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Krystle Gemnich - Episode 45

JBS Show·podcast_episode·45m 30s·analyzed·Nov 15, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Jersey Jack's Crystal Gemnich recounts her path from Chicago player to production liaison, emphasizing community mentorship.

Summary

Crystal Gemnich, a production development liaison at Jersey Jack Pinball, discusses her journey from reluctant pinball newcomer to industry professional. She shares her origin story—starting as a breakup hobby in Chicago's pinball league—and traces her career path through Logan Arcade, Marco Specialties, and ultimately to JJP. The podcast also features host Jamie Burchell discussing the Wormhole Pinball museum in Houston, a 501c3 with 250+ machines that prioritizes community inclusion and safe play spaces.

Key Claims

  • Crystal worked at Logan Arcade from 2016 to 2019 as a junior apprentice/technician

    high confidence · Crystal Gemnich, describing her career timeline

  • Crystal moved to work for Marco Specialties in Columbia, South Carolina in 2019 in customer service

    high confidence · Crystal Gemnich, career progression narrative

  • Crystal currently works as a Production Development Liaison at Jersey Jack Pinball, involved in prototyping, production translation, training, and quality control

    high confidence · Crystal Gemnich, describing current role at JJP

  • The Wormhole in Houston started in October 2020 as a quarantine project with 8 people and ~25 rotating machines from Tim's warehouse of ~140 games

    high confidence · Jamie Burchell, describing Wormhole origin

  • The Wormhole is now a 501c3 museum with 250+ pinball machines and runs three tournaments per month

    high confidence · Jamie Burchell, discussing current Wormhole operations

  • Chicago Pinball City League was started by a mutual friend of Crystal's after her breakup, which led to her deeper involvement in pinball

    high confidence · Crystal Gemnich, origin story

Notable Quotes

  • “I hate that a man is the reason that I started playing pinball, but really... me and my partner split up. And, you know, as it goes in a bad breakup, you know, you find things that help you cope and that make you feel better.”

    Crystal Gemnich @ early in interview — Defines Crystal's entry point into pinball as cathartic post-breakup hobby

  • “I'm in a weird timeline that I, it's like that imposter syndrome that's like, I'm trying to get over where I'm like, how, how am I in this timeline? How did this happen?”

    Crystal Gemnich @ mid-interview — Reflects on her unexpected career trajectory from casual player to JJP production liaison

  • “I joke around like I'm going to go back to 2013 and tell me like 30 year old me like, guess what? Ten years. Keep working hard.”

    Crystal Gemnich @ mid-interview — Emphasizes the unlikely 10-year journey from casual player to industry professional

  • “We started in COVID, too. We were going to be a pinball bar. We couldn't get a liquor license because we only have seven parking spots.”

    Jamie Burchell @ mid-interview — Explains Wormhole's unexpected pivot to museum model due to zoning constraints

  • “What we try to do is just give everyone a safe place to play pinball... If you have that safe place for anyone to come and play pinball, I think they'll get addicted to it.”

    Jamie Burchell @ later interview segment — Core philosophy driving Wormhole's community inclusion strategy

  • “So Avatar just came out right, really excited to work on this game excited to work with Mark because it was his first game... the element of surprise is taken away from from me and my experience of having pins for leap.”

    Crystal Gemnich @ final question segment — Reveals tension of NDA restrictions at JJP—losing the fresh discovery experience of new releases

Entities

Crystal GemnichpersonJamie BurchellpersonJersey Jack PinballcompanyWormhole PinballorganizationMarco SpecialtiescompanyLogan ArcadevenueCale Hernandezperson

Signals

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Crystal Gemnich's vertical career progression from apprentice technician (Logan 2016-19) → customer service (Marco 2019-21) → production development liaison (Jersey Jack 2021-present) demonstrates clear technical skill development and manufacturing interest

    high · Crystal's detailed account of moving from Logan to Marco to JJP, with each role building on previous experience

  • ?

    community_signal: Strong emphasis on peer mentorship and education in pinball community—Jim Zespi taking on apprentices, Gina Lowe coaching newcomers, Logan's educational series, Wormhole's safe-space philosophy

    high · Multiple anecdotes (Gina Lowe coaching Jamie on Attack from Mars, Stern employee teaching Taxi rules, Jim Zespi recognizing Crystal's interest)

  • ?

    venue_signal: Wormhole Pinball represents emerging 501c3 nonprofit museum model for pinball; started as COVID quarantine project, evolved into tournament venue (3/month) and streaming platform with 250+ machines

    high · Jamie Burchill's detailed account of Wormhole's October 2020 origin through current operations; 501c3 nonprofit status; tournament and streaming infrastructure

  • ?

    operational_signal: Wormhole constructed specialized infrastructure ('the vault') with dedicated tech bathroom and restoration workspace for rare/European imports, indicating serious commitment to machine preservation and exhibition

    high · Jamie Burchill describing the vault with dedicated bathroom for techs, curated collection of European machines (Vern's World, etc.), Brian's growing restoration team

