Happy Sunday, pinfolk, or whatever day you're listening. This is NYC Pin Pop, in which a panel talks location pinball in New York City and nearby surrounding areas. My name is Benjamin Furiga. My initials are BCF, and I'm thankful that I put my initials in four machines at three venues in my neighborhood last week. My name is Eric Sweetland. My initials are HIP, and I'm a pinball tournament director in New York City. on this week's pod. We'll run down local competition results in ball one as usual. As usual, in ball two, we'll have venue updates with Eric, courtesy of Pinball Map and its users. And we'll also do our Pinball Bullet Journal. We'll tell you what pinball we played over these last couple of weeks. And then in ball three, we'll have a bit of a grab bag. We'll talk a little bit more about the fallout from the bias incidents at OBX. We'll talk maybe a little bit about some pinball NYC controversy and maybe just a couple other things. We'll see. Let's get started. Let's talk about competition pinball results in New York City and nearby surrounding areas. In fact, we're going to start in those nearby surrounding areas on Saturday, November 22nd. By the way, we took Thanksgiving week off. We're going to look at two weeks of results this time. And on Saturday, November 22nd, the day after we recorded the last episode of NYC Pin Pod, or I should say the most recent episode of NYC Pin Pod, the Rock Fantasy Pinball Open was convened at Rock Fantasy in Middletown, New York. Fall Pinball Open. Yes, the Fall Pinball Open, which they actually got to in the fall this time. Sometimes the fall happens in April or August. and this time it happened in the actual fall. I imagine the winter will actually happen in the winter, but we love our friends in Orange County. Kate Smith got first place. Ed Zeltman, who crosses the Delaware like George Washington to come play in New York, he got second place. Frank Romero got third, and New York City's own Mike Pantino tied with Howard Levine and Mike Troup, or Troup, sorry if I said it wrong, Mike, for fourth. On Monday, November 24th, Arcade Brooklyn Pinball League held their sixth and final qualifying session of their seventh season. Thirteen players showed up, and Kate Martins, the director of record, although wasn't there. Paul McHugh picked up 27 decisive points on the night, propelling himself into the A-finals. Wesley Machowski got 26 and both Alex Weisenberger and Till Lottke got 25 this was a bye week for my Monday team so I was able to attend also the only time I got to play in the BBPL this season and didn't qualify for any of the finals but had a fun time cool, did you pay the whole entry fee? they were kind enough to not require an entry fee I feel like in the last week sometimes you can do that in a league and that's if someone shows up in the first week and they're like I'm only going to play this week and you don't take their money it's kind of weird but if they show up in the last week and it's like you know they're not getting submitted for whoppers or anything I think that's a nice way to be friendly we specifically did that at Scrapple this last week for someone who showed up and it was their only time a visiting player with all six weeks of qualifying in, the standings for finals are set. The A finalists will be first seed Matthew Grady with an amazing 122 points collected. That includes a perfect night with 35 in week two. Sean Grant will be the second seed. Jonah Shlaes third and Kate Martin fourth. Jose Garcia, Paul McHugh, Alex Weisenberger and Matthew Torres will be the fifth through eighth seeds. Another eight people have made the B finals, which will be non-determinative of Whoppers. It won't reseed them for the final submission based on the attendance, but top seed in B, Till Lotke. And second seed, David Brinkman, will be driving buses at the finals. Brady Torres, Eric Rabinsky, Wesley Michalski Michael Focus, Bernie Birnbaum and Sam Hall make up the rest of B finals Also on Monday, November 24th NYC FSA, as Eric said, they had a bye, they were sitting at home, they were waiting They wanted to see who was going to come out victorious when Lion Persons visited Special When Lit at Solid State Lion persons came out on top 10 to 6. Balls of steel were waiting for the winner of the mutants and parliament at Rulos, where the mutants were the top seed, and it was tight, but the mutants pulled out a 9 to 7 win. And in the left in-lane playoffs, these are the folks who qualified in the 7th through 12th seeds after the league was divided, so this is sort of the B division, But in the left in lane playoffs, the pin pals were waiting at home for the winner of the deluxe horses and intermission Dolores, who faced off at Bar Great Harry. And it took a tiebreaker before the deluxe horses advanced to face the pin pals. Two for one. We're waiting for the winner of the pin bots who faced the aristocrats at Gebhard's Beer Culture and the virtual home team. the aristocrats came away with a tight again nine to seven win the widest margin i just said in four games of playoffs on monday november 24th was a 10 to 6 win all of these games were very close these playoffs are fun that aristocrats match was a uh revenge match for them having finished their season at gephardt's beer culture with a loss that's right that's right the lesser players got their second win against the aristocrats who had a tough beginning to their season and a tough ending to their season but they came out and found a win this week and will go on to face the two for one or will have i should say once we've told you about it at least it's not true until someone says it out loud tuesday had the night off because they already had one they didn't have buys in their season so they had thanksgiving tuesday off which is probably a Pretty smart move by Chris. On Wednesday, November 26th, the day before Thanksgiving, 22 players came out to Scrapple Land in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for the fourth qualifying week of Scrapple League's fifth season. Greg Pavarelli was the tournament director with assistance from me. Material assistance this week is in a rare absence of Woody. I lugged my iPad up to Scrapple Land. I love that you're talking about lugging an iPad like you had to have a backpack with 50 pounds of shit in it to take an iPad with you. Yeah. We played five rounds of match play with IFPA scoring with the goal of garnering the most points towards our series total. Zach Arnold did it the best that week with 29 points. Adam Kane needs on goodbye and Sean Grant all picked up 27 points, while Chris Caffaro, Mike Pantino, and Sam Hall picked up 23. Nine players participated in the optional side pot, with the money being paid out to Zach Arnold, Nitsan Gabay, and Sean Grant. On Thursday, November 27th, No Bro Presents Turkey Night Strikes was convened at Jack Bar in Williamsburg. It has a note that says, Friendsgiving Strikes. We believe Ida led the way on Thanksgiving, though Gabe Chazanov is the director of record. 16 players gathered, and Tommy Ortega won the day with a single strike to his name, besting Andy Hayden, Wyndham Manning, and Alex Weisenberger. Andy came in second, Wyndham and Alex tied for third. After a quiet weekend for competitive pinball in New York City, on Monday, December 1st, pinball NYC's playoffs resumed. In the left orbit playoffs, lion persons faced off against our New York City Flipper Sport Association at our virtual home bar of Rulo's. And NYC FSA took the night 11 to 1. also mutants the third seed faced second seed balls of steel at gebhardt's beer culture and the mutants had a big nine to two win in the left in lane playoffs the pin pals were the virtual hosts at buttermilk bar for the fifth seed deluxe horses pin pals 11 to 5 and the aristocrats and the two for one ers faced off at arcade fi die the two for one ers get a 12 to 4 win That ends the aristocrats' hopes to repeat. I believe they might be the only team who cannot repeat from last season so far in the division that they are contending a championship. On Tuesday, December 2nd, everybody woke up from their tryptophan naps in Tuesday night pinball NYC, and they came back to play. and in the right orbit playoffs these are the folks who qualified one through five six yes no one through six indeed no quarters for laundry bested the top seed harlem globe flippers at jack bar by a 10 to 2 margin and danger danger beat the ball drainers at barcade brooklyn these are the lower seeds in both cases they had the you know the virtual away status they were choosing in the first and third rounds, but in both cases, they didn't need the fourth round. They only needed the rounds they chose, seemingly, because Danger Danger won 9-3, just as no quarters had won 