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The US Waged War on Pinball for Decades · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Uh, this is this is
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Speaker 1: a fun one. This is a neat one. My name
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Speaker 1: is Ben. My name is Noel Ben. You know we
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Speaker 1: only trade in fun. We don't do it well, that's
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Speaker 1: not sure. There there there have been the the odd
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Speaker 1: Nazi related ones or horrible sterilization. Yea, somehow they're still managed.
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Speaker 1: I mean they are ridiculous that that maybe they go
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Speaker 1: against the spirit of the show. But today's episode is
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Speaker 1: squarely within the spirit of the show because it's a
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Speaker 1: really innocuous thing that we all know. Some of us
1:01
Speaker 1: may be better ahead it than others. But I don't
1:04
Speaker 1: think anyone has ever thought of a pinball machine as
1:07
Speaker 1: being like a tool of the devil. Not not in
1:11
Speaker 1: our modern day. No, that's that's true. Uh, most of
1:15
Speaker 1: us these days associate pinball with kind of like a
1:19
Speaker 1: a retro vibe, you know what I mean, the days
1:21
Speaker 1: of arcades, And I've always been fascinated by them. I
1:25
Speaker 1: love them. Uh. Growing up a very eccentric neighbor, family
1:30
Speaker 1: friends collected pinball machines for some reason. That's a cool
1:34
Speaker 1: flexi collector item there. Yeah he had a barn like Pa,
1:40
Speaker 1: you had a pinball barn. Yeah, he had a pinball
1:43
Speaker 1: barn and he had you know, fixed it so that
1:45
Speaker 1: you didn't have to use quarters. So to me, this
1:49
Speaker 1: this guy was kind of a demi god. It did
1:51
Speaker 1: not take much to impress me. But did you did
1:54
Speaker 1: you get regular entry into the pinball barn then? Uh?
1:58
Speaker 1: Huh Yeah? Yeah, like a child's dream come true? Dude,
2:01
Speaker 1: What a cool neighbor. It was a cool guy, it was.
2:03
Speaker 1: It was cool, very very strange dude. But I guess
2:07
Speaker 1: that's a prerequisite for getting a pinball barn in the
2:10
Speaker 1: first place. Secret murderer perhaps or their body is buried
2:13
Speaker 1: beneath the pinball barn, you know. I I don't know,
2:16
Speaker 1: but I thought the guy was so cool that if
2:18
Speaker 1: I had found that out in my head being a
2:21
Speaker 1: very creepy kid, it would have just made him cooler.
2:24
Speaker 1: But still not as cool as our superproducer Casey Pegram,
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Speaker 1: who is here in a digital personhood. Before we hopped
2:35
Speaker 1: on this show, Casey Casey said, look, I'm gonna hang
2:38
Speaker 1: back for a while because I I just got lunch
2:41
Speaker 1: so I mean so one. You know, number one favorite
2:44
Speaker 1: thing people love to hear on a podcast is somebody
2:46
Speaker 1: chewing into the mic mouth sound pegram we have. There
2:51
Speaker 1: was a podcast that came out Canton, which one it was,
2:54
Speaker 1: but one of the features, one of the things they
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Speaker 1: talked about was leaving those sounds in. I don't know
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Speaker 1: about you all, but I have a little bit of
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Speaker 1: miss aphony. I think we all do with certain sounds.
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Speaker 1: But in Casey, I didn't mean to blow up your spot.
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Speaker 1: I just love the idea, the fact that Noel and
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Speaker 1: I are the lunchtime entertainment. So we're gonna do our best.
3:15
Speaker 1: We're gonna do our best to regale you. You guys
3:18
Speaker 1: are very synackable. Yeah, try the veal we're here all
3:21
Speaker 1: week or at least for the next couple hours. Um.
3:24
Speaker 1: You know, I really last thing on the mouth sounds,
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Speaker 1: you guys. UM, there's this filter that we use, or
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Speaker 1: the suite of of plug ins for audio clean up
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Speaker 1: UM that has a mouth sound remover setting and it
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Speaker 1: has this like hell raiser puzzle box button that no
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Speaker 1: one should ever venture near, where it filters out everything
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Speaker 1: but the mouth sounds where you can hear just the
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Speaker 1: mouth sounds that it filters out and it is nightmare fuel,
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Speaker 1: my friends. Let me tell you that is terrifying. I
3:55
Speaker 1: think I just had a spontaneous waking nightmare about that.
3:59
Speaker 1: What's it to nightmare when you're awake? Is it a day? Maare?
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Speaker 1: It's just life, It's just life. There we go that. Well,
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Speaker 1: today we're going to talk about something, uh hopefully a
4:10
Speaker 1: little less dark, but but we'll see where it goes.
4:12
Speaker 1: So pinball. Um, none of the three of us are
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Speaker 1: pinball prodigies, but I think we all enjoy the game
4:20
Speaker 1: and we all, you know, being roughly the same age,
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Speaker 1: we have a similar kind of idea of what pinball is.
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Speaker 1: But it might surprise you to know that once upon
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Speaker 1: a time here in the good old US of a
4:35
Speaker 1: pinball was an enormously controversial thing. Yeah that's right, um,
4:41
Speaker 1: just just really quickly. Uh. The the origins of pinball
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Speaker 1: come from a French table game called bagatelle, and the
4:49
Speaker 1: first ever pinball machine was patent in eight seventy one.