  • $

    market_signal: Wormhole pursuing rare machines from international sources (Europe, Australia, Italy, Spain); attempted acquisition of David Hankin's How's That cricket game at Expo Free Play room

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.137

0:00
Hello, my name is Jamie Burchill, and you are listening to and or watching our podcast called Wormhole Pinball Presents.
0:10
Today, I'm very, very excited to be joined by two great individuals. Today, I'm really excited to be joined by a very special guest. And today, I'm very excited to be joined by two awesome guests all the way from Arizona. Hello and welcome to our podcast we call Wormhole Pinball Presents, a series we started to highlight those in pinball and arcades. And for episode 45, I'm so happy to speak to someone I met very briefly on the floor in Chicago at the Expo, but also at the Women in Pinball Seminar at Expo where she was one of the speakers. Please welcome to the podcast Crystal Gennick of Jersey Jack Pinball. Welcome to the Wormhole Virtually, Crystal. Hi, thank you for having me. Oh, my God. First of all, great job on that seminar. Oh, thanks. That was one of my highlights of Expo. It really was. I was sitting next to, shout out to Kale Hernandez, electric pap. And, of course, his wife, Rachel, was on the panel with you as well. Yep. And you were telling your origin story of how you got into pinball. I leaned over, whispered to Kaylin, said, I have to have her tell this story on the podcast. Ah, thanks. And so when I saw you on the floor, I was like, that's a done deal. I got to get her on the podcast. This has to happen. Yeah, yeah, thanks. Yeah, it's great because Kaylin and Rachel and I go way back because we worked together at Marco's Specialties back in the day. Bree and then during COVID times. I've had them on many, many times. They're awesome. They're so great. Oh, my God. I hung out with them most of the expo, the poor guys. I was their third wheel.
1:54
They're troopers. They go to so many shows, and they're just so enthusiastic about the hobby, and they're just, yeah, they're great. Well, can you retell the story of how you started playing? Let's start there, right? Yeah. How did you start playing pinball? How did you get the bug? So I was in a long-term relationship with somebody. I hate that a man is the reason that I started playing pinball, but really.
Rachel
person
Emotoperson
Jim Zespiperson
Jack Dangerperson
Nick Campbellperson
Timperson
Brianperson
Gina Loweperson
Chicago Pinball City Leagueorganization
Mark Ritchieperson
Avatargame
Atomic Pinballvenue
Bells and Chimes Houstonorganization
Midwest Gaming Classic (MGC)event
Pinball Expoevent
Attack from Marsgame
Taxigame

high · Jamie and Crystal discussing Australian games (How's That/Dennis Lindsay cricket game), Vern's World (Bell Games), Italian/Spanish games, European imports in vault

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball Expo featured dedicated Free Play room with rare/international games (Australian David Hankin designs, vintage titles like Taxi); indicates growing curatorial emphasis on game discovery and preservation

    medium · Discussion of Free Play room with Australian games, Taxi, Earthshaker, Howzit; Jamie wishing he'd spent more time there

  • ?

    community_signal: Women in Pinball Seminar at Expo featured Crystal Gemnich and Rachel Hernandez as speakers; Backbox Pinball Podcast focused on women in pinball (per KB); indicates growing visibility and formalization of women's participation

    medium · Crystal and Rachel panelists at Women in Pinball Seminar; Jamie specifically noting this inspired podcast appearance

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Emphasis on making pinball accessible through progressive rules education—starting with simple objectives, building to complex rule sets; contrasts with intimidation factor of overwhelming light displays and complex rules

    high · Stern employee teaching Crystal Taxi rules incrementally; Logan's educational series; Wormhole's planned beginner-friendly pricing ($5 entry over 10k score vs $20); safe space philosophy

  • ?

    industry_signal: JJP's NDA restrictions create unintended consequence: employees unable to experience games fresh upon release; Crystal loses anticipation/surprise factor despite being deeply involved in creation

    high · Crystal's final answer about Avatar release—NDA prevents her from experiencing game's unveiling as typical player would

  • ?

    content_signal: Jamie Burchill transitioned from soccer podcasts to pinball content; Wormhole Pinball Presents podcast launched to highlight rare machines and community figures; streaming strategy inspired by Jack Danger's early livestreams

    high · Jamie's background in soccer podcasts; deliberate decision to podcast/stream rare machines (Cosmic Princess, Future Queen, Warlock, Who's Tommy); Jack Danger cited as inspiration

  • ?

    venue_signal: Downtown power outage event drove surge in Wormhole attendance and tournament requests, illustrating demand for reliable pinball venues and community organizing gaps in Houston arcade scene

    medium · Jamie describing league night downtown power outage redirecting players to Wormhole, leading to growth and multiple tournaments monthly