10-2. There was no reason to play the fourth round. In the right in-lane playoffs, these are the folks who qualified 7-12 after everything came down. Butterballers went to At the Wallace, where Everybody Loves the Sunshine, easy for me to say, Everybody Loves the Sunshine was their virtual host, and the Butterballers got an 11-5 win. and at Sunshine Laundromat the replays hosted the Trolls and Trolls got their first semi-final win after advancing to their first semi-finals they got their first semi-final win by a 10-6 margin at Sunshine Laundromat Monica who is captain of the Trolls sent me a text that was a selfie of four of them together I don't know if they were the only four who showed up, but three of them are or were colliders at one point, which is to say they are trolliders. There's a very special crossover between the colliders and the trolls. And Morgan was there too. I love that team and I love seeing them win, but that sets them up to face off against your Butterballers next week. We'll talk about that in the schedule. The Trolls Instagram account, Pinball Trolls, it's got some more pictures from the event. I can tell there's at least seven in one of the photos. Oh, great. Looks like a great time. It's fun to go to Sunshine. Wednesday, December 3rd, it was time for the fifth qualifying week of Scrapple League's Season 5 at Scrapple Land in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, under the direction of Greg Pavarelli, with assistance from myself and Woody Richman. 27 players came out this week. Hoping to add to their series total, Greg Pavarelli got 31 points on the night. Big. Chris Caffaro picked up 27 and five players came in with 25 points. Sean Grant, Susie Zalewski, Dan Merrill, Mike Pantino, and myself. Wow. Eight players participated in the optional side pot. Three people were paid out. Greg Pavarelli and Chris Caffaro got their money clean. Three players had to play for a third place tie break. Sean Grant, Dan Merrill and Mike Pantino played one game. Mike Pantino took that money home. Nice. Five of six in the books. That's right. The standings are firming up with one week left to go. In the A division, sitting at the top with 118 points is Greg Pavarelli. Sean Grant has 114 right behind him. Adam Kane, 110. Mike Pantino, Peter Larson, Nitsan Gabai, myself, and Ali Bassett are all currently looking at an A finals berth. The B finals has Matt Rudolph currently in the number nine seed with 78 points. But Susie Zalewski and Dan Merrill both have 77 and Woody Richmond 76 at the top of B. Dan, those 77 with three meetings only. So he's moving up if he can show up for week six. Chris Caffaro has 71. That's also three weeks. Three meetings, yeah. Richard Diamond and Matt Raz are at 68 and 67. Luis Perez is also at 67, but only three meetings. Just outside the B cut line at the moment, Christian Klossner is at 66 and Connor Fleming at 61. It seems like almost everyone who's below the line right now either has three meetings or has one single-digit dud of a meeting. and so there could be a lot of movement around the bottom there, I think. Although most of those people right above the line had only three meetings, too. Matt Raz looks like a guy with four. Richard Diamond, those might be the folks we're thinking about whether or not they're still going to be in B after all is said and done once these three meetings and people kicking off a single digit have their say. It's all to play for next week. That's right. On Thursday, December 4th at Jack Bar, No Bro Presents Thursday Night Strikes 12-4 was convened with a note that says, it beeps it, I'm not going to, fuck Nike pinball. What does that mean? I don't know. I don't know. I just don't know. Fuck Nike pinball, it says. I don't know what that means. Nike as in victory in Greek and or as in the shoe brand. Or the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Program. Oh yeah, I guess. Greg Pavarelli took the day after 11 rounds with two strikes to his name. Adam Robinson came in second, Monica Weidekamp third, and Mikey Mike, Eric Shows, and Ida Kreutzer tied for fourth. Also on Thursday, 20 players showed up to Buttermilk Bar for the sixth and final qualifying week of South Slope Pinball's fifth season of this year, directed by Kate Martin. Zen Zokniak and Matthew Carlson picked up 29 points on the night, and both Matthew Grady and Janos Kiss Gonzalez got 25. That's all six weeks in, and the finals have been set. Matthew Carlson will be driving the bus in A finals with 118 points. He'll be the top seed. Billy Vazine is the second seed with 102 points. Joining them will be Zen Zokniak, Matt Grady, Robert Wong, Janos Kiss Gonzalez, Tom Milburn, and Kate Martin. At the top of the inconsequential B finals, Rob Adler picked up 89 points and will be driving a bus. The second bus yet to be determined who will be driving, David Barber and Stephen Christopher both picked up 88 points. A.J. Gould, Courtney Wetzel, Caitlin James Rees, and John Chase are also cleanly through to the B finals. There's another tie at the line competing for that last spot in B. Paul McHugh and Mason Matthew both had 66 points on the season. I'm going to predict that David Barber will not come back to New York for B unless he's staying in New York right now I don't know he might be but I don't I think he lives elsewhere and comes here and stays here sometimes I'm going to predict that he will not come back and both of those people will be in B I was looking through it the other night just trying to like what are the chances who else who's going to skip do I have any shot of sneaking into B I doubt it. I think I'm going to be probably right at the bottom of the overall people who get submitted standings. Yeah, it seems right. I'll still be there. Oh yeah, sure. Next week, on Monday night, the Left Orbit playoffs will have its championship match at Scrapple Land where the mutants will face off against your New York City Flipper Sport Association. For the third year in a row. For the third year in a row. Or season. Yes, right. Season, indeed. And let's also note that we're talking about Eric playing for a championship for the X year in a row on Monday night. But what else will happen on Monday night is that in the left in lane championship match, the two top seeds in the division, they were seventh and eighth overall, but they were one and two in this division. And they're going to face each other at Gebhard's Beer Culture. the two for oners will face off against the pin pals the pin pals will be marginally home and it's a little funny that they will be home at gebhard's because we have busted their chops here once or twice about they sometimes just don't go when the match is on 72nd street so i think it's a little bit fun that they are home there uh and they will punch me and hate me when next i see them and then on tuesday december 9th pinball nyc's championship matches in the right orbit and right in lane playoffs will be contested in the orbit fifth seed no quarters for laundry faces off against third seed danger danger at sunshine laundromat and in the in lane playoffs for the first time, sixth seed trolls will face fourth seed, our Butterballers at Jack Bar. And I think that's the second season in a row that the Butterballers are playing for a championship as well. It'll be the third season in a row that we play for a championship, and if we win it, it'll be our third consecutive championship in the right in lane. Right. On Wednesday, at Scrapple Land, at Pinball 8 o'clock, Scrapple League 2025's sixth meeting of Season 5 will be convened under Greg Pavarelli's confident guiding hand. And on Thursday, December 11th, No Bro Presents Thursday Night Strikes will start exactly at 8 o'clock at Jack Bar in Williamsburg. Williamsburg. Also on Thursday, South Slope Pinball League's sixth season of the year will have its finals convened. You know, pinball 8 o'clock, but I really think in this case that means like 8-0-8 probably because there's one more round to play. It's finals. If you don't start till 8-20, man, you're going to be there till tomorrow. A couple of tie breaks to deal with too. Yeah, right. Right, right, right. I imagine if you got a tie break to play, if I were you I show up before 8 o so that you ready to go right at 8 o because whew it going to be a night And on Saturday December 13th director Greg Pavarelli will bring the Fidei Winter Pinball Open to Barcade Fidei, qualifying starting at 2 p.m. with a hybrid-style best game qualifying on a bank of 10 with a pop of finals to be held the following day. And also, on Sunday, December 14th, Stern Army's RWI will be convened at Rulo's under Jess Warren's guiding hand. And with some food by Bart. Yeah, Bart will make something delicious. As of December 6th, 2025, there are 358 pinball machines in New York City at 79 public locations. 