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Speaker 1: But it's not the ones we think of today with
4:55
Speaker 1: the little flippers and the little Yeah, there's a there's
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Speaker 1: a number of ways you can kind of make pinball
5:00
Speaker 1: game more elaborate with targets that you hit and little
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Speaker 1: ways to sink the ball and double balls and all
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Speaker 1: that stuff to blow up your score. Honestly, I never
5:08
Speaker 1: understand how to play a pinball game, like it's always
5:11
Speaker 1: just a mystery to me. I'm just kind of like
5:13
Speaker 1: shooting it at whatever seems cool. But there are definitely
5:16
Speaker 1: people that very much know exactly how to get the
5:18
Speaker 1: perfect score on some of these specific pinball michiganes, which
5:21
Speaker 1: we'll get into it bit, but those have things like
5:23
Speaker 1: flippers where you hit the buttons and you launch the
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Speaker 1: ball with a plunger and shoots the ball up into
5:27
Speaker 1: this kind of rampi encased in glass, you know, table,
5:32
Speaker 1: And then in this early version it was more like
5:34
Speaker 1: what we think of today is maybe pachinko, where you're
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Speaker 1: shooting the ball and then it's popping around on these
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Speaker 1: little little pins hence pinball, I guess, and then it
5:44
Speaker 1: just falls into whatever hole, sort of like ski ball
5:47
Speaker 1: or something, but it goes up to the top and
5:48
Speaker 1: then it bounces down. And that's still very much a
5:51
Speaker 1: thing with pachinko. Not sure if it's exactly one to one,
5:53
Speaker 1: but it's very similar, but in n that's when you
5:57
Speaker 1: started to see the advent of the modern ball machine,
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Speaker 1: where you have those flippers that we're talking about, so
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Speaker 1: you could actually kind of control where the ball went
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Speaker 1: when it rolled back down that hill. If it didn't
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Speaker 1: go right down the middle, which is like the bane
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Speaker 1: of any pinball players existence, it goes to either left
6:12
Speaker 1: of the right side, you have the opportunity to keep
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Speaker 1: the ball in play and flip it around the table
6:16
Speaker 1: with those little flippy boys and that pinball machine. While
6:21
Speaker 1: we would consider it, you know, quote unquote the modern
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Speaker 1: pinball game, it was still very different from what you
6:28
Speaker 1: would see in your average retro arcade today. You could
6:33
Speaker 1: try to tip or tilt the machine in your favor,
6:36
Speaker 1: but you were very much at the mercy of the
6:39
Speaker 1: random movements bounds of the ball. And because of that
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Speaker 1: element of chance, people started gambling on pinball games. So
6:49
Speaker 1: of course, anybody has been to Vegas or Macau or
6:52
Speaker 1: something can assure you that some people will gamble on
6:56
Speaker 1: virtually anything, but gambling on pinball was a cool like
7:00
Speaker 1: it was a cool happening thing to do. People would
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Speaker 1: get prizes all the way from like free games or
7:07
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of stuff you would win at
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Speaker 1: ski ball play chuck e cheese, all the way up
7:11
Speaker 1: to pretty expensive stuff like fine china or jewelry. And
7:17
Speaker 1: soon this affected the reputation of pinball. What we think
7:23
Speaker 1: of is like a fun neat arcade game was seen
7:28
Speaker 1: as this uh machine built for iniquity that catered to
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Speaker 1: like Slee's bags, uh low lives and ne'er do wells. Yeah,
7:39
Speaker 1: And if I'm not mistaken, the reason it's just in
7:41
Speaker 1: the same way like maybe video poker machines, you know,
7:44
Speaker 1: sort of skirt the law in some parts of the
7:46
Speaker 1: country where they can get away with it not being
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Speaker 1: considered illegal gambling by like just handing out tickets or
7:53
Speaker 1: making things like an equivalent of like you know, goods
7:55
Speaker 1: and services, I guess, but they don't actually give you cash, right, Um.
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Speaker 1: And I think that was the deal with early pinball,
8:01
Speaker 1: because you know, gambling was outlawed in in in many places,
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Speaker 1: and um, this was sort of a way around that.
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Speaker 1: But like you said, ben Um, in Chicago in particular,
8:13
Speaker 1: pinball machine started getting associated with organized crime because Chicago,
8:17
Speaker 1: as we know, was a massive, you know, sort of
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Speaker 1: hub of mob um and gangster activity, and these machines
8:26
Speaker 1: were cash based, and it became kind of like a
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Speaker 1: way to make a quick buck by criminals, maybe in
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Speaker 1: these back rooms and these kind of illegal gambling parlors,
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Speaker 1: and it was easy to make a lot of money
8:42
Speaker 1: at scale, like if you were organized uh an organized
8:45
Speaker 1: crime ring and he wanted that income stream, pinball would
8:49
Speaker 1: be a great thing to hop onto. I mean, think
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Speaker 1: about it. So gambling, we would ordinarily think of things
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Speaker 1: like card games, but with these gaming machines or coin
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Speaker 1: opera rated the players did not have to know the
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Speaker 1: rules like a lot of us don't for pinball, and
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Speaker 1: the you know, full disclosure, I have no idea what's
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Speaker 1: going on when I when I pulled that plunger, I'm
9:11
Speaker 1: just holding on. And the unlike a card game, like
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Speaker 1: a mid to high stakes poker game or something, you
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Speaker 1: didn't have to have much money at all to play pinball.
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Speaker 1: And now we see pinball as entertainment, but back then
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Speaker 1: it was just seen as almost like another kind of
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Speaker 1: slot machine. Right, yeah, that's right, and um, it's pretty cool.
9:35
Speaker 1: In the research for this game, our research associate extraordinaire
9:41
Speaker 1: stumbled upon a fantastic article from the Portland Mercury that
9:46
Speaker 1: quotes a girl friend of the show and the network
9:48
Speaker 1: a guy that I've worked with on the podcast called
9:50
Speaker 1: Murder and Oregon, a gentleman by the name of Phil
9:52
Speaker 1: Stanford who wrote a book called Portland Confidential, and it
9:56
Speaker 1: was all about just kind of how Portland's has this
9:59
Speaker 1: reputation of being this sort of shining liberal bastion on
10:03
Speaker 1: a hill, but it actually has has been a a
10:06
Speaker 1: place rife with corruption for a very long time. And
10:08
Speaker 1: that's what Murdering organs about. But he specifically talks about
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Speaker 1: um in an interview he did with the Portland Mercury
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Speaker 1: about how pinball machines were kind of seen as a gateway,
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Speaker 1: uh to gambling, to like more heavy gambling, the way
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Speaker 1: marijuana is today. And he says, quote, the people who
10:24
Speaker 1: wanted to get rid of slot machines went after pinball
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Speaker 1: machines too much in the same way that law enforcement
10:29
Speaker 1: goes after marijuana. UM, So it was kind of perceived
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Speaker 1: as being a gateway into more heavy vices and types
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Speaker 1: of gambling. It reminds me of that uh oh, where
10:42
Speaker 1: is that song from the musical Trouble. It's all about
10:46
Speaker 1: playing pool? Oh, that's the music man music man, where
10:49
Speaker 1: were the Knickerbocker's trouble. Yeah, with a capital T that
10:53
Speaker 1: rhymes with P that stands for pool. I love that.