    • 2:23
    So he and then a good mutual friend of ours had been going out and playing pinball at a local bar right near where me and my partner had lived. And there was like an old Spider-Man, I think was what it was. and they were playing it all the time, like Friday night, Saturday night. And then I kind of would come along just as like the reluctant girlfriend, like, all right, I guess I'll go and play pinball with you guys. It's fine. I don't get it, but, you know, I'll try and be enthusiastic about it. And kind of started playing, getting a little bit better at it, a little used to it, and then me and my partner split up.
    3:01
    And, you know, as it goes in a bad breakup, you know, you find things that help you cope and that make you feel better and that, you know, you can engage with and, you know, you want to join a new hobby maybe. And it just so happened that that friend of ours who we had been going out to play with started the city league, the Chicago pinball city league. And so I ended up joining that league after the breakup and just started getting into it, going out and playing pinball and like going to all of these different locations to play and and um meeting a whole bunch of great people um and then it just kind of took off from there it was um it um it grew into something entirely uh I had no idea I was even gonna do this as a career like it was kind of one of those things where I was like oh it would be kind of cool to work on those games like yeah so one day you just all of a sudden go to Logan's and say, hey, I want to start working on machines? It wasn't necessarily all of a sudden. I had gone to a few places with some friends. We took some trips to St. Louis to see CP Pinball, which now I think is called Atomic Pinball or something else.
    4:17
    And it was like, we walked into the... CP, I'm not sure what it's called now, I'm sorry. At the time was a couple of big like there were like storage facilities I'm not really sure what they were but they were in the middle of a parking lot across from like an oil refinery in the middle of just like outskirts of St. Louis and it had been the first time that I had seen um solid state pinballs from the 80s and the 90s and a bunch of ems like old got leaves these things that I had never seen before I had no idea they even existed and it was like oh my gosh look at this like look at the way that these are built look at how like interesting they are and and that that kind of grew my uh my interest in it a lot more and I wanted to know more about what was inside and like how they were built and um and then going to Logan Arcade of course which at the time was a record store um it was like a speakeasy so it's like you go into the record store you buy a record and then you go in the back and you you could play pinball for free essentially you just had to buy like a piece of gum or something um and uh their head tech whose name was james he was always he was always there he was always working on pins and i saw him and i saw the underside of of these games and i was like i need to know how these work like it just deeper diving deeper and deeper into it um and and then i i think jim zespi you know i mean i think he recognized me as a regular and he knew that I was interested and I you know um I wanted to know how it worked and I was encouraged by a lot of other people like Jack Danger and his friend Nick Campbell to to like try like to find a way to get there and and sure enough he needed some help one holiday uh like cleaning up pins and and chopping them out because they were I think they were understaffed or something and then he's like yeah why don't you come in for a week help us clean them up. And then after that week, it was like, yeah, stay on. So I essentially became an apprentice, like a junior apprentice is kind of what I called myself.
    6:27
    And how long were you there? I was working at Logan, I think from 2016 to 2019. In 2019, I got the job with Marco and I moved down south to Columbia and I started working for Marco Specialties, customer service.
    6:44
    which was also an entirely other aspect of my education as far as pinball repair, because it's like I was learning about the parts a little bit more in detail. Okay. Does Marco have, before we talk about them, do they have the secret sauce of hiring some of the nicest people on the planet? I've gotten to know so many of their boys, from Emoto to Rachel and Kale to Matthew, Tally. These are the nicest people on the planet. They really are. Like it's, I don't know how, I don't know how they do it. It's like a little, it's like a little garden of just like, like finding wonderful people to work and, and, um, be enthusiastic. And, and, um, yeah, it's, I get a little bit like sentimental about it. Cause it's like, I, I don't know if it really was a great place to work. And, and, um, not only that, but like, you just get to meet so many people going to all those shows. Like it's, it's really cool networking. yeah just the nicest people so you go down to south carolina so you're a canadian who lives in chicago that goes to south carolina that's just that's a tough one isn't it i've been all over the place i've been all over the place too so i relate to that right when people haven't been all over the place they they're a little spoiled to be honest with you because my dad transferred a lot and yeah that transferred right that's how you got there yep yeah so my dad we went from long island new york to florida which is like crazy wow totally weird when i was 16 yeah and uh then college in florida then met a girl from chicago good girl from chicago married her up and brought her to Houston and that's how I got here so you know what do you tell people when they ask you where you're from because that's like that's like the hardest question because like I'm very much like I'm just gonna tell you my life story right now because I don't know how to explain where I'm from like I guess I'm a big Westerner at heart but like I don't know I uh I tell people I identify as a New Yorker and I'm not trying to be a wise ass about it it's just those are my formative years I still have a slight accent, and I still love the New York Yankees. So that's kind of how I identify as. I'm sorry for your loss. Oh, my God, that hurt feelings.
    9:17