358? Mm-hmm. I was just thinking about what the number for Scrapple Land, that means that Scrapple Land is about a sixth, about 15% of the pinball machines in New York City. Dang, yeah. Thanks to the creators and users of Pinball Map for this data, here are machine updates from the past couple of weeks. On Saturday, November 22nd, user Bonsai let us know some details about the Stranger Things at Barcade Chelsea. Banzai said, the big issues were actually sorted out about a week ago, and it's playing well. The left out lane switch was too sensitive, regularly triggering an unearned ball save soon after launch, putting two balls in play. Both flippers were also rebuilt. Game is getting another ramps-removed clean and rubber replacement in a week or so. It needs it, as the pins all get an absurd amount of play from normies here. ah bonsai throwing shade at the normies user tilt fail tried out the jaws le at sunshine laundromat and said busted can't find balls just lost money and user head phase zero let us know that the star wars at bohemian hall and beer garden in queens has the action button missing well that sucks you can't play Star Wars that way, but what the hell? There's pinball at Bohemia Hall now? Well, I gotta go to Astoria. They got the pinball machine in June of 24. Huh. On Sunday, November 23rd, a Halloween was added to the lineup at Scrapple Land. Also, a Cactus Canyon and Foo Fighters were taken out of the meetup grill in Rockaway. A Medieval Madness remake and a Star Wars Fall of the Empire were added. So I gotta go to Rockaway to play it? I think that's the only one I've seen in the city so far. I think so too, yeah. On Tuesday, November 25th, user Toenuff said of the Jaws at Sunshine Laundromat, it's working tonight. and Flipper Eric said of the Indianapolis 500 at Gebhardt's Beer Culture, plays perfectly. On Wednesday, November 26th, user Flipper Fiend said of the gold strike at Scrapple Land, coin slot not registering coin input. On Saturday, November 29th, Halloween and Galactic Tank Force were taken out of the lineup at Scrapple Lands. Going into the lineup of Scrapple Land, a Stern Pirates of the Caribbean and a Simpsons Pinball Party. Also Saturday, a Mandalorian was added to the lineup at Transmitter Brewing. On Tuesday, December 2nd, the Shadow was added to the lineup at Barcade Fidei. On Wednesday, December 3rd, the future spa at Barcade Chelsea went out. In its place, Bad Cats. Oh, that's too bad. I mean, I like Bad Cats, but that's too bad. Also Wednesday, Dungeons & Dragons left the lineup at Scrapple Land. Hot Wheels left the lineup of At The Wallace and joined the lineup at The Throwback. User Grubo let us know the Hot Wheels is upstairs. Alright. And The Shadow was added to the lineup of At The Wallace. user Grubo said freshly off the shop user Bonsai commented on Freddy A Nightmare on Elm Street at Barcade St. Mark's hard to believe I know but this game was put here on purpose you probably you probably don't like it but everybody that doesn't know anything about pinball will put tokens in because it says Freddy on the back glass enjoy Jaws Bonsai also commented on the Atlantis still hanging out at Gebhardt's Beer Culture. Come on, crew. All right. I presume that's a call-out from the game. And on Thursday, December 4th, user MiniFlipper noted that the Star Trek Next Gen at Scrabble Land is off. That is its best state of repair to me. We've had an extra week since our last bullet journal, Benjamin. That's right, and even an extra day. And even an extra day, because we're recording on Saturday this week instead of Friday. I played a little bit. I got out on the Sunday of the weekend, the Sunday after the last time we recorded. I think we might call that November 23rd. I got out on that day. Did you do anything on the after we recorded on the 21st or do anything on the 22nd? Not until the 24th. You did not have your last regular shift at Barcade came before we last recorded, right? That's right. And so that Saturday before Thanksgiving was my first Saturday off in a long while. And I enjoyed that by staying home. Yeah, that's a good way to enjoy a day off. Your first one in a while. Yeah. Or the first one on that calendar day, you know, whatever weekly, weekly day, whatever it is. Well, when I played on Sunday, I just I played pinball around the neighborhood. I woke up in the morning and had it in my head. that because I had edited a lot of the podcast on Saturday evening and was ready pretty early on Sunday. So I had it in my head that I was going to go somewhere and eat lunch, that like lunch and pinball were going to be a singular pursuit. And I was supposed to meet my friend Ben H. from the Colliders out somewhere. And when I kind of pitched FIDI as a possibility and we assessed whether or not we wanted to be there during family time, we decided we did not. So that limited my options in terms of a place where I am going to have both lunch and pinball. But thankfully, Franklin Park right here in my neighborhood has really good burgers. Franklin Park is a bar, but it also includes a restaurant that is called Dutch Boy Burger or used to be called Dutch Boy Burger. I think it is now all the same corporate entity and used to maybe be separate that shared a lease somehow. But they have a pretty good kitchen. You're not going to get a steak there. And if they have a steak on the menu, seriously, don't get the steak, dude. Get a burger. Get the chicken sandwich. Get something that comes with a side of fries. You probably don't want the other stuff. but they're really good fries and really good sandwiches. So I went there and played some pins while I waited for Ben, and he came and joined me. The vibe wasn't awesome there for us because it was Pinball Sunday, or Football Sunday, rather. It was Pinball Sunday for us. It was Football Sunday for all the people who were yelling and shit in the bar. And we knew that we could go to Charlene's where there isn't a TV. There's no chance that someone's watching football unless they're watching it on their phone. And I imagine the bartender would ask you to leave if you were making a lot of noise doing that at Charlene's. But we headed that way. Ben hadn't been to Bilt Bar yet, so we stopped by there first. Oh, yeah, by the way, put my initials in for a Jaws mode championship or some shit. Maybe frenzy scoring champion, I think. And also the super jackpot champ on Godzilla, because I hit one for over $100 million while I was at Franklin Park, while we just played only a couple of games. me first while I was waiting for my burger and then when Ben showed up while I finished my beer and then we moved on and when we went to Bilt Bar I put in a couple of replacing high scores on the Mandalorian I was just shy of putting my initials in Gilligan's Island that game is stupid and I wish that I love Ed and I love Max and just because I am someone for whom Built Bar and Charlene's are pretty close, are kind of in neighborhood. I'm in Crown Heights, but I'm Prospect Heights adjacent. And so these are Prospect Heights joints. And I wish that there weren't a Mandalorian at one and a Mandalorian at the other. But it's two different operators. I'm not going to tell them that they need to coordinate their games. That's not their business model is to coordinate with other operators. but I wish there weren't two Mandalorians so close to one another. The good news is when we later got to Charlene's because there were really loud football people and right up in our business at Bilt Bar. When we went to Charlene's last the Mandalorian wasn't working so it wasn't even an option. We played Attack from Mars. I think it's a Frankenstein. I think it has pieces of the new and pieces of the old and I don't know how to quantify that or prove it and maybe you could say that doesn't work it would need two different kinds of bus bars or some shit and i just wouldn't know but i honestly think that some of the pieces on it are from the old one some of the pieces are from the new one i think the play field is old and i think pieces of the back glass are new that's what i think what game was that attack from mars we we had talked about this there was an update from right i think it was jns uh that was like, this says that it's the one, but I think it's the other. And I have been there a couple of times since and didn't even think to look the other times. But this time, I really tried to look and I felt like the playfield was old and the back glass had elements that were new on it. It didn't have the Bally logo in the plastic on the back glass. How odd. But the playfield looked to me like it was the old playfield. But regardless, I put in my initials once and