10:57
Speaker 1: Seth McFarland from Family Guy is a great cover of
10:59
Speaker 1: that was weird, but but you're you're absolutely right it was.
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Speaker 1: It was seen kind of as a gateway to gambling
11:08
Speaker 1: into wickedness and sin. And part of this public perception
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Speaker 1: I think came about because people were teetotalers during the
11:16
Speaker 1: age of Prohibition needed something else to focus on. So
11:20
Speaker 1: we know that, we know that law enforcement in Portland's,
11:23
Speaker 1: Chicago other places had always kind of given pinball the
11:27
Speaker 1: side eye because they knew it was connected to gambling. Uh.
11:30
Speaker 1: Churches school boards also said, you know, this is making
11:35
Speaker 1: your kids bad. It seems like fun, but little Johnny
11:38
Speaker 1: is gonna steal a nickel. The next thing you know,
11:40
Speaker 1: he's gonna hold up a bank. They're skipping school. Uh,
11:44
Speaker 1: they're gonna go hungry. These kids are starving to death
11:47
Speaker 1: because they keep putting their money into the devil's balls.
11:52
Speaker 1: I'm just making things up. I like it. I like it. No,
11:55
Speaker 1: it's true. Um and this Alice Obscure as a great
12:00
Speaker 1: article about this called the war on pinball, and they
12:03
Speaker 1: categorized these folks, um, these anti fund types as crusading
12:07
Speaker 1: do gooders, which I love because you're right. Then they
12:10
Speaker 1: needed something else to spoil people's good times with and
12:14
Speaker 1: and this was what it was. Uh. And so it
12:17
Speaker 1: did leave this outcry and this you know, this rallying
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Speaker 1: around pinball being sort of like you know, doorway to
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Speaker 1: iniquity led to pinball being banned a lot of cities,
12:28
Speaker 1: especially New York. And that specifically because New York had
12:31
Speaker 1: this mayor you've probably heard of. Uh, it's got a
12:34
Speaker 1: pretty big airport named after him, Mayor fear Ello LaGuardia. Um.
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Speaker 1: He was a massive anti pinball guy. He hated the game.
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Speaker 1: And in nine three he came into office with this
12:48
Speaker 1: anti crime, anti mob kind of you know platform, and
12:53
Speaker 1: he has this great quote where he he self proclaimedly
12:56
Speaker 1: wanted to quote drive the bums out of town. Yeah.
13:00
Speaker 1: He got rid of the illegal slot machines, had quite
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Speaker 1: a few of them dumped into the Hudson River in
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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, just after he's elected to let the
13:10
Speaker 1: public and the mafia know that he meant business. And
13:14
Speaker 1: so mobsters replaced the slot machines with pinball machines, and
13:19
Speaker 1: he was like, you're not getting past me. As a
13:22
Speaker 1: matter of fact. In Free for All News, we have
13:24
Speaker 1: a great quote from LaGuardia where he says the pinball
13:27
Speaker 1: machine racket is a direct out growth of the slot
13:30
Speaker 1: machine racket. And as was the case, whether it's evil
13:33
Speaker 1: parents is dominated by interest heavily tainted with criminality. There
13:37
Speaker 1: was no difference between the two rackets other than the
13:40
Speaker 1: more subtle and furtive methods of robbing the public. It's
13:43
Speaker 1: twenty million dollar profits taken from the pockets of school
13:47
Speaker 1: children in the form of nickels and dimes given to
13:50
Speaker 1: them as lunch money. Like this was his passion project.
13:53
Speaker 1: Almost yeah, and it's because, like we were saying earlier,
13:56
Speaker 1: I mean, gambling was illegal. These slot machines were a
13:59
Speaker 1: lead goal. And because pinball machines sort of occupied this
14:03
Speaker 1: gray area. Um, but kids were allowed to play them.
14:07
Speaker 1: But they had like a payout. You could win um
14:09
Speaker 1: by you know, dumping all your nickels in, you know,
14:11
Speaker 1: your lunch money or whatever. Um. God forbid the bullies
14:14
Speaker 1: that like, you know, beat up other kids to steal
14:17
Speaker 1: their nickels and dimes, you know, that. You know, that image,
14:19
Speaker 1: classic image of like the bully kid holding the kid
14:22
Speaker 1: up by his ankles and shaking him until all his
14:24
Speaker 1: nickels fell out, That's what I'm picturing. And then just
14:26
Speaker 1: scooping all that up and going right to the arcade. Um.