    I went on a baseball sabbatical, wouldn't even look at the news for a week, wouldn't accept texts from people. because I watch 150 something games a year. Like I'm vested. This isn't a joke for Jamie. I'm a big New York Yankee fan. So it hurt feelings. But so I used to go to South Carolina when I was 12 years old. We went to Litchfield, which is South Myrtle Beach, right? Yeah. And that was a culture shock for me because I had never seen the South. I was 12 years old. I had never seen the South. I had never seen South Carolina, which is really South. Yeah. So, I mean, talk about that culture shock. You go down there. The nicest people, it's just a lot different, right? It is very different. Well, especially when you live, you know, you're used to living in a city. Because, I mean, before I moved down there, I was living in Chicago. I was, you know, in one of the kind of the, you know, I guess you could call it a borough. I'm not really sure, but, um, you know, like that's, and I'm, again, I'm a Midwesterner, I'm a Canadian and, um, to, to go down there and to have an entirely different climate, a totally different culture, a different side of the map politically, I guess, however you want to put it. Like it was very, um, it was educational. Yeah.
    10:52
    Um, and, and it's beautiful that it's beautiful down there. I mean, the country, one of the really great things about living down there is the chance to go. First of all, I got to have a car, so I got to travel kind of at will a little bit more than just living in Chicago, riding my bike everywhere.
    11:09
    So I go to Tennessee, I go to Atlanta, you know, to the coast. We go to the beach all the time like just really beautiful beautiful country And like yeah it hot and it humid and if you don have the fortitude to be able to handle that heat like it can be tough I didn mind it too much You know like it was it was a nice place to visit
    11:34
    Right. I definitely wouldn't really want to live there long term. And I think that was ultimately one of the other reasons why I left. You know, I kind of I was there for about two years and luckily, you know, I managed to get through COVID while I was down there and did OK and came back here. And not the pinball down there is also really interesting because in Chicago, you're used to so many barcades. And, you know, sometimes I go out to the suburbs to travel to people's private homes to play pinball and like tournaments and stuff. and a lot of the tournaments out there were in people's private residences like like people who have farms who would have like an entire barn just full of pinball machines and pretty cool though yeah it was it was interesting again like like a pinball community that's the same but different like it's the same core feeling but it's a it's just an it has a different face right yeah that's what I love now about since we started the podcast and since we started kind of being social, the wormhole is when we travel to other cities to play in their league or to play in one of their tournaments. I try to do that almost all the time. Yeah. You know, some people recognize me, whatever. I don't care about that. I'm just coming to check you guys out and play in their tournaments because more often than not, the pinball communities are really awesome. They are. Yeah. It's kind of overwhelming sometimes. It is, right? It is. It's so funny. That's another reason why I really appreciate Expo and MGC. So you said that this last Expo was your first Expo, right? Yeah, it was. It was my first. Do you like it? I really had a great time. I wish we had our shit together because we didn't know what we were doing, Crystal. like we just didn't we got the tickets late that there was a hotel rooms open late like we did everything wrong so next time we go we're just gonna do it better right on yeah you should come for you should come for mgc in april because that's a really fun show too um there's less pinball but um it's uh it's a really fun arcade show and it's like uh one of the best midwestern arcade shows. Where is the Midwest Gaming Classic? Where is it? Milwaukee. Okay. So I've been asked to come up there too. I know Rachel does a lot of work with that and I would love to. I'd love to stream with them. I'd love to just go up there and be a commentator because I love doing that so much. It's so fun. Yeah.
    14:19
    My rules knowledge is not great. It used to be a little bit better when I was playing more competitively. but I think I've kind of fallen off on, on like tournament, tournament stuff a little bit. Now I just, I'm like, I just build them. Yeah, you do. So how does that opportunity come about? That's a good segue, right? How did that come about? So, so it's kind of wild because I was, you know, I said I was starting to feel like, okay, it might be time for me to leave South Carolina. I think that my time with Marco is probably kind of winding down a little bit. And so I updated my resume and a buddy of mine said, oh, hey, Jersey Jack has a listing for customer service. They need representatives or a manager or something. And he says, why don't you just take that opportunity to, you know, complete your resume and then just submit it. See what happens. No pressure. Just a minute. See what happens. And so I did. And they called me for an interview. and I had my first interview and then I think I waited a little bit. I think it might have been a couple of weeks before they got back to me. I don't really remember.
    15:31