then replaced them in the next game with a score that is sub the default grand champion. It was 5 billion both times, probably like a 5.6 and a 5.9 or something like that. But I put my initials in Attack from Mars with a couple of pretty good games too. It was a great day for initials. It was Dexter's Laboratory, the little kid Dexter. He would wake up every day and say, ah, what a fine day for science. It was a fine day for pinball that Sunday. I played pretty well. Perfect day for banana fish. What about you? Did you play on Sunday? I think that was, was that an RWI Sunday maybe? No, no pinball on Sunday. It was a board game day with Jess and friends. And then on Monday, it was the quarterfinals of Pinball NYC's left orbit and in-lane divisions. but NYC FSA had the bye week. And so I took the chance to pop into the Barcade Brooklyn Pinball League, join in the fun there. It was their sixth qualifying week. It's the only week I was able to make it, otherwise busy on Mondays with Team League. So it was cool to stop in and see the people who were doing that on the alternating Mondays. Both Wesley and Kevin, the principals of the Red Hook Pinball Museum, were there. Cool to run into them. Yeah, that's cool. My next thing is Friday. Well, on Wednesday was Scrapple League. That was the day before Thanksgiving when I had to carry the heaviest iPad in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Had the lucky iPad up there, yeah. Yeah. So then you played on Friday. I did, I did. So I was in Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving on the north side. I looked around the pinball map several times and I noticed one of the things that I noticed is that a vast majority of the locations in Pittsburgh, there are lots of locations in Pittsburgh that have a lot of pinball machines, but a vast majority of them read like the list of the last eight machines that Stern made or the last 10 machines that Stern made or 10 of the last 15 machines that Stern made. Like, I think I looked at several locations that had eight to 15 machines and the oldest one was Iron Man at any of them. And there were a few that I looked at that had, you know, bigger collections and had some of the some classics in it. We were planning to go to the Warhol Museum, the wife and I later in the day. And I was just like went out for a walk, you know, had seen that, OK, there's this there's this place that I can walk to that has 20 some games in it. and I walked up to it. It's called Verdetto's Family Restaurant and Bar or Bar and Restaurant. I don't remember which. But it was one of those places that had a lot of games and all of them were modern Stearns and modern Jersey Jacks and maybe the American Pinball remakes or whatever. Or Chicago Gaming remakes. What are they called? The Chicago Gaming remakes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. American Pinball is the different thing. It's the other company. But they... They had a room in the back that had all these games, these modern games, and this room up front that I could see just when I walked past it and looked in had skill games, which are these slot machine type things that in Pennsylvania they were originally legal at the racetrack. and now there are places that you can go and buy lottery tickets and also gamble on these machines. And it felt to me a little bit icky and it made me wonder if the reason that I saw only modern machines on site was because there's one big operator and they're actually a casino operator who is adding pinball machines in to lend some kind of legitimacy. Well, or I also don't know what the rules are for your skill games parlor in Pennsylvania that, like, it may be if you have a big gaming parlor and less than 5% of it is skill games, these gambling, touchscreen gambling things, you know, that maybe you can skirt some rules if you have games that aren't gambling or ostensibly aren't gambling somewhere to add a few that are. I don't know for sure. but I got a really weird vibe when I walked past that place and I wondered, and I reached out to you that day, Eric. I was like, do we know someone in Pittsburgh? Who do we know in Pittsburgh? Because I want to kind of understand if this is their whole scene, is like everywhere they go play is this, because it's got the big things. Now, they have a clubhouse place that is, I think, a collective or a cooperative, I think, based on what I like. It has over 100 games, I believe, and seems to be the place where they play a lot of league events and yada, yada, yada. It was somewhere not in the neighborhood I was staying, and also probably had really limited hours. But outside of that, it seemed like so many locations were just all modern machines, and I was a little bit apprehensive. So after we went to the Warhol Museum, I forced my wife to walk down to a place called Shorty's Pints and Pins because I saw it on the pinball map. And we walked in, and it clearly was not this. It was, in fact, it was like if you put duck pin bowling in a, and not real duck pin bowling, like the suspended pins thing that resets by itself, not like someone actually is resetting the things. A shuffle bowler? I mean, you were rolling balls. Or the ball ones. Yeah, you were rolling balls. And it was two-thirds of the length of a real lane. There were 12 lanes across in this place, and claw machines and video games and whatnot, and you had to buy a game card to play there. It was Dave & Buster's, but a privately owned Dave & Buster's, as opposed to being Dave & Buster's. And we walked in and we sat down because I wanted to see a place, And I just like, I looked around and was like, we haven't spoken to a host or anything. We weren't seated. Can we please leave here? I don't want to be in this like Chuck E. Cheese atmosphere here. Let's go anywhere else to eat. And so we went somewhere else to eat, landed at one last place. And I'm glad to say that two of the three places I went to weren't gambling parlors with pinball in them. And I actually played at the third place. It was a brew pub. My wife being a gracious human being and wonderful who puts up with me, we walked three quarters of a mile to this other place called Four Points Brew Pub and had so-so beers, but they had three pinball machines. I'm glad to say that two of the three places that I went weren't casino-like, you know, with pinball machines in the back. They were actually things. But I definitely – it really made me think about what pinball is going to look like after three casinos open in the five boroughs. Oh, God. Definitely made me wonder that. I mean, I understand that's a really fucking disgusting question to ask and think about. But also, I think it's the question we probably should be asking ourselves. Thank God that Coney Island one didn't go through. Indeed. Saturday, I worked a pickup shift at Barcade Brooklyn. Oh, cool. So that a couple other people could have a long Thanksgiving weekend. I picked up that Saturday open. No notable or fun pinball repairs, unfortunately, but, you know, familiar and nice to be back. Yeah. After a one-week hiatus, right back to the nose of the grindstone. I was back in the city on Sunday, and I went to Park Slope to play. And it occurred to me that, you know, Rulo's doesn't officially open until 5 o'clock, I think, on any given day of the week, unless there's some specific event. but often on Sundays if there's a football game on or you know I mean several Sundays a year there are definitely football games on at 1 o'clock he will often open even if not you know having advertised the opening time just open early and have a game on the TV and I walked in and indeed or walked down that way about 2 o'clock and indeed he was open there was football on the TV there were a few people playing darts and it Three o'clock, by the time I'd played my two beers worth of pinball, which I played pretty well, Bart remarked to me as I was leaving, he was like, hey, I heard a lot of replay sounds while you were over there. I was like, you know, I played pretty well. It was another fine day for pinball, it turned out. But I played a couple of good Lebowskis, a couple of good Pulp Fictions. I don't even remember what else I played. I think those were my primary. I didn't want to play Banzai Run because there were people playing darts. I figured I'd let them play darts and I'd go play Banzai Run after they were done instead of making all of us nervous. But, you know, it was fun. It was a good time. I love playing at Rulo's, man. Wow. I went to Rulo's on Monday because it was the semifinals match between NYCFSA and Lion Persons. We didn't get to play Banzai Run. It was excluded from play, Lion Persons having won at Barcade Fight Eye. Yeah, that's too bad. I mean, maybe not for y'all, I don't know, but it feels too bad because it's my favorite game in the place. I love the Big Lebowski, but it's my favorite game in the place. That was an 11 win for our association I really did not go into Rulos that night expecting it to be quite so lopsided against a team like Lion Persons Sure Well and the fact that it 11 I can sort of use that number and reconstruct logically that they won one point in round two And in round three, that's it. That's everything they did, right? It was a night of some big games. Starting off in the first round, they had called a game on Roadshow. Red and Ted's Roadshow, that is, by the way. That's right, Red and Ted's. Both my fellow associate Gabe and Lionperson Dante put up some big games on that. I think the combined final scores was NYC FSA with about $1.4 billion to Lion Person's $800 million or so total. Wow. Then on Tuesday, my team, the Butterballers, were facing off against Everybody Loves the Sunshine at the Wallace, which is my Monday night team's home bar. Right. And that went really well for me. I played four times and just had four pretty darn good games out of it how many were Hot Wheels? I played no Hot Wheels I played World Cup Soccer twice and I played Deadpool twice and one of those Deadpools was a personal best oh how much? about 826 million that's a big number Yeah, I got the mech suit multiball, which I don't often get to in competition. It's too far into the game. 45 weapons, is that right? 45 weapons, and then you hit the suit? That's right, I collected 45 weapons. And then during that, I hit the snicked enough to get myself up to a 5x playfield. Ooh, yeah, that'll do it. And I got 100 million super jackpot in there, plus a bunch of 30, 40 million jackpots along the way. snicked for anyone who doesn't know if you hit from the left flipper off a stand-up target under the wolverine toy and it ricochets up the ramp that it should be able to go up if you hit like a right lane that leads it to it that's how you get a snicked and doing it multiple times doing it the first time increases your playfield value to 2x doing it multiple times increases it multiple amounts. That's the way to the big score on that, and if you got yourself a multiball with a 5x, that's awesome. That's also a lot of times to hit that target. Very satisfying. Yeah. And yeah, the Butterballers also advancing to the finals of the right in-lane playoffs, so both of my teams in the finals again for the third season in a row. both of my teams looking for a three-peat. Huh. I'll cut that out because we owe Phil Jackson if you say that, I think. Three-peat. He supposedly copyrighted the word three-peat. No kidding. Yes. At some point, that's what a bunch of sports media were saying, is that he copyrighted the word three-peat. Or someone, maybe Jerry Ryan, someone who was a mucky-muck with the Bulls after they got three in a row, copyrighted the word. in the way that I'm not allowed to say what Michael Buffer says before fights, even if we were going to rumble just now. Editor's note, it's Pat Riley who owns the copyright, and I'm claiming fair use here. Well, on Tuesday, Monica texted me when the Trolls won to mention that they were going to the finals with, I think I mentioned it before, but that was pinball adjacent. That was a way that my mind was being occupied with pinball on Tuesday, even though I didn't play. you played on Wednesday at Sunshine oh I'm sorry Scrapple League Scrapple Land I mean I will say on Wednesday we'll talk about this a little bit more in Ball 3 but on Wednesday we received texts from multiple people indicating that they felt that there was that there was something incumbent on us to cover on this week's podcast which I think we'll talk about a little bit in Ball 3 but that was a pinball adjacent thing that happened on Wednesday and took me to the New York City pinball discord where I fell down a rabbit hole for a while that was pinball adjacent in fact yeah that was the story of my Wednesday night at Scrapple Land was standing next to Greg Pavarelli as he participated in that discord chat right right uh i i i you know i will talk about that a little bit in ball and a good league night for me with 25 points yeah yeah right that's got me currently looking at a finals if if not too many people pass me in the final week and what what number are you replacing if you're playing in the final week what's your low that counts good question i'll be replacing a 17 okay so your first 17 don't count go get the first go win the first three and you're four in the in the in the black already and then keep building on it that's what you gotta do yeah and then contrastingly on thursday night i played in south slope league at buttermilk but it was only my third meeting so uh nowhere near any sort of cut line there right oh but boy was it a uh that was just a real fun night of uh chatting with the south slope folks hanging out lots of laughs with matthew carlson yeah yeah that's how it goes when you hang out with matthew carlson yeah later in the evening i was having a text conversation with adam robinson and saying that this past week i was out every night for pinball the monday and tuesday teams wednesday and thursday leagues And every night was like, I mean, well, our teams, my teams won both Monday and Tuesday. Both of those nights became I stayed out rather late celebrating with my teammates and other pinball people and having a regrettable one more whiskey. Yeah, right. And I want to say, you know, thank you to all of my bartenders who made that one more whiskey a ridiculous pour. But my head has hurt so bad every day this week. Right, right, right, right, right. And then every night this week is like, ooh, well, you know, one more. We're celebrating. Yeah, yeah, right. Look, I mean, there's more pinball to play. There's always more pinball to play. Thursday I did look through the Discord chat a little bit more while I was sitting down to lunch. I did not get the whole way through it. I'll talk more about that in Ball 3. And then last night, Friday, I went to Barcade Brooklyn for the Brooklyn Trans Pinball Night. A monthly just friendly meetup that Felony puts on. And that was a great time for some community. my APAB co-collaborator Eric Rabinsky was there great to see him we were describing that to someone else and saying we sort of just folded this in to let the Brooklyn Trans Pinball Night be the main thing cool, short night, early evening and finally got a little bit of sleep last night very good, woke up without a headache on Saturday All right, let's talk about controversy. There's some further fallout from OBX, some of which we learn from Colin at Kineticist and IFPA's own statements. but I just kind of want to talk about it a little bit more because it's a real thing. It's for real. It's a thing that's happening in our wider community. It's not specific to New York City but it is specific to pinball in this instance because the incident happened in a pinball community and shockingly just one week after we brazenly declared that pinball is for everyone. it stands to reason that we should continue speaking about this until there's nothing left to speak about. I don't know when we could have said enough about it when it's as problematic as it is. The IFPA have, in their most recent statement, they have indicated an understanding that they've lost trust and they've committed themselves to continuing. At Colin's work at Kineticist, Colin Alshimer, continues to be great on this. He is largely getting their statements, but he is publishing them. And I just... I appreciate what Colin did, but I also just want to slightly reinforce that maybe the publishing of that chat log with one person's consent was a little... at least a little iffy, at least a little questionable. I don't want to say it was wrong exactly, but it was at least a little iffy. And other than that, I think Colin's work on this has been great. But the IFPA's most recent statement, it does really seem to recognize that they fucked up, that it seems to own that they fucked up. And they seem to have made it very clear that their Ryan Policky is that only the president can make any decision and that these were the decisions that were made by this president. And therefore, that is what has happened. they also and i i really want to credit them on this one they they are not blind to the fact that some of us might not want to be associated with them any longer and have provided in their statement links and methods to either suppress your name from their standings or to opt out you know given the the directors of tournaments the ability to say this you know to submit results without anyone who has opted out of IFPA participation in any given tournament, which I believe gives one the opportunity to not pay that extra dollar. I would assume that it would give one the opportunity to not pay that extra dollar and therefore be eligible for whatever prizes there are right there on site, but not have their name further associated with the IFPA. The suppressing thing, it just means that they take your name off the website. They keep tracking everything about you. You keep paying for it, I think. But it shows up as suppressed player in the standings or something like that. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, I've been talking to a lot of people about this, a variety of people around our scene. And I agree. Yeah, I think we'll keep talking about this. Maybe we'll see where we're at when the pin pod returns next season. Indeed. Indeed. Look, the Philly Pinball Club sent us a newsletter. They send it to nycpinpod.gmail.com, which you can also communicate with us at. Oh, and also, I just did this new thing this week. I created a page where you can leave us a voicemail message if you want to. You can send us a voice memo at speakpipe.com slash nycpinpod. It'll record your message right there on the site, and you can listen to it again before you send it to us. We may publish it here. We reserve the right to edit it for clarity, but we promise we won't muddle your intent, or at least we'll do our best not to. About the Philly Pinball Club, they sent out a newsletter the Monday before Thanksgiving that said that they will no longer be submitting results to the IFPA because of the incidents that happened at OBX. expressed a distinct stance about that and you know like said very clearly this is the reason we're not associating with them they also i had language that indicated they're going to reevaluate the ifpa in the future if they feel that meaningful change has been made but that at this time they are not going forward they will not be submitting either philly pinball club itself or Bells and Chimes Philadelphia, which I think is very closely associated, maybe has a director in common, question mark, but that they will no longer be submitting IFPA results because of this fallout. That is a major city on I-95, like one of the six or so most populous cities in the United States, that the biggest piece of their competitive market has just said, we're opting out of the IFPA. It doesn't matter if the individuals are or not. The club is opting out. Didn't you say you had heard some similar rumblings up in the Pacific Northwest? I have heard rumblings. I can't substantiate this as more than rumor at the moment, but I have heard that effectively the Oregon scene will be opting out. I presume that there will be some exceptions to that because that scene is huge. That scene is bigger than New York City, despite the size of the city itself. the number of pinball players in that scene is more, I think, than the number of pinball players in the New York City scene. But I believe I have understood that a lot of the places that would usually have submitted there are not going to anymore. I think they were also a little bit tenuous. I think they already had some of their own metrics going that had nothing to do with the IFPA for a city championship and things. and I think they were already kind of ready to make the jump in a lot of ways but that this was the straw if I understand the rumor correctly if that's right, that's the vibe I have on it, I don't have more than a vibe and I hate saying that because it makes me sound like Joe Rogan was just asking fucking questions but I also, that is a vibe that I have and that is a rumor that I have heard that the directors there are effectively like that's it, we're done with them there's kind of a vacuum, right? People will still have an appetite for this, but they've lost confidence in this organization. There's a part of me who is ambitious and arrogant. Well, that's all of me. One particular ambitious and arrogant part of me wants to start an inter-city, not an inner-city series, although if you want to put pinball machines in Brownsville, I will happily volunteer for a program that helps out kids in Brownsville who don't have access to pinball machines unless we bring them to them. But intercity is what I'm talking about here. I would be really interested to find maybe some folks up and down I-95, you know, who might be willing to track a year's worth or find their own way, whatever it is, of nominating people to send to an inter-city championship. To my mind, I would think that in New York we would have a tournament a month and that there would be points allocated that have nothing to do with Whoppers that are probably just about how many people you beat in the tournament. And maybe there's some bonus for getting first or getting into finals or whatever. But like I would think there would be just like some kind of series like that that would nominate X number of players from New York to go play against X number of players from whatever other city. Boston seems like a good rivalry, but I-95 seem, you know, Baltimore. I mean, hell, let's go to let's go to Delaware because that scene is thriving, right? the Delaware scene, anything that happens in Baltimore, anything that happens in Philadelphia, DC, Boston, there's a way in my head that that is actually kind of superior to what we already do. What we already do is bogged down in so much, so many rules, so much stuff. And I think that having that, it has something of a city pride element to it. But it also, for God's sake, if If a Twitch account in New York City covered the New York events and a Twitch account in Philadelphia covered the other events and they were all sharing each other's stuff and same thing in Boston, then we've also got a thing that maybe helps out those communities while we're actively doing our hobby. It's such a great idea. Yeah. You know, there's a similar thing that Toronto and Buffalo have had like some city face offs. Right. A couple of times. I think it's it sounds like a lot of fun. And I'm just I'm really encouraged by the idea of some alternative pinball formats. You know, here in New York City, we've got Team League that's going on all the time and it's a big deal. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things I think that could be awesome about the InterCity series, too, is to add a team element. Not all of these places have team leagues, right? And to have some kind of team element to it, too, there's a part of me that wants it to not have the possibility of a tiebreaker, for it to be decisive without the need for a tiebreaker. So I think I would want an odd number of singles games to be there. But that's also getting into the weeds. That's, like I said, ambitious, arrogant. These are the things I have going for me. What I don't have going for me is grassroots organizing, boots on the ground shit. And so if you are saying to yourself, hey, that sounds like a great idea, Benjamin, then please email us nycpinpod at gmail.com nycpinpod at gmail.com or you can leave us a voice message at speakpipe.com slash nycpinpod we're happy to hear from you please this is not a thing that a person does alone this is not a thing that two people do alone this is a thing it takes a village. I encourage you to think about if that sounds like something that's inspiring to you, and it's okay. It's all right. If you're like, you know what, dude, the IFPA is the thing we're already doing. I'm not going to hate that for you. I understand you're pot committed on it. I have felt that way in the past too. I have felt like it's stupid, but it's what we have. And now I feel like it's stupid and its integrity is questionable. and so it's not what I have. Having something that is stupid and non-integral is not useful to me. I don't want that. I think it's great to see some ideas for some sort of different things we could do. I'm not super optimistic that we'll see meaningful change at the IFPA in any short order. their last statements a good sign but not everything that needs to be done and i want to continue to push on that i want to make them better and explore some other alternatives that's what interests me about this about this idea of an intercity series it can scale having a season wherein you and your city do whatever it is that you do to nominate the people who go to this thing you know you can set the rules in your city right there's I guess there would have to be a provision whereby you send as few as one but as many as you know a certain number for a competition and a certain for individual competition and then a certain number for a team potentially that could be you know, duplicated or not, as you see fit. If you wanted to send probably 10 or 15 people to this, you could probably figure out how to get everybody a pinball game or