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Speaker 1: You know, and those kids are already on a on
14:33
Speaker 1: a very dire path to criminality. So this is just
14:36
Speaker 1: enforcing that. Um. And and La Guardia wasn't standing for it. Um,
14:40
Speaker 1: You're right, Ben, he had already had the slot machines
14:44
Speaker 1: dumped in the river, and next he had his sight
14:46
Speaker 1: set on the sort of de facto gambling machines. And
14:50
Speaker 1: as if that moral panic angle wasn't enough to get
14:55
Speaker 1: people on his side, just in case they also start,
15:00
Speaker 1: Lombardy and his team also started rolling out anti pinball statements. Uh,
15:07
Speaker 1: in a very weird flex. When the Japanese military at
15:10
Speaker 1: the time bombed Pearl Harbor in one December seven, Mayor
15:14
Speaker 1: LaGuardia went patriotic with it. It was like, not only
15:18
Speaker 1: is pinball morally terrible and the cause of starving children
15:22
Speaker 1: and criminals, but uh, but also it's a waste of
15:26
Speaker 1: America's valuable resources. We're wasting copper, aluminum and nickel making
15:33
Speaker 1: these devil ball machines, when when we could be sending
15:37
Speaker 1: that to our our boys on the front lines, right
15:40
Speaker 1: to make guns and bullets and weapons of war, which
15:44
Speaker 1: is so much better for the world. I do love
15:47
Speaker 1: too that he referred to the pinball machines as insidious
15:51
Speaker 1: nickel steelers. I think that should be the name of
15:54
Speaker 1: a sports team. I don't know, maybe a band, or
15:57
Speaker 1: maybe a comedy troupe, who knows. H So LaGuardia had
16:06
Speaker 1: the city council on his side, he had public opinion
16:08
Speaker 1: on his side because he's done such a good job
16:10
Speaker 1: at making the case for this and tying it to
16:13
Speaker 1: our precious resources. And as we know, during this time
16:15
Speaker 1: like it was important to be able to you know,
16:18
Speaker 1: fund the war effort. And it was easy because patriot
16:21
Speaker 1: patriotism was rampant. After an event like the bombing of
16:24
Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor, an attack on you know, American soil, we
16:27
Speaker 1: have to do everything we can, you know, pull in
16:29
Speaker 1: together to defeat this enemy, this common enemy. And so
16:34
Speaker 1: he got the city council to approve a ban on
16:37
Speaker 1: pinball machines in public places, um even ones that didn't
16:41
Speaker 1: use the payout system or any kind of you know,
16:44
Speaker 1: even like with of gambling. That just the machines themselves
16:47
Speaker 1: were enough because they were a waste of time. Uh,
16:50
Speaker 1: they were breeding this idea of criminality. They were a
16:53
Speaker 1: gateway into more serious gambling. And they were a waste
16:57
Speaker 1: of materials. Yeah. Absolutely. And when LaGuardia and the various
17:03
Speaker 1: police chiefs got together with the press and smashed pinball
17:07
Speaker 1: machines with sledgehammers, they put their money where their mouth was.
17:12
Speaker 1: You know. They dumped this stuff into barges bound for
17:15
Speaker 1: Long Island Sound. And just like that Mental Floss article
17:19
Speaker 1: we referenced earlier mentions. Uh, the New York Times got
17:23
Speaker 1: ahold of this headline and they noted that cutting down
17:28
Speaker 1: pinball manufacturing at least was making a meaningful contribution to
17:33
Speaker 1: the war effort. The military got ten thousand pounds of
17:37
Speaker 1: scrap metal courtesy of pinball machines, and that was enough
17:41
Speaker 1: if you did the math to make four two thousand
17:43
Speaker 1: pound bombs. It's very it's the opposite of swords to plowshares. Really,
17:49
Speaker 1: it's super is And I love this little little nugget
17:52
Speaker 1: here from Mental Floss and how Pearl Harbor led to
17:56
Speaker 1: the War on pinball. You know how pinball machines have
17:58
Speaker 1: those like legs, it's like a a table, and then
18:01
Speaker 1: they have these legs and you could presumably they're probably
18:03
Speaker 1: not welded on, they're probably screwed on in some way.
18:06
Speaker 1: And you know, there's four of them. And they used
18:08
Speaker 1: each of those four legs for pinball machines, uh, to
18:12
Speaker 1: make them into billy clubs, uh for police. So it's yeah,
18:17
Speaker 1: it's very interesting, uh dynamic here Seligarty is leading this,
18:22
Speaker 1: you know, war on pinball single handedly. You know, it's
18:26
Speaker 1: like the War on Christmas, only it's no, it's not
18:29
Speaker 1: a good comparison at all. Forget I said anything, but
18:32
Speaker 1: it's true. He essentially had successfully had pinball band It
18:37
Speaker 1: was really portrayed as being this menace. And then places
18:40
Speaker 1: soon followed suit, like major cities around the country like California, Chicago,
18:46
Speaker 1: which is actually where a lot of the pinball machines
18:47
Speaker 1: were manufactured. I didn't realize that, uh, And laws went
18:52
Speaker 1: on the books that either outright banned or limited the
18:56
Speaker 1: use of pinball machines to certain places. Yeah, they were
19:00
Speaker 1: really they were really cracking down. Let's see what was
19:03
Speaker 1: it Los Angeles, New Orleans, Chicago, Milwaukee. They followed New
19:09
Speaker 1: York's leading banning pinball as much as possible. Some other
19:12
Speaker 1: cities started to heavily regulate it, like if you are
19:15
Speaker 1: a kid and you're uh supposed to be in school,
19:18
Speaker 1: you can't be found playing pinball during school hours. And
19:22
Speaker 1: that's why, all of a sudden, like the counter culture
19:27
Speaker 1: embraces pinball, the rebels without a cause. You know, they've
19:32
Speaker 1: got the leather jackets, the cigarettes rolled up in the
19:35
Speaker 1: short sleeve T shirt, grease r pompadours, and and they've
19:39
Speaker 1: got the pinball fever. There's a bunch of low life
19:43
Speaker 1: layabouts if you ask me, no, but that's certainly the
19:47
Speaker 1: way they were seeing by the folks that were against this,
19:51
Speaker 1: this whole thing. I do want to point out something
19:53
Speaker 1: that I think is interesting. It's always interesting to hear
19:55
Speaker 1: how Washington, d C. Throughout history has maintained sort of
19:58
Speaker 1: like a pretty progress of approach, you know, being one
20:02
Speaker 1: of the first places to legalize marijuana. When you think
20:05
Speaker 1: of it as being like the seat of government, but
20:07
Speaker 1: it always has been super progressive. And Washington, C. Was
20:10
Speaker 1: one of the places that didn't outright ban pinball playing. Um,
20:14
Speaker 1: But they just did what you said, Ben, They limited
20:16
Speaker 1: it and made sure that kids couldn't be found playing
20:18
Speaker 1: them school. But I also think that's sort of like
20:20
Speaker 1: aren't isn't Aren't kids not supposed to be caught out
20:22
Speaker 1: of school? Period? Does that is like add to the
20:25
Speaker 1: badness of the of the behavior, Let's give them like
20:27
Speaker 1: another strike. I don't know how that works, yea, is
20:30
Speaker 1: it one of those tricky things? Like uh, in areas
20:32
Speaker 1: where marijuana is decriminalized, is getting a ticket for it
20:36
Speaker 1: up to the discretion of the officer? What happens when
20:39
Speaker 1: they're out for summer? Because I mean, uh, I always
20:43
Speaker 1: said mean, But could like a crotchety uh law enforcement
20:47
Speaker 1: agent have prosecuted a kid anyway because they would have
20:50
Speaker 1: been in school if school was happening. I don't know. Yeah,
20:53
Speaker 1: like Officer Krupkey, you know, like it wasn't he from Greece?