    And they said, actually, we might be interested in having you somewhere else. We might put you in a different role because we think that you might be better suited to that rather than customer service. And I was like, yeah, okay, please. I would like to get away from customer service if possible. Um, and then, and then from there, we, we, I think I had two more interviews and then, um, I was, I was asked to come and work for them. And, um, I essentially started off working, uh, working production, um, and getting my feet wet in the production environment because I didn't have, uh, I didn't, I hadn't had that experience yet. So, um, and then I kind of grew into my role of what I do now. which is can you talk about that are you allowed to talk about your exact role I can talk about my role a little bit yeah so I my my official role is I'm a production development liaison and what that means is I work in the prototyping phase with the engineers I learn how to build up the new games that are coming out and I translate that to the production line so i i help train the team i uh teach the managers i provide quality instructions so if there's anything that you really have to look out for you know um stuff like that and then i also work with the engineers and say hey like this might not work great for production can we change it um which is pretty cool yeah it's uh and it's great i don't know i learned something i learned something new every day and i get to build pinball every day and that's like it's the best is it just Does the dream come true really right now? I constantly am like, I'm in a weird timeline that I, it's like that imposter syndrome that's like, I'm trying to get over where I'm like, how, how am I in this timeline? How did this happen? Because back when I was going, I was going to Jack Danger's studio a lot and playing pinball with him and his buddies and he would live stream, you know, early days. And like, I would just dream about it. Like he and I would talk about that. Like, Oh yeah. Like working in the factory. Imagine that. Imagine if you could like build games every single day or test games every single day. And just being a the idea of being a tester was like top tier for me. So the fact that I've like gone like higher and above is really like I joke around like I'm going to go back to 2013 and tell me like 30 year old me like, guess what? Ten years. Keep working hard. You know, like it is crazy where life takes you. And it's a journey and you just jump on board and see where it's just unbelievable. I'm having the time of my life on this podcast I'm having the time of my life at Wormhole Pinball and who thought when I moved to Houston that this would even be possible that I would even know what a pinball machine is it's just crazy now there are these strange boxes that live in our homes and that we work on and that we sell and it's like the most strange niche hobby it's just like a kinetic enterprise and the fact that we make money off of it is kind of a miracle. I'm going to be 100% honest with you. Well, one of us does. What? Are you guys open again? No, we are. We are. I'm joking. I don't make money on a podcast, but on the wormhole itself, we're a 501c3, so we're a charitable museum.
    18:53
    To tell you our story real quick. We started in COVID, too. We were going to be a pinball bar. We couldn't get a liquor license because we only have seven parking spots. And that's just the city, right? So we were like, the owner of the building, Tim and Christine, they were like, you know,
    19:15
    our renter who left, our taxes are really tiny here. It's not that bad. Why don't we just move in some pinball machines and we'll all just quarantine here? And we were like, yeah, that sounds fun. And that was October of 2020. and then word got around Houston during COVID that these idiots are at a place that they call the wormhole and they're playing pinball all through COVID. Like that's all they're doing.
    19:46
    And it kind of got out, but we wouldn't let anybody come in and we were calling it Parts Unknown Houston because we didn't want to get COVID.
    19:56
    And so we're all quarantined together like me, John, and Tim and everyone. And we were just, eight of us, we're not screwing this up because we had the best time. And Tim had, like, at the time, I think he had about 140 games in a warehouse. So he would rotate about 25 in here. And then all of a sudden, you know, COVID lifted and we're like, well, we got to let some people in here. And there was a league night downtown and the power went out downtown.
    20:27
    And everyone was so bummed they wanted to play pinball. and we all went, come to the wormhole. We're about 10 minutes away. And we brought everybody in, and that's, I guess, the rest is history because then we just, people just wanted tournaments here. We grew. We have three tournaments a month here. And then we started streaming during COVID because we were, like, watching Jack Danger. We're like, well, we've got some really rare machines in this joint. I think people want to see them, right? Yeah. Like Cosmic Princess or we got a future queen over there, Warlock. We just streamed The Who's Tommy last night.
    21:07
    And so we were like, let's just do this. And so Jack was a total inspiration to us. And I used to be on soccer podcasts. So I was just like, they were like, Jamie, you have to do a podcast. You have to do this. You have to do that. And so it's really kind of exploding around us. And now we're a 501c3. We have multiple buildings that we're going to. We have 250 machines.
    21:34
    Some, Zachary, is so rare that no one's ever seen. That's incredible. It's incredible the growth that we've had in the last three years, and I'm just riding it. I'm just like, are you kidding me? I get to be the face of this? Are you joking?
    21:51
    I should be paying you. I mean, this is the best thing in the world. I'm having the time of my life, Crystal. So it's just the smile is ear to ear. That's so fantastic.
    22:02
    Go ahead. So do you guys kind of crowdsource your tech help, or do you do it together? Do you have, like, one dedicated tech that works on all the machines? Like you said, there's one person who owns most of them. I imagine he's pretty savvy with technical. No, the person that owns all the machines, Tim, is, like, as bad as being a tech as I am. All right, we know how to clean machines. And we have a tech that started during COVID helping us and started geeking on these machines. His name is Brian. I won't out him, totally. And we had a Zachary I don remember which game it was that started geeking him out So we have this vault We call it the vault It's a warehouse, right, full of pinball machines. Yeah. And we've constructed this to the nines for them. They have their own bathroom, their own tech bathroom. Everything that they can think of will be in this vault. and we just want them to fix these machines because they're coming in from europe they're coming in from all over the world uh and they're geeking and brian has now amassed a team that is geeking on fixing all these really really rare ones and we can't wait to showcase them wow huh that's pretty remarkable yeah we just got a verne's world um which is a uh i don't remember who makes it. It might be Bell Games. I'm telling you, some of these are really awesome.
