our entire space and basically built walled off sections that we called individual pods and the pods had anywhere from one pinball machine to five five and then you would have a table and some chairs in there. We set up a whole online reservation system. Yeah. Whereas you would, you know, like, oh, I want to go to Wedgehead and be socially distant and this is what's available. And you would type in what you wanted. We would line up the nights, kind of bring them in. Yeah, we had to do a turnover and we had these big sterilization fogging guns that they were using on the airlines. And so we'd sanitize each one in between every guest. Yeah. And we also had a system where there was like a doorbell system where you would write down what you wanted on a little clipboard and then you would press a button. And then at the bar, it would tell you what pod it was. Yes. It was like a service call. And then we would go. So that way we would limit our staff interaction with the guest. So the guest was really only and everyone was wearing masks and all that kind of stuff. this the height of the pandemic but we did that for almost a year yeah i mean most of the country didn't have to deal with this shit portland at least the way we did portland is super conservative in the way that they deal with every super left wing yes but took the pandemic very seriously yes so we had to deal with and we had to and and even in the pods we had it open and then they closed us down for a month as numbers spiked and then we could open back up and we had to go back and forth a few times but we had a very unique like i think it's indicative of like ourselves like you and me both as far as like we've we struggled when we opened and we and because we don't have a lot of money in the bank you and i had to be creative with how we built the space out yeah and how we operate the space in general and then when the pandemic hit there was a lot of places that struggled because i don't think that they had struggled in a while yeah they were used to doing well and they didn't know how to like well you know they had people to you know bring their towels and their mats and you know like the ice machines like they read everything out you know like and it's i mean that's why margins on restaurants and bars is always pretty tight but you know we knew what it was like to have nothing and we yeah we really operated on nothing for a year and a half trying to build up yeah the first year and a half was so rough anyway for us that like we're like oh this is this is just another hoop another thing that we got to figure out and i think you and i weren't afraid to change the model which i think saved the business no yeah i mean like and you know like we're not like a we don't have like accountants on staff and stuff like that we we run a super like being small is beneficial you know with that for that reason you know and we didn't really even get any coveted money like we got some money from the city to reimburse our landlord, which didn't, I mean, I guess that helped our bottom line, but it was sure. I mean, it was good for him. Yeah. But then, but then we're coming out of the pandemic or the serious measures of the pandemic. And we have, we were at a crossroads because the pods, the, basically the goal was if you showed up, you would have a minimum in each pod. So if you were there for an hour or either for two hours, you'd have a minimum. As long as you spent that in food and drink, the machines were on free play. So you basically had your own private room. You could play those machines while you had your time. So we had sort of transitioned into this free play model. So we wouldn't have to handle cash or quarters or any of that weirdness during the pandemic. And then when we were coming out of it, I was pushing for a free play model. And I was firmly against it. Rhodes is firmly against it, which I think is something that we'll talk about in future podcasts more about the different price models or how, whether you use tokens or use cards or like we do, we're free play. and but you know roti's old school he's he romanticizes the coin play and the coin drop and putting a couple chords into games so you were you were pretty against the free play model i was and then we started doing it and then i was not and then yeah and you were not in maybe in a future episode we'll talk more about the economics of pinball and i'd love to to help people understand it it's basically you make more money it's easier and that that's a lot of labor involved in coins like you need an atm then then they're taking 20s to the bartenders to turn into fives and ones and they're taking those fives and ones they're going to a coin machine and then and any of those points can have failure points you can run out of small bills you can run out of stuff in your atm you can run out of coins and then each game jams up and like that's just a total pain in the ass and i i would spend so much of my time just dealing with coins and it used to just really upset me like yeah because it's i i think it's like it's it's very necessary when you're on a route and an operator has games in somebody else's location i think when we became an arcade where we have you know our 23 pinball machines and we want to maintain them to the best of our abilities it became a liability to do it on coins because you can get players in here that would just kind of loiter and not really spend any money. I think that, you know, Wedgehead really turned a corner once we did go to Freeplay. Oh, yeah. I really think it changed this business. The clientele changed a lot, but it also just fostered more people to get in. Like, their foot in the door. Like, new people were playing pinball. New people were trying it because they weren't getting, they weren't showing up and just getting. Well people were like I got to put 75 cents into a game that I suck at Like they don want to do it You know like so like if you pay your price to get in and then it like oh my god i i free to just go try whatever i want it's like oh i hate that game i never want to play that game and then you're like well i paid my 12 you know i paid my money to get in let's go play it you know like and then they're like oh shit that was really fun you know like you get to find out a lot you know like it's fun to explore i Yeah, it's been a great shift for us. It allows us to, it saves us labor and it changes the customer experience. Now, some people would say they hate the new experience. The people who are playing pinball here now are generally happy. Oh, yeah. Whereas when it was like, you know, you're putting your quarter in, people are like shaking the games and like, that's bullshit. You know, like they would get upset at the game. we used to get a lot of like, Rhodes, he has a reputation around town, which I have inherited, uh, because we're, I'm sort of a Chris Rhodes disciple in the way we set up games where it's like, uh, I remember when I first met you and you had a game at bump and I