20:56
Speaker 1: Doesn't they say Officer Krupkey krup you because the research boys, No,
21:01
Speaker 1: it is the whole song and he's he's like the
21:04
Speaker 1: kind of like you know, old school square beat cop
21:07
Speaker 1: that doesn't understand the these crazy kids and they're greaser
21:11
Speaker 1: ways and their pinball playing. There's something weird here, though
21:15
Speaker 1: I don't know. This is one thing that fascinates me
21:17
Speaker 1: about history, because we'll will never know the thoughts of
21:23
Speaker 1: the anti pinball crowd on this, but it seems like
21:26
Speaker 1: all the restrictions that they put into place in cities
21:30
Speaker 1: across the US played a big role in at least
21:34
Speaker 1: temporarily turning pinball into exactly what they were afraid it
21:40
Speaker 1: would be. You know what I mean? Because now now
21:43
Speaker 1: that the game is moving increasingly off of main Street,
21:48
Speaker 1: it's starting to pop up in seed to your places,
21:52
Speaker 1: and you're finding it insect shops. Uh and and Hollywood
21:57
Speaker 1: picks this up and it puts it in the zeitgeist
22:00
Speaker 1: mass media. If you saw a rebellious character in a film,
22:04
Speaker 1: and you know, the forties or fifties or something, then
22:07
Speaker 1: the quick way to establish them as a as a seedy,
22:12
Speaker 1: uh untrustworthy person was to just have a scene in
22:15
Speaker 1: there where they're hanging out around a pinball machine, they're
22:18
Speaker 1: playing a pinball machine, and then they're like, all right,
22:21
Speaker 1: you're ready for the murder exactly. That's that's a very
22:25
Speaker 1: short walk from pinball to to murder to to homicide.
22:29
Speaker 1: I love that, and then you know, it's sort of
22:31
Speaker 1: like reefer madness. You know, it's this idea of creating
22:34
Speaker 1: this narrative around a thing that in and of itself
22:37
Speaker 1: is pretty innocuous. But when you start to like connect
22:40
Speaker 1: it to all these other elements and behaviors, people focus
22:44
Speaker 1: in on the thing, you know, as being like, oh,
22:47
Speaker 1: it's like it's it's like heavy metal music, like with
22:50
Speaker 1: Tipper Gore and all that stuff, you know, blaming Marilyn
22:53
Speaker 1: Manson for kids being basically just like moody brooding kids. Yeah,
23:00
Speaker 1: this reputation continued for decades through the fifties and the sixties. Again,
23:07
Speaker 1: the I really feel like the anti pinball crowd shot
23:10
Speaker 1: themselves in the foot, or they've they tilted their own machine,
23:15
Speaker 1: I should say, because they created a self fulfilling prophecy.
23:19
Speaker 1: They turned pinball into the thing they feared it always was.
23:24
Speaker 1: So the flipper comes out. We talked about that in
23:26
Speaker 1: the invention of pinball. The flipper comes out. And now
23:29
Speaker 1: the game is no longer just to pull the plunger.
23:32
Speaker 1: Game of chance nowadays a test of reflexes and if
23:36
Speaker 1: you practice, you can become better. So pinball becomes a skill.
23:42
Speaker 1: Even though people I think grew a little less hot
23:47
Speaker 1: headed about the connection to gambling in the nineteen fifties,
23:50
Speaker 1: and a lot of that having to do with the
23:52
Speaker 1: flipper turning pinball into a game of skill nationwide. If
23:56
Speaker 1: you asked the average US resident at the time time,
24:00
Speaker 1: they would still be kind of like, pinball's naughty. What
24:05
Speaker 1: do you know, pinball's naughty. You definitely don't want your
24:08
Speaker 1: daughter in a pinball hall, which is a phrase I
24:11
Speaker 1: made up, may as well have been an opium den,
24:13
Speaker 1: you know, for all intents and purposes. Ben really quickly,
24:16
Speaker 1: when did the flipper come out again? And this, I know,
24:18
Speaker 1: this like sort of like made it harder to gamble
24:21
Speaker 1: with because it then became more of a game of skill.
24:23
Speaker 1: What year was that? Okay, so this really is like
24:27
Speaker 1: right on the cusp of the greaser culture, like right
24:30
Speaker 1: in that kind of like pocket of history. That's really interesting.
24:34
Speaker 1: So they weren't so much worried about robbing the children
24:37
Speaker 1: of their nickels. Well, they still could have been, because
24:39
Speaker 1: it was a time suck. You know, it's sort of
24:41
Speaker 1: like a frivolous waste of money, but with the gambling
24:44
Speaker 1: part removed at least it was a little more accepted legally,
24:49
Speaker 1: but it still had kind of a bad rap, right,
24:51
Speaker 1: Is that about where we're at? Yeah, yeah, I mean
24:53
Speaker 1: history doesn't always repeat, but it certainly has a rhyming
24:57
Speaker 1: structure to it. Right. So, so lot of the arguments,
25:01
Speaker 1: especially the more sensationalistic ones against pinball and against children
25:06
Speaker 1: playing pinball, I feel like they're exactly the same as
25:10
Speaker 1: other later arguments about video games, like yeah, I get it,
25:13
Speaker 1: I have a PlayStation. I know it's a time vampire.