    23:42
    Like Vern's World, like Escape from the Journey, Center of the Earth, or some of those books that he had. Yeah, yeah. There's a pinball machine called Vern's World. And it's almost done. We're ready. That might be coming soon, I hope. Wow, cool. It's got a volcano in the middle. It's got all this crap. Some of these Italian and Spanish games are just amazing.
    24:09
    Did you see the Australian games in the free play room at Expo? Yeah. We tried to buy one of them. We wanted, what was it? I wanted Dennis, the cricket one. Yes.
    24:24
    Was that, what are they called? Haiku, what were they called? Oh, shoot. Oh, someone's going to kill me for this. Hankin.
    24:33
    Hankins, yeah. Okay, so we were playing dollar games, me, Rachel, John from the Wormhole, and Kale on that Hank and Dennis Lindsay or Lipsy, whatever his name is, the cricket player. How's that? The game was called How's That? Yeah.
    24:50
    That's strange. It was great. I loved it. I was in that room a lot. Were you in that room a lot, that free play room? I didn't spend a lot of time in that room. I kind of wish that I had. But again, like a lot of the times when I go to these shows, I don't end up playing a whole lot of pinball. I like I just end up talking like like talking and talking and talking to so many people and like kind of hovering and like looking at games and like not a lot of playing. I played I played Howzit for like maybe one or two games.
    25:21
    I didn't. I wish I had, especially because there was a taxi in that room and taxis like my all time favorite game. Yeah, we have a taxi right there. It's the best. It's a great game. Yeah, we have a taxi next to a diner.
    25:33
    Because it belongs next to each other, right? Yeah, the Chris Granner special. Mark Ritchie, Chris Granner. Yeah, they're perfect together. They're perfect. We just got an Earthshaker. We just brought our Earthshaker in for Radical. That's okay.
    25:49
    Radical had been here a while, and it was a real pain in the ass, to be honest with you, because of the four flippers. Yeah. but it worked great good job um brian once again good job brian once again so let me ask you a question i love the women in pinball seminar yeah so shameless plug here the wormhole has a phenomenal relationship with bells and chimes houston good and we want to get more people into pinball so how do we do that how do we get more people into this great hobby oh my gosh such a question sorry it is it's a big question i mean my answer my kind of stock answer for that is it's just like i don't know like be enthusiastic about it um if you see somebody playing and i don't know it it's i think it is i want to what we try to do with the wormhole I don't want to speak for women. I'm not trying to do that. But what we try to do is just give everyone a safe place to play pinball. Yes. And I think we have this no asshole policy here. If you have that safe place for anyone to come and play pinball, I think they'll get addicted to it. Yeah. Yeah, because they know they can come back. They know that they're going to be with people who are not going to be disrespectful to them or they're not going to condescend to them. Yeah. They feel safe asking questions. That's another thing is that a lot of people don't feel very safe asking questions about how things work and might want to give up because they feel overwhelmed or not welcome. Right.
    27:37
    That's what I love about the pinball community is the questions. When I first started, one of the questions I was going to ask you is, do you remember the first N that gave you the aha moment? mine was attack from Mars I sucked at it I'm playing I'm just bouncing stuff trying to hit the middle and Gina Lowe of Houston Pinball one of the nice people on the planet she grabs me and she goes you need to do this at the end of the game right the game was over she wasn't coaching and she goes do this and this and that and change your lanes up top you know you don't know how to do that you can use those flippers because nobody no newbie knows how to do that right we always that's hard it's a hard thing to even get used to like once you recognize that it's something that you have to do yeah i still am instinctively like oh flip flip flip like i get like really like trigger happy when i see lanes and i'm like ah you know like we all miss them we did i'm really terrible it's that's making sure that my inland my in lanes and my outlines the outlines are switched like i Oh, that too. Especially with these newer games. They're so integral.
    28:53
    Those lanes to change. You really got to pay attention. But, you know, she didn't have to do that. She saw I was struggling and she just came to me and went, you're going to have more fun basically if you know what you're doing. There's a method here.
    29:12
    There's something that you want to accomplish, not just keep the ball alive. That was a big aha moment for me. There was, I was at, God, I don't even remember when it was, but there was someone who at the time had worked for Stern.
    29:30
    And I'd seen him out playing pinball with his buddies or by himself at Logan and at a local place, which I think is called something different now. It's called Headquarters at the time. and one time he was out, it was like a Friday night, like really, really busy Friday night at this really crowded arcade bar and he was playing Metallica with his friends and he had a multiball going and he didn't know me. I didn't really know him. I just recognized him as somebody who plays pinball often and I kind of walked by. He was in the middle of, I think it was like Sparky, the electric chair, multi-ball and he was handling the balls he was like he was trapping up and he was like making the balls bounce from flipper to flipper yeah post pass and he was like making shots that he was clearly aiming for and like blowing it up and i just remember watching this kid and being like you could do that how do you do that like and just watching him and then and uh ended up like being introduced to him because he played in the city league and then it was actually taxi uh logan got taxi and then he was like oh you know that they're like the rules to this right i was like no can you show me he's like oh it's so easy you just collect the characters and then your jackpots