was like, Oh my God, this game's so hard. You know, I was a new player. I wasn't very good. And, and, and you, you had come and you just tuned the game up and tighten the slingshots up and rebuilt the flippers. And it was like, it was really mean. And I remember we were playing and I was like, it's too it's too mean you're you're like i was doing that classic like new player crying like a little baby about playing a hard game and you we were playing a two-player game i plunge you know i lose my ball and then you plunge it goes right into a slate goes around an orbit hits a sling firecrackers back and forth and then slam drains down the side and i was i was about to be like John Youssi and then you just turn around with a big smile on your face you're like man i can't even see the ball it's awesome yeah right like and uh and that that's sort of what uh changed our kind of outlook on that that's that's the big difference with with chris and just the way he set stuff up well i gotta say that my kind of philosophy that i've always kind of run at pinball routes is to kind of try to display the games as they were made and tune them up the best you can like I don't want to put a bunch of colored lights I don't want to put a bunch of like mods and all that kind of crap into games like I believe that the games were right when they came out I don't need an alternative trans light I don't need a topper I don't need any of that crap I want the game to be like it came out and I mean like there's certain things like LEDs like LEDs definitely are better for a game like it's because they don't get all that heat yeah the heat right and and it's just better for the game and they're brighter and they're brighter yeah and but i will only put in warm white l white leds that's a big some games i'll maybe put in cool white i mean there's very rarely i break the exception but i like to have shit the way it is the way that it plays good and i want it to be i kind of the way my i learned how to set up games was by going to the in pittsburgh going to papa and playing at the professional and you're playing pinball it's back games yeah and it was like they set up all their games super hard but it was fair you know like it wasn't so hard that you couldn't play them and it's like you know like basically we're all playing the game with you know a cup and a string and a ball and you're trying to catch them i mean and it's just like it's all the same you know like which i think is like the last topic we'll talk about which is basically like what we are and why we're different is like the setup which I will get into deeper in a different episode that I want to talk about because setup of a pinball machine is very personal people like different things there's different compounds for just things like your rubbers and then there's incandescence versus LEDs there's colored LEDs there's all sorts of things that can change the way a pinball machine plays but I will say that what makes us unique as a as a pinball destination as a pinball spot is one i think our building's very unique the way that we built it out is unique but the way we set up our games is very of a certain style they're all steep they're all they all play fast we like to use real rubber we like warm white leds and really no mods yeah i mean and you know like it's not all about getting all the leds and tight tight tilts tight tilt i mean tight tilts and and tight slings really yeah like i mean like like getting a bunch of le's in the building just because they're le's is like they don't play better so and that's the biggest thing too is like we always have a it's very important that we have a mix of games so you know we will always have an em or a couple on the floor we will always have solid states we will have games from from the late 80s to the 90s to the 2000 you know like up until modern games and that's important to us that we don't end up with a with a bunch of sterns a bunch of sterns like but there's nothing wrong with that i mean not that there's anything wrong with that but it's just not our style no it's there's good games from every era and we want to make sure that we're setting up a place that's that's a place where you can play games from all the different eras so that i mean that's that's what i think is is the big difference and i mean that's what we we we it's definitely curated i mean whenever we bring a game in it's like okay this game comes in so that means that that game that type of game has to come out. Or, you know, like it's always like we try to match the vibes. Like we try to keep a mix of different types of games because we care about having different types of games. Yes. And sometimes the easiest thing in the world is to bring in a new stern that we know is very reliable that we could do. And sometimes we're bringing in games that have been stored that we got to go through and repair and diagnose and do all that kind of extra work to, even though we hate that game no no no my man pinball magic uh pinball magic it's it's fun it's okay the pinball magic's been uh a little bit of a bastard lately but um i mean i'd rather i'd rather do that than just have a mandalorian there or whatever like and not again not that there's anything wrong with that i just don't i i mean those i want to play different games i want people to come here and play different games that's what i think makes us unique we're gluttons for punishment. That's the biggest thing. I mean, we operate pinball machines. I mean, it doesn't get much worse than that. It's dumb. It's definitely dumb. But I think we're going to... I think we covered the history of Wedgehead pretty well. How you and I met. Who you are. You're the legendary Chris Rhodes. I don't know about that, but yeah. But yeah, we talked a little about Wedgehead and how we built this place out. And thanks for joining me on the show, on the official Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. We'll get you on again And yeah, man, I think these episodes one and two have been out and I've listened to, you know, a lot of it so far. It's good shit, man. Good. Well, these are going to be these are going to be the highest rated episodes ever, I bet. Yeah. Well, I'm glad to. Everyone's going to love to hear Chris Rhodes. Sure. Just just I'll just remember I'll call you by the wrong name. Yeah. He does that. He's got a little Ron Swanson in him. But yeah, we'll end it here. thanks for joining me once again for everyone else out there who's listening thanks for listening to the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast just to implore you that wherever you are go out play some pinball go play some pinball on location support a local business we rely just like everyone else does on people showing up and playing these games the people that work at your local arcades or bars they all put in a lot of hard work to make sure you have these games to play and they're a lot of fun so go out there and play them. Until next time, good luck, don't suck.