25:17
Speaker 1: I I understand that. But there were there were being
25:20
Speaker 1: alarm as there was still this kind of moral panic.
25:23
Speaker 1: And uh, in fact, this became part of a political
25:28
Speaker 1: strategy used against John F. Kennedy himself during the nineteen
25:33
Speaker 1: sixty presidential election. Kennedy was a Democrat and Republican operatives.
25:38
Speaker 1: His opponents leaked a group photograph of Kennedy and some
25:43
Speaker 1: friends and uh, he is at a he is with
25:48
Speaker 1: someone who's the silent partner in an Indiana pinball business. Gasp, horror, Oh,
25:56
Speaker 1: the horror. Yeah, And and this was used, like, you know,
26:02
Speaker 1: as as a compromise against him, essentially right, as though
26:06
Speaker 1: they had like a sex taper. Think about what goes
26:09
Speaker 1: down as like, you know, smear campaign stuff. Today, this
26:13
Speaker 1: is so tame it makes me laugh. I yearned for
26:16
Speaker 1: the years when a picture with a pinball machine was
26:19
Speaker 1: enough to get you out of a race. Yeah. Yeah,
26:22
Speaker 1: I could see that. I could hear the conversation in
26:25
Speaker 1: households across America where they're like, well, you know, Kennedy's
26:29
Speaker 1: Kennedy comes from a bootlegging family and he's a papist
26:33
Speaker 1: and a pinballer. I hear the pinballer God forbid, Yeah,
26:37
Speaker 1: and and tangentially, this is just interesting. Um. There was
26:41
Speaker 1: a guy named Jim Garrison who was a distrie attorney
26:44
Speaker 1: of Orleans Parish who was like a kind of Kennedy
26:48
Speaker 1: conspiracy truther. And he actually was indicted in nineteen seventy one.
26:53
Speaker 1: UM suspected and convicted of accepting bribes to protect illegal
26:58
Speaker 1: pinball gaming in New Orleans. But he was he was
27:02
Speaker 1: found not guilty. Yeah, what were saying is pinball was
27:05
Speaker 1: a big deal. It's tough to part this because the
27:08
Speaker 1: truth of the matter is, yes, pinball was part of
27:13
Speaker 1: the world of gambling, in the world of organized crime
27:16
Speaker 1: for a time. It itself was just not an inherently
27:20
Speaker 1: uh sinful, wicked thing. It wasn't a vice. But wait,
27:25
Speaker 1: you're saying, how on earth did pinball go from being
27:29
Speaker 1: like visual shorthand of a of a bad character and
27:33
Speaker 1: film too, something that's seen as like cute even someone
27:37
Speaker 1: kitchen today that that switch occurs in the nineteen seventies. Uh,
27:45
Speaker 1: for a couple of reasons. I believe it was seventy
27:47
Speaker 1: For the Supreme Court in California apparently was having a
27:53
Speaker 1: slow day. Uh. They ruled that pinball was officially more
27:58
Speaker 1: a game of skill and chance, and therefore it did
28:02
Speaker 1: not qualify as a gambling device. So this overturned the
28:07
Speaker 1: prohibition of pinball in Los Angeles. Very cool, big win
28:12
Speaker 1: for pinball there, and then perfect timing. About five years later,
28:16
Speaker 1: the zeitgeist really caught up with pinball um in a
28:20
Speaker 1: big way. Everyone knows the Who's rock opera Tommy about
28:25
Speaker 1: a pinball Wizard, the titular character of the famous Who
28:29
Speaker 1: song Pinball Wizard Um, and I love it. There's a
28:32
Speaker 1: there's a line in the movie or in the song.
28:34
Speaker 1: Maybe I've never fully known all the lyrics of the song,
28:36
Speaker 1: but apparently he's described as having crazy flipper fingers and
28:40
Speaker 1: in the film. He's played by Elton John. He's wearing
28:42
Speaker 1: these amazing platform shoes, super glam and it takes Pinball
28:48
Speaker 1: out of the realm of like, you know, No Good
28:50
Speaker 1: Nicks and into the realm of like glam rock, you know, superstardom.
28:55
Speaker 1: Um and kids ate it up. Yeah, I was gonna
28:58
Speaker 1: ask you about that too. Do you think that there's
29:00
Speaker 1: a little bit of a little bit of extra legitimacy
29:04
Speaker 1: because this was coming from the UK? You know what
29:08
Speaker 1: I mean? Baby, Yeah, that's certainly a good point. I mean,
29:11
Speaker 1: there was a certain mysticism applied to like, you know,
29:16
Speaker 1: British rock and and and bands like the Who and
29:19
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and all that stuff. Uh,
29:22
Speaker 1: there were obviously American equivalent sort of but not not
29:26
Speaker 1: quite as as mystical and like you know, um looming
29:30
Speaker 1: large and the zeitgeis to some of these British bands. Uh,
29:33
Speaker 1: that's very obviously kicked off with the Beatles in the
29:35
Speaker 1: British invasion and all of that. So it's a really
29:37
Speaker 1: good point. So yeah, I'm wondering if part of that
29:41
Speaker 1: goes back to the uh, the longstanding American inferiority complex
29:47
Speaker 1: about British things like our story about the actors and
29:51
Speaker 1: the Shakespeare riots. You know, so maybe that played some
29:55
Speaker 1: small role. But either way, putting the providence of Tommy
29:59
Speaker 1: a saw Hide, we know that it did exactly what
30:02
Speaker 1: you described, nol. It put pinball a little bit further
30:06
Speaker 1: away from its seedy reputation of the past and at
30:09
Speaker 1: bit closer to mainstream because Tommy was successful and people
30:13
Speaker 1: love the musical. Who doesn't love a good musical? And
30:16
Speaker 1: then New York is in the midst of a bankruptcy
30:21
Speaker 1: crisis yet again, that's one year later, that's ninety six. Uh,
30:26
Speaker 1: the city council said, hey, maybe we should get rid
30:29
Speaker 1: of that pinball band because movie theaters, bars, hotels, they
30:35
Speaker 1: can all be making some serious coins, some literal serious coin,
30:40
Speaker 1: and uh not everybody was on board. There was one
30:43
Speaker 1: councilman from Queens who said, look, it appears the pinball
30:47
Speaker 1: is innocent, but it will bring rampant vice and gambling
30:51
Speaker 1: back to the city. So they had to they had
30:54
Speaker 1: to try to prove to everyone, to the pinball skeptics,
30:57
Speaker 1: that this was definitely no fooling, a real game of skill.