lit and then you can either get a multi-ball or i was like that is so easy like i i had been so daunted by by the idea of pinball having rules and like the lights are overwhelming and all of this stuff. And he just made it. So he's like, just aim for this, just do this and this start there. And then from there you can grow and learn more of the rules. Right. And that was like, for me, really, it was, of course it was people helping and people in the pinball league being, um, you know, like just being good community members and, and, uh, and, and being encouraging and, uh, and that, but it was also a lot of observation, just like watching people and then and then picking it up right like for me that was that was something that was really helpful so it's like I don't know we had like another thing that we had for a little while Logan was we had like an educational series which is something that might be really good to encourage people like not just like oh this is a safe space but also like come and ask us questions like this is the time that you can come and ask us questions we'll have a teacher or a tutor or whatever and And that was something else that was like really, really helpful.
    32:02
    Yeah. There are leaks that do like if you're over 10,000, you pay five bucks or something, right? Right. And we're thinking about that, you know, something like that. Just, you know, maybe once a month for our Forex, if you're over 10,000, you're five bucks instead of 20. You know, anything you can.
    32:24
    That's great. Yeah. All right. Last question for you before our, we have this little game show called the hurry up. It's like, but not to out your personal life, but is it hard to hear a work at something at Jersey Jack and not being able to talk about it?
    32:43
    Um, home or with your partner or a significant other or anyone else? Is that hard to do? no not anymore uh it's it's hard in the sense that honestly it's kind of selfish in that like the element of surprise is taken away from me and my experience of having pins for leap like i don't know how to articulate this really well but like so like avatar just came out right really excited to work on this game excited to work with Mark because it was his first game and, and, um, you know, all of the things that we'd been working on up to that point. And it's not the idea of not being able to tell people it's the idea of me not being able to experience it fresh. Right. Like I see it from its, from its incubated stage to its fully developed, you know, hatchling, whatever you want to call it. Right. I don't have that like, Oh my God, it's avatar. There it is. Look at, you know, the UV lights and all of this other stuff. It's so beautiful. It's Mark's first game. It's like, that's like kind of a selfish way to look at it because I am very privileged to be able to be there for that whole process But no it not hard It sometimes it more hard to like catch myself from like spilling the beans like which I never ever do but like sometimes it be like I can talk about that you know like um that that the hard part really is just being like okay realize that you know I there are things that I can't say or things that I can't talk about um it's I guess you just get used to it how great was it to work on avatar was it just awesome it was awesome it was um because it's an awesome machine and i've played it a lot uh i got to play it first at houston arcade expo and then we went to chicago and played it a lot at the at the jersey jack booth there so i'm i'm so thrilled that that it is being so well received i like again like it was it was really really cool to work on and and And, again, like seeing Mark work on his first game as a game designer and not just as a homebrew designer, which his work with that is good, too. I don't know if you've seen anything from Metroid, which was his homebrew game. I've only seen pictures. I never got to see it. Oh, so he was streaming that build for a long time. And, you know, I think his build is on Pinside. He might have documented that as well. Okay, smart. so he would like he would hook up his his twitch stream and um just you know be like oh i'm programming today or i'm working on this that or the other thing and and that was actually how i ended up meeting mark before he even worked at jersey jack meeting by internet meet you know um so and it's cool because it's like when i first started working at jjp he was he was working on the whitewood for avatar and he was showing me his shots and stuff like that and um to see him go from that to now he's officially a game designer. And he says it, he said it himself, like, he feels like one. He's like, yeah, I feel like a game designer now. And I'm like, Oh, that's so good to hear. Like it's, it's so, so rewarding. It's really incredibly rewarding.
    36:11
    Yeah. And the, and the feedback has been really, really positive, which is always great. You know, I must be hard. I can't even listen to feedback from the podcast, let alone, I'm not putting out a giant pinball machine, but, you know, this community can be pretty tough. But all in all, I think the community is pretty great, though. They can. Yeah. Yeah, they can be tough.
    36:35
    You're right. Do you look at any of that stuff? You can't, right? You can't as an employee, right? I don't.
    36:44
    Most of the time, if I'm really curious, I'll hear it from other people. just be like, oh, did you hear about X, Y, or Z? And it's like, yeah, okay.
    36:55
    If it's constructive, then it's constructive and you can try and listen to it. But, you know, sometimes it's not always constructive. Exactly. And just stay away. Like a professional athlete, you can't have Twitter. You just stay away. I'd rather focus on the positive things than the positive things. It's a great game. Congratulations to Jersey Jack and you and everyone that put that together. It's just, it's fantastic. Thank you. You know, all right. Are you ready for our rapid fire game we call the hurry up? Hit me with it. This is thanks to Cale Hernandez, Ian Jacoby and Donovan Wade for helping me write these questions. It takes a village crystal. It truly does. Podcast together. So, all right. If I had theme music, it would go like, not yet.
    37:45
    Chicago deep dish or Chicago hot dog? Hot dog. Favorite Lollapalooza that you went to or wished you attended?
    37:55
    None. You never went to a Lollapalooza? I never went. I actually went to Riot Fest twice. All right. I went to Lollapalooza 1 when it was a traveling show. Yeah. Yeah, it was good. You used to eat chili peppers? No, that was Lollapalooza like two or three. Lollapalooza 1 was Ice Tea and then Jane's Addiction I would have liked to have seen the Chili Peppers for like the second Lollapalooza I guess I think they were on Lollapalooza 2 with Metallica Lollapalooza 2 was really good but I didn't go to it Alright, bucket list vintage car to own Car?
    38:40
    Vintage car that, I know you're into vintage cars Give me one that you would love to own. That would be a Datsun 510 wagon. I'm not sure what year. Maybe like, I don't know what year they really were around. Maybe like 72, 73, like that era. Awesome. That's awesome.
    39:02
    Best pinball expo to visit. Like pinball show? Pinball show that you'd like to visit again. Oh, that's hard. Oh, my God, that's hard. I don't want to hurt feelings. It's okay. It's rapid. You'll be fine. It's rapid. Honestly, California extreme. Okay. California extreme. Favorite person to eat lunch with at work?
    39:26
    That was Kale, by the way. That's a good question. Oh my gosh. Honestly, Eric Minier. If I can catch him eating, like Eric doesn't always take lunch, but If I can have lunch with Eric, I love having lunch with Eric. What's your go-to pin at Logan's Arcade right now? I haven't been in so long. Or any arcade. You go in, what's your go-to pin that you're putting a lot of quarters in right now? Taxi. Okay. Favorite Arab pinball machine to repair?
    40:01
    System 11. Hardest pinball machine to work on? Hercules. That's true. That makes sense. All right. That's it. Thank you so much for sitting down with me tonight. This has been a lot of fun. I really, really appreciate it. I know we had audio problems in the beginning that nobody got to see, but we got through it, didn't we? We did. We did okay. We did great. Where can people find you online if they want to contact you and bug you? Maybe? um i guess my instagram account um which is blue continental i mostly just take pictures of old cars but but if they want to see that that's where they can see you are you going to the texas pinball festival and i'm gonna try i i'd really like to i haven't been in a while and i do like that show quite a bit um so so i'm gonna try and try to come if you can we have a booth that they They put us – last year they put us outside, right? And it's the walkway to get into the hall. And we were the first booth.
    41:06
    And we set the tone, I think, for the TPF, okay? We have really rare machines that we put in there and let people come and play it and have a party. And we have all these lawn chairs and we have these big TVs where people can watch my stream for the TPF. And we're going to play the longest game of Starball to date. We've done two. Last year we had about 65 people of Starball on Trailer or, no, Future Queen. I don't know which game we did. But we'll do one again, and it'll be an absolute blast. I mean, you're convincing me right now, like, that I got to go. You got to go. It's TPF. It's fun. And you never know. The company you work for might be having something out. So you might have to go. Who knows? Thank you, Crystal, so, so much. I really appreciate you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It was great fun. All right. Take care.
    42:08
    Thanks again, Crystal, for coming on the podcast. That was fantastic. I really had a lot of fun speaking with her. She's so genuine and nice, and I really appreciated that conversation. All right. Something very funny happened to me yesterday in John's space, right? I have to share. Today is Tuesday. This podcast will be out on Friday. So Monday night we were contacted by Texas Country Reporter, which is a division of Texas Monthly Magazine, about doing an interview about the wormhole. Now we've done a few print interviews before. So we were like, yeah, no worries. John and I got this. Tim and Christine, Janine, you don't need to do it. Jamie and John will do this one. So we scheduled the reporters to come in on a game night for our Twitch channel, and we decided to stream right over there Tommy, the Who's Tommy pinball wizard from Dada East. Thanks again, Charles Bucknell, for loaning his pin to the wormhole. It is a beautiful copy. Anyway, so these game streams that we have, if you haven't watched them on Twitch, they're a lot of fun. We've done, I think, 81 of them now. They're not IFPA-sanctioned events. They're one strike. There are usually 12 to 16 of us. We each throw in a whopping $2, and the winner gets $24 or whatever, which I want to change to $5. If you're listening and you come on Mondays, we're going to $5 in 2025. So we have these reporters come and interview us and take pictures of the game stream, and we're like, this is a perfect night. You guys come by an hour before. So reporters walk in with way too much gear for a print interview. And guess what? It's not an article. It's a TV segment for a Sunday morning Texas news show called Texas Monthly. And we're going to be one of the segments. So footnote, my wife's out of town. She's in New York. And I don't know if at this point I'm panicking. Do I look good enough for a TV segment? I'm kind of freaking out. John Spates is looking at me like, how did you screw this up now? We thought it was print. We prepared for print. Now we're not prepared. And this was both our first television interview, right? After two minutes, John and I had a ball. We actually really had a fun time. We covered topics about our origin story, pinball community in Houston. We talked about barrels of fun, long range of topics. All in all, we spent about 20 minutes being interviewed. lights on, mics, and then we played the tournament and they kept our mics on. So it was a blast. Look out for that segment in December. And we will definitely share that video. Hopefully they don't make us look too bad. All right, follow us on all the socials. Next week will be another episode of Arcades Across America, our podcast series, with my co-host, Co, from Corner Drop Arcade. And our guests will be Mike from the Flipper Room and Evan from the Pacific Pinball Museum. That's going to be a great episode. All right, I've kept you long enough. For Warm Up Pinball, I am Jamie Burchill. Don't.