two to play over the course of the weekend. But I feel like, you know, a team of four to six is probably what would be likely. A couple of hotel rooms worth of folks makes some sense. And I think it would be really interesting to see what we could put together Right now there effectively a month until the end of this year if we wanted to create a year thing And look here the good news If we wanted to create a year-long thing and we did finals in January, we would probably necessarily have no qualifying in January. So we might have until February 1st to figure it out if we were really clever. yeah speaking of february jess warren and i organize a tournament called valentine's gay it is a fundraiser for the ali forney center and the transgender law center and also hopefully a very welcoming friendly first tournament for a lot of people for new pinball players for new queer pinball players to join in, it's pretty likely that that won't be sanctioned by the IFPA this year, but it can still fulfill its primary purposes to be a fundraiser for two great organizations and a welcoming new place for queer pinball. And if I were really clever, I might find a synthesis between what Eric just said and what I was just saying about a qualifying series. If I were really clever, I might find that those two analytical statements somehow synthesize into a proposition. Yeah, I want to continue playing in IFPA events and push to make them better, to make the IFPA better. So if individual players are interested in ways they can disassociate from the IFPA, what are their options, Benjamin? Well, so I think we can, if individual tournament directors, this is on a tournament basis, And this is what I want to look at the IFPA and say, you did a good job by offering people their options. In their statement, they explained this pretty clearly, that if you don't want to be associated with us, there are two ways. One is that you can suppress your name from our standings, whereby you will effectively still participate, but your name will appear as suppressed player or something like that in the standings. Your name will not appear on our website, but I believe you still pay the dollar. You still accumulate Whoppers such that you might be able to reassociate and claim the results that you had earned. had paid for at a later time. Or this other option, which is at the tournament director's discretion. At each tournament, it's at the tournament director's discretion. It's entirely up to them. But you can opt out of participating, presumably. And the way that I would imagine that goes is I don't pay the extra dollar that everybody else is paying. So if it's a $5 entry fee and $1 goes to the IFPA, I don't pay it. And if it's a $5 entry fee and the bar is covering the $1 IFPA fee, then the bar just doesn't pay it. But that I am still eligible to win the tournament. But when they report the results on the IFPA website, if I win, whoever got second or the highest place that hasn't opted out of IFPA participation in the tournament will be reported as the winner of the tournament. and my participation will not be included. Whatever amount, and I contribute very little to the pool when I participate in a tournament, but I am a positive effect, I think, on when I play in a tournament that qualifies for Whoppers, I believe that I add a very small amount to the amount that the winner of the tournament receives, to the amount of Whoppers that the winner of the tournament receives. and I will say it is partially that just the arcane nature of that that like we've gone so far that we are litigating people's dignity as well as we litigate points and that's where my line is. Dignity is that which cannot be equivocated. That's Kant, whatever translation I read. So look, here's the thing. Don't suppress until your state finals. If you're going to qualify for your state finals, and I want to credit Zoe Vrabel. I reached out to her about this matter for other reasons, but she made a point of saying to me, I don't want people to not participate in the state finals, and there's a very specific reason why, and it's that all those $1 that you sent to the IFPA, they're not actually using them. They're transmitting them back out to these state finals. And so you have already paid in this year. By the time this happened in late October, early November, you had already paid in 10 months of dues to this thing. And so if you're qualified and you're thinking that I'd like to suppress, my personal integrity cannot match up with being associated with this organization until their integrity is better, if that's where your head is at. I want to thank Zoe for pointing this out to me when I reached out to her, because I think it's a really important thing to consider. You paid for that prize pool already. You did it throughout the course of the year when you entered tournaments. And so you deserve to have that money come to you. If everybody opted out, then there's just a pool of money sitting out there that this not-for-profit organization that we've all lost faith in gets to do whatever they want with and i say we've all lost faith in excuse me that i've lost faith in if in the scenario that literally 24 people would not show up for new york state's championships that that like literally not enough people would show up that they would consider it to be a legitimate championship and the money just went back to the ifba that would be every that would be a scenario where everyone had lost faith that there was a complete and utter vote of no confidence from the pinball community. It's not going to be like that. I'm not saying they're going to get to me because they're not. I didn't play very much this year. But if they get to number 75 in New York, I bet some of that will be some people who are like, no, I'm just not going to do it. In fact, some people just won't go to Rochester just because it's Rochester, just because it's far away from here. in the same way that some people from Rochester might not come here if it were here. And that's no shade on Rochester. It's just going to Rochester in January is hard. Coming to New York City in January is hard. Don't suppress. Don't suppress until after the state finals. Get your money back. These are words of wisdom from one of the best pinball players that I'm lucky to know, Zoe Vrabel. Speaking of city team leagues. Oh, my. so we talked about it in the bullet journal on wednesday night two different people texted us they didn't specifically say this is on the record or specifically say this is off the record so i'm not going to say their names although one of them is on a team who this affected two people texted both of us together right am i am i correct yes i believe that i saw when i got a text from these two people i think that i saw and these were within 15 or 20 minutes of one another and they They were as the NYC pinball discord was blowing up with this conversation that a venue had been changed in the Tuesday night right orbit. That is to say the championship matches venue was changed in the right orbit playoffs, the top seeded half of the playoffs. Also, by the way, on Tuesday night, I don't know if you noticed on Tuesday night, everybody was a lower seed who advanced on Wednesday night. Everybody was a one or, it's one versus three instead of one versus two on Monday night. Yeah, one versus three or one versus two on Monday night. And on Tuesday night, it's three is the highest seed in the tournament, but it's like I think six and seven on the bottom half or, I mean, four and six, there you go. So some lower seeds got through. It indicates that maybe these are more competitive divisions but also it seems like the venue was changed. I'm not going to read every comment on Discord. If I read the whole thing, I would be like Cory Booker's filibuster on the floor of Congress where he talked for 25 straight hours. I couldn't possibly do that. So we're going to do a quick vibe check on this. After about an hour, after we got those texts, I went to the Discord. It was blowing up. I tracked it for a minute or two. I didn't actually make popcorn, but I thought about grabbing the popcorn gif that everybody posts or one of the many eating popcorn while I'm watching all of this unfold gifs. It was, I read it for a minute and then I, you know, went about my business and then I came back to it and read a little bit more of what had been said. And then I said, you know, I'm going to look at this tomorrow. All of this information will be here tomorrow morning, and I will look at this tomorrow. Two people called our attention to it and said, you better talk about this. And so here we are. I was at Scrapple Land when a lot of this was going down. I wasn't following it in real time, but I was standing next to Greg Pavarelli, who was furiously typing on his phone and reported he was having a great time. It was something. I tried to read it on Thursday while I ate lunch and I feel like I spent the first three to five minutes scrolling up to find where I had last seen when I went to this. I was on my phone, not on a computer. I was, you know, little screen, little text, big thumb. I didn't have time to read through the whole thing. I want to call attention to, on an anonymized basis, one particular post that indicated that the poster was unable to post because while they were trying to place a comment somewhere in the stream, it just kept moving up and moving up and moving up and it shut them out on their phone of editing their comment or something like that. It just like it was moving too fast for them to actually be able to comment for a while. I will mention what I believe the facts are and what I believe the vibe of all of that was based on what I was able to read of it at lunch. I did not finish it while I sat at lunch for 40 minutes or so trying to read through it. It was a lot. I want to shout out to Dante Oliva. When I actually stopped reading, I had continued reading past the time that I had finished my lunch and before I went back to the office, I just sort of kept scrolling a little bit. When I got to the gif that offers the metaphor from Plato's Republic of the Allegory of the Cave, which was posted by Dante Oliva. I stopped reading and was just like, you win. This is where I'm checking out. You win. But that was great. But these, I believe, are the facts. The Danger Danger for No Quarters for Laundry match was originally scheduled to be played at Scrapple Land. A Danger Danger captain requested that the match be moved because two members of No Quarters work at Scrapple Land. Chris, as the commissioner, agreed to move the match and moved it to Sunshine. Those, I believe, are the facts of the matter, the big picture facts of the matter. Do you disagree with any of those things as factual statements? No. And mostly outside of it, but for an actual reason. The NYC FSA versus Mutants match was moved from Barcade Brooklyn, which was going to be a conflict because the Barcade Brooklyn Pinball League was going to be having their finals the same night. So our match was moved to Scrapple Land, which had been vacated by the other move. Right. Those are facts. Right. Although, to be fair, that was a Monday night as opposed to a Tuesday night. Oh, yeah. Danger plays on Tuesday. It's not... Oh, shoot. So those aren't related. I mean, if you take one game away from a venue, it might be the reason that you put a match at... It might be the reason you reschedule. It may or may not be related. Correlation and causation are not proven here, but correlation may be causation. I would add these general facts. The rules say that the venues are random. with some call-outs for like it shouldn't have all of the same games that are at your home venue. Reasoning I think I saw repeatedly given for why it shouldn't be at Scrapple Land is that two people work there who are on No Quarters for Laundry. And I might generally add that people who work at a given bar do not necessarily get to play those games as much at that bar as I get to play those games at that bar because I'm a patron when I come to play. They're working. They're actually working, yeah. But I would argue that that does not actually necessarily give them an advantage, although I understand that there is a familiarity aspect that they probably get from being pinball players who work at a pinball bar and playing a little before or a little after a shift or whatever. I recognize that there may be a small familiarity advantage, but it's not one that I can't overcome by going there and playing those games for two straight hours. Any advantage or disadvantage that is brought about by a location is minimized by the diversity of games. At a place that has 60 pinball machines, there are as many players on any given team that know a lot of the games in that room as there are on the... I actually think it's a disadvantage home bar in a certain way for that reason. I think that the fact that your opponents necessarily can choose games that you absolutely hate because in a bar with 60 games, there are games that you absolutely hate. There are. And so I think there's a way in which it's actually a disadvantage. While this is not related to the bare facts that I've stated, it is related to the vibes of the comments, which I will mention my overall assessment of in a moment. But the notion that the state of the games is problematic there seems problematic to me, if I view it from a populist standpoint, at least, because more people play at Scrapple Land's weekly league than any other weekly league in the area. I'm not saying that there's never been a Thursday where there were more people at Thursday night strikes than there were at Scrapple League the night before. But in general, more people are playing at Scrapple League in any given week. And so just the populist sentiment disagrees with that, I think. You vote with your money, and the populist sentiment disagrees with that. I'm just pointing that out as I understand that everybody gets to have their opinion about how games play at any given place. And there are varying states of the way that they play and varying things that the operators might want them to be. Maybe if I wanted the premier competition venue in New York City, I wouldn't have easy replays. And maybe if I wanted to have family day every Sunday from 12 to 5, I would. During the discussion of the fact that a couple members of No Quarters for Laundry work at the venue, there were lots of counter examples thrown around. My name in particular was thrown out because the night before, the Butterballers had gone to At the Wallace, my NYC FSA home bar. And that particular night, I happened to have a really on night, and I did really well. And so that gets called out. Is that unfair that the Butterballers get to play at a bar where I'm on a different team on a different night? People work at places all over the city. Right. Tournament directors play in the tournaments they run. Random is random. Operators are our co-competitors. Yeah. All over the place. a competitive pinball scene is not big enough that you can get rid of every little conflict like this and No Quarters isn't at home at Scrapple Land. They're coming from solid state. I don't know. Yeah. Look, the general vibe as I saw it, it seemed like there was outrage among everyone not on Danger Danger who weighed in. There was outrage that someone asked for an exception to the rule by which the venues are random. If not outrage, at least disappointment, maybe. When your mom and dad say they're not mad at you, they're just disappointed in you. it might have been some of that but it seemed like outrage a lot I think the vibe also you know it took on a nuance that it's crazy to ask for this but it was asked for and granted right it is because it was asked for it is hard to fault the asker if the problem is the ask having been granted there's also a sentiment that i noticed which i just tried to sort of counteract a minute ago among some very good players who like the barcade machines and not peters as much that they don't feel like peters play as fun and i i understand it i do these are all the people that i saw doing that or people whom I would think would feel at home playing a 15 minute ball of pinball. And you can do that at Barcade. And you can't necessarily at Scrapple Land or Sunshine. And I think that is, I think that there is an aesthetic difference that can't, there's no accounting for taste, as I often say. But I think there's an aesthetic difference here that is exactly that. There's not, you actually can't, I usually say it as a joke, but I actually kind of mean it as a, as albeit a facile, a serious statement that's when you get into the question of how do the games play, there's no accounting for taste. I was working up something to say that started with, I don't want to relitigate the Peter operator discussion. And frankly, that's where the whole thing stands. That's where the whole sentence ends right now. That's all for this week's pod. Join us next week for the final podcast of the season when in Ball 1 we will run down local competition results, including, of course, the Pinball NYC Championship Rounds. We will, in Ball 2, give you venue updates and tell you what pinball we played over the past week in our bullet journal. And in Ball 3, I'm not 100% sure what we're going to do, but I have a feeling that it'll have some content that came from venues while we were out and about. Between now and then, whatever you're up to, go get them, pinfolk. you