31:09
Speaker 1: So enter Roger Sharpe. Um. This kid who well, I say, kid,
31:15
Speaker 1: but he was an adult at this point. But he
31:17
Speaker 1: had learned to play pinball very skillfully while he was
31:21
Speaker 1: in college. Um on like black market pinball machines in
31:27
Speaker 1: New York, you know, because they were they were against
31:29
Speaker 1: the law, so he had to hone his skills and
31:31
Speaker 1: like these secret back room pinball parlors or whatever. Um.
31:36
Speaker 1: And there's actually a book from nineteen seventy seven that
31:39
Speaker 1: he wrote called Pinball Exclavation Mark um and uh. He
31:45
Speaker 1: was a magazine editor by you know, by day and
31:48
Speaker 1: a pinball wizard by by nine, because that's when you
31:50
Speaker 1: play pinball is at night. It's definitely a nighttime game.
31:53
Speaker 1: And on April two of nineteen seventy six, he stood
31:57
Speaker 1: in front of a pinball machine in the New York
31:59
Speaker 1: City Council Chambers and essentially demonstrated his skill in in
32:08
Speaker 1: on the machine and showing how he could win. He could,
32:11
Speaker 1: you know, play better than other people, as simple as that.
32:15
Speaker 1: And he talked about some of his little tactics. And
32:18
Speaker 1: I don't understand this fully, I guess he says, if
32:20
Speaker 1: I pull the plunger back just right, the ball will
32:22
Speaker 1: go down the center lane. So he's explaining to like
32:25
Speaker 1: pinball nubes, to just trying to demystify the thing and
32:28
Speaker 1: show that, like we were talking about the beginning of
32:30
Speaker 1: the show, you have to bounce the ball around using
32:33
Speaker 1: those flippers, and it's about aim, and it's about trajectory
32:36
Speaker 1: and how far you pull the plunger back. If you
32:38
Speaker 1: just pull it back a little bit, it will go
32:40
Speaker 1: a certain distance, etcetera. Um. And he seems to make
32:44
Speaker 1: a pretty darn good case for it. Yeah, Yeah, there's
32:47
Speaker 1: a really important thing that happens here. It's strange how
32:50
Speaker 1: history hinges on such small moments. The fact that Roger
32:55
Speaker 1: Sharp was able to in front of people predict where
32:59
Speaker 1: the ball would go based on his actions. The fact
33:03
Speaker 1: that he was able to do that was huge and
33:06
Speaker 1: persuading people that he wasn't just you know, rolling the dice.
33:10
Speaker 1: We have to wonder what would have happened if he
33:12
Speaker 1: had whipped it, If they had said, well, this sharp
33:15
Speaker 1: kid is lying to us, then maybe there wouldn't have
33:20
Speaker 1: been an overturn of the band. But when Sharp managed
33:24
Speaker 1: to accurately predict that shot he took, the council was persuaded.
33:29
Speaker 1: They got rid of that three decade long pinball band
33:34
Speaker 1: and they were going to issue I think it was
33:36
Speaker 1: a fifty dollar licensing fee on every pinball machine in
33:40
Speaker 1: the city, which would bring them an estimated one point
33:44
Speaker 1: five million dollars. So it also goes a long way
33:48
Speaker 1: to helping their bankruptcy crisis. It's nuts thinking a single
33:52
Speaker 1: a single shot. And once New York rolls this out again,
33:57
Speaker 1: it's kind of like marijuana. Remember once call A Rotto
34:01
Speaker 1: was selling marijuana. We're making so much money off of it,
34:05
Speaker 1: and it became easier for other parts of the country
34:08
Speaker 1: to uh to try to pursue the same thing, just
34:11
Speaker 1: because they were following the money. And that's what happened
34:13
Speaker 1: with a lot of other cities. And it's it's not
34:16
Speaker 1: it's nineteen. It's just like the next year, right, nineteen
34:19
Speaker 1: seventy seven, Chicago officially legalizes pinball. Imagine. Uh, I'm totally
34:26
Speaker 1: making this up as unfounded speculation. I don't know if
34:29
Speaker 1: we have a sound cue for that yet, but I
34:44
Speaker 1: just loved the idea of like some mafia so sitting
34:48
Speaker 1: around and their local uh, their local restaurant or front business,
34:52
Speaker 1: they get the news about the pin ball and they
34:54
Speaker 1: get up and they started like dancing and they roll
34:58
Speaker 1: out the machines from the back. Well you have to
35:01
Speaker 1: remember too, this was like right at the cusp of
35:04
Speaker 1: like arcade machines coming into into prominence, things like pac
35:08
Speaker 1: Man and Space Invaders and Paperboy and all of those
35:12
Speaker 1: games that some of them are still a lot of
35:13
Speaker 1: fun and do require skill. Some of them have not
35:15
Speaker 1: aged well, but that was creating a demand for arcades
35:21
Speaker 1: and with that, um, these kind of gussied up versions
35:24
Speaker 1: of the old school pinball machines that now had TV
35:27
Speaker 1: and movie tie ins like the ones we see today
35:29
Speaker 1: like the Adams Family Pinball Machinery, Indiana Jones or whatever.
