"Pinball Palace was a small, almost hidden place...

January 26, 2016 6:00 AM

...tucked between the Jerry Lewis Movie theater and a specialty bra shop. From the outside, it looked forbidden and dangerous, two things that combined to point a beckoning finger at me.
Gina opened the door and I followed, knowing that this was exactly the kind of place my parents warned me about."
-- Michele Catalano, on the lost age of pinball.
posted by JHarris (18 comments total)

Dear God, how I love pinball. Love it with a deep, visceral affection reserved for few things in my life. We had a pinball machine in my basement growing up, Flying Circus by Gotleib, that was a vestige of my grandfather's bowling alley on Main Street in downtown Akron. Later, my parents also bought Jungle Lord, which featured two levels and multiball play. But my all time favorite was the Cyclone, which I played religiously through college at a little diner called The Shack, right off campus at the College of Wooster. Hours would pass with packs of cigarettes and gallons of coffee. Good times, good times.

When I lived in St Louis, a placed call the Silver Ballroom opened up, but my first kid was born right around then, and I never had the chance to make the trip down Morganford before we moved back to Ohio. To hear there is a pinball museum in Las Vegas is very exciting news for me. I travel out there every year or two for a convention, and usually can get away for a few hours by myself.

I love pinball.
posted by slogger at 6:22 AM on January 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

I can hear that CLACK of a free game now!
posted by fairmettle at 6:24 AM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Back when I was in high school, there were pinball arcades all over the east side of Indy, and a friend and I would spend entire nights driving from one to the other.

I dearly loved pinball, and you came to know the idiosyncrasies of tables in each place. For instance, you didn't play Fireball at this arcade because the table seemed to be a little steeper, but the Fireball this other arcade played great. The OXO at another arcade paid-out free games like crazy, so you could play for ages on one quarter. etc. etc.

For me, the true golden age of pinball died when tables went from five balls to three balls per game.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:33 AM on January 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

I spent last night reinstalling most of the playfield components on my Drop-A-Card and then figured I'd play a game or two of Cleopatra before bed. I got what my wife likes to call Pinball Brain. Then it was 12:30 and I had to get up at 5:30. It's amazing how my basement disappears around me when I'm playing. It might as well be the arcade or roller rink from 25 years ago.

I never regret all those hours and quarters spent feeding my pinball frenzy. I never regret the time spent learning the exact angles of each machine, or feeling the excitement when my name went up on the high score chart.

That says it all. I don't regret getting 4 hours of sleep last night either.

I thought I was fully in work mode this morning, but then I read this wonderful thing and now I have Pinball Brain.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 9:06 AM on January 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

I've been seeming like I need a ton of sleep lately, for some reason. But sometimes... rarely....

...sometimes I find something that gives me something like Pinball Brain, and that condition melts away. The problem is not a lot of things do that anymore, that I have access to at least. The last thing that really did it for me was watching all of Steven Universe back around the time Lion 3 was the most recent episode, where I started watching it at 2 AM on little sleep and "just one more episode"d all the way through to 2 PM, and was energized enough at that point that I remained awake for hours after.
posted by JHarris at 10:07 AM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oh man, this takes me back. In the late 1970s, when I was in high school in suburban Toronto, my friends and I would go downtown to hit a seedy pinball place every Friday. We would go down a flight of stairs, and then it was pinball heaven.

As in the author's place, people sometimes went there to score drugs - occasionally, someone would sidle up to me and ask me if I wanted to buy anything. I would tell them no and go back to trying to hit the SPECIAL WHEN LIT.

I miss pinball.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 10:08 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

If you love pinball, and are anywhere near the Bay Area (you live in Sac? that's near) you need to visit the Pacific Pinball Museum. It's 15 bucks, all the tables are free, and there are 3-4 rooms of the things, spanning all generations. Yes, the newer (ok, 90s) tables are the most popular (and that room is LOUD), but that just means you can probably play Fireball 5 games in a row. And there's ins and outs so you can make a day of it.
posted by aspo at 10:11 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Seattle represent!

I was delighted to find this place a few years ago. There are several other places around the city with more than one or two machines - Shorty's in Belltown (is that closing along with Mama's?), Full Tilt Ice Cream and Olaf's in Ballard, that joint at the foot of Denny on the Hill. I have a recollection of trying to explain pinball in the 1970s to a Metafilter meetup denizen at at Shorty's about ten years ago, now that I think about it.

The development and easy accessibility of pinball sims is something I very much appreciate, as well, however distinct a gaming experience it may be.
posted by mwhybark at 10:48 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

The last thing that really did it for me was watching all of Steven Universe back around the time Lion 3 was the most recent episode, where I started watching it at 2 AM on little sleep and "just one more episode"d all the way through to 2 PM, and was energized enough at that point that I remained awake for hours after.

Imagine what you could've done with a run of Li'l Butler.
posted by the sobsister at 11:18 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I was interested by the mention of a GoT table at the end of the main link. It comes in three editions, starting at $6k and topping out at $9k. If the game costs $2 and the shipped-and-taxed cost of the $9k edition can be rounded to $10k, my estimate is that just over 31 days of 8 hour full-paid operation will break even.

Cortex, how much walk-by traffic does your basement get?
posted by mwhybark at 11:23 AM on January 26, 2016

For those wanting to get back in to the silver ball, be sure to check the online lists and see if there happens to be any machines nearby.
Pinball Map
Pinside pin map

You might be surprised what you can play within a short drive. And next time you're planning a vacation, there are lots of great pinball arcades out there worth the pilgrimage.

Sincerely,
pinball addict anonymous
posted by Theta States at 11:40 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Oh my stars. Your pinballnovice blog is near the top of my list in my pin bookmarks folder. I don't have the energy to put in the work and time you do on that, but I sure do appreciate that you do. I think I found it when I was rebuilding a Sinbad playfield and it's been very helpful as I repair and build various machines. Nice work on that. Mine would have to be called "so why did I buy another pinball?" but I know the answer to that.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 12:08 PM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

aspo, I was literally on the same block from that place a few months ago when our groom's party was getting our two-bits right before a wedding. Didn't have time to pop in and play due to wedding day schedule and I was really let down.
posted by a halcyon day at 12:45 PM on January 26, 2016

That really captures a time.

Pinball Palace was a small, almost hidden place, tucked between the Jerry Lewis Movie theater and a specialty bra shop.

In my Twilight Zone episode where I go back to my youth, this is where I will go.
posted by bongo_x at 12:56 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh my stars. Your pinballnovice blog is near the top of my list in my pin bookmarks folder. I don't have the energy to put in the work and time you do on that, but I sure do appreciate that you do. I think I found it when I was rebuilding a Sinbad playfield and it's been very helpful as I repair and build various machines. Nice work on that. Mine would have to be called "so why did I buy another pinball?" but I know the answer to that.

Ahhh Sinbad is such a great game! Pure pinball snooker. What is in your collection at the moment?
I barely have time to work on machines though, so my updates are super sporadic. I haven't even posted up about the two latest arrivals in the basement: LOTR and JP.
posted by Theta States at 1:11 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

At the risk of a derail - I currently have Drop-A-Card, Sinbad, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Cleopatra, and boxes of parts. I've also got three empty System 1 cabinets that will have customs in them eventually. I love to play them all but for owning I like 'em old and I like 'em Gottlieb.

My current project is a Time Travel in pop culture based game. It's VERY slow going because I'm designing the playfield, toys, gameplay, electronics, and software from scratch. The only re-use is the cabinet and power supplies and the basics like flipper, pop bumper, target, etc. assemblies because I don't need to reinvent every wheel. I could remake a game or steal the controllers, but I want to prove some kind of a silly point to myself that I can do this. Either I succeed or I'm building a really sweet coffin for myself.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 1:41 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

In my Twilight Zone episode where I go back to my youth, this is where I will go.

"You unlock this door with the key of imagination...."
posted by JHarris at 2:48 PM on January 26, 2016

I grew up near Indy too. The bowling alleys were the place to play pinball in the early 70's as a young kid before arcades were a thing. When the arcades started popping up in the malls, they usually had a row of pinball machines in the back. I remember saving up quarters for a couple months and playing pinball for an hour once. It was the best, even if the attendant looked at me like I was crazy.

When I went to the Metafilter's favorite, the City Museum in St. Louis, we made a side trip to the Silver Ballroom. It was dead because it was the early afternoon. Most of the machine's are double deckers and there's a great selection. If you go to their website, they list what machines they currently have. I'm sure the the couple of people working there were wondering about how we ended up there because we were a good 20+ years older then them but they were nice to us. The bartender even gave me my soda for free because I can't handle drinking at 1PM in the afternoon. It is kind of a dive bar with old punk on the jukebox but we loved it. I'm happy that pinball is becoming popular again.
posted by stray thoughts at 8:45 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]