35:33
Speaker 1: Unclear as to how you're playing of the pinball machine
35:36
Speaker 1: makes you feel participatory in any kind of movie plot line.
35:39
Speaker 1: They try, they try to force those little bits down
35:41
Speaker 1: your throat, but again I never know how do I
35:44
Speaker 1: do the thing? How do I like save the Galaxy
35:47
Speaker 1: in the Guardians of the Galaxy pinball machine. But there's
35:49
Speaker 1: still a lot of fun um and there absolutely are competitions,
35:53
Speaker 1: and I think there's like a pinball museum. Then, didn't
35:56
Speaker 1: you go I have not been to the museum. I
35:59
Speaker 1: think it's is it in Vegas. Who went? Was it
36:02
Speaker 1: you Casey? I think it was Ramsey? Yep, yep, one
36:04
Speaker 1: of our one of our colleagues. Here a ridiculous history.
36:10
Speaker 1: Great guy Ramsey went to the Pinball Machine Museum. I
36:14
Speaker 1: remember that because I was bummed I wasn't able to
36:16
Speaker 1: make it. But but it's still there. I think you
36:21
Speaker 1: should be able to visit it there. There's a great
36:24
Speaker 1: documentary on Netflix about the early days of these arcade
36:29
Speaker 1: games high score one that um that maybe yet Yeah,
36:34
Speaker 1: the creation of the early electronic based games, right uh.
36:39
Speaker 1: And what's fascinating about this is at the same time
36:44
Speaker 1: pinball was gaining legitimacy, it was running up against these
36:49
Speaker 1: electronic games, these digital games. And so you would go
36:53
Speaker 1: into an arcade and you would see this more analog
36:56
Speaker 1: pinball set up, but then you would also see video
36:59
Speaker 1: game games. Audiences loved both, by the way, but people
37:03
Speaker 1: who own the arcades light to the electronics stuff. Because
37:07
Speaker 1: there were fewer repairs, they didn't take up as much
37:10
Speaker 1: floor space. You can pack more stuff in. And that's
37:15
Speaker 1: why you know, in the twenty one century, pinball is
37:19
Speaker 1: becoming uh, increasingly rare. It's weirder and weirder to find
37:24
Speaker 1: a machine, but I love a man. It's like high
37:26
Speaker 1: speed putt putt on LSD. I don't know I'm doing.
37:30
Speaker 1: You hit the right ball in the right place and
37:33
Speaker 1: it's like propel. So yeah, but it has become more
37:37
Speaker 1: niche kind of where there are like you know, in
37:40
Speaker 1: bigger cities and like I went to one in Brooklyn.
37:43
Speaker 1: Actually that was was really funny. It's actually a combination
37:46
Speaker 1: laundromat and pinball emporium. Uh And it's got a little
37:49
Speaker 1: bar and they just serve like beer and sold you.
37:52
Speaker 1: Very strange but small place packed full of pinball machine
37:55
Speaker 1: is very popular, but it has become more of like
37:57
Speaker 1: a hipster thing or like you out, like what's old
38:01
Speaker 1: is new again. They're like people that like Vinyl records.
38:04
Speaker 1: They're like old school stuff. Not not to say that
38:06
Speaker 1: sound like a grandpa. Vinyl is obviously incredible and going
38:10
Speaker 1: through huge resurgence and it absolutely, uh objectively sounds great.
38:14
Speaker 1: But there is that kind of niche like people that
38:17
Speaker 1: only want to play any s games, or people that
38:20
Speaker 1: like you know, insist on having a Nintendo sixty four,
38:22
Speaker 1: all these like old school systems. Pinball kind of occupies
38:25
Speaker 1: that niche, and I know they still make new ones,
38:28
Speaker 1: but I have a feeling it's probably much less so
38:30
Speaker 1: because you're right, then they're very They're like clockwork. You know,
38:33
Speaker 1: there's all these moving parts and you have to get
38:36
Speaker 1: them serviced. And you know what a nightmare that must
38:39
Speaker 1: be when you could just literally have a firmware update
38:41
Speaker 1: for your arcade machine and then you're done. Have you
38:44
Speaker 1: ever seen the innerds like the bat? Have you ever
38:47
Speaker 1: opened the back of a pinball machine? See what looks like?
38:49
Speaker 1: Oh but it must it must just be incredibly complex.
38:52
Speaker 1: It's like steampunk man, at least based on my memories.
38:56
Speaker 1: You're You're right, it is. It has acquired a new
39:00
Speaker 1: life as a kind of novelty. There was for a
39:04
Speaker 1: time just this great bar that I miss here in
39:06
Speaker 1: Atlanta called Joystick. I loved it because it was this
39:10
Speaker 1: is this very nerdy adult moment for me when I
39:13
Speaker 1: was like, Wow, how strange life is from the pinball
39:18
Speaker 1: barn to the pin bar. I guess it's true. And
39:24
Speaker 1: if any listeners, I'm sure you already know about this place.
39:27
Speaker 1: But one of the coolest ones I've ever been to
39:29
Speaker 1: is in Los Angeles. It's called Button Masher and they
39:33
Speaker 1: have like every cabinet machine you could ever think of,
39:37
Speaker 1: but also have a really like a whole room. I
39:39
Speaker 1: think it's nothing but pinball machines, and um, it's it's
39:42
Speaker 1: it's quite a large place. It's it's really cool. If
39:44
Speaker 1: you haven't been there, I recommend checking it out. There's
39:46
Speaker 1: another great win in Chicago I went to a number
39:49
Speaker 1: of years ago. There's one I didn't go to in Portland.
39:53
Speaker 1: I'm not going to name names. I didn't go because
39:56
Speaker 1: when I was in Portland, I was looking for a
39:58
Speaker 1: place to go and I saw this and I thought, oh,
40:00
Speaker 1: you know, a barcade and uh. I started reading the
40:03
Speaker 1: reviews and they were like, watch out. This is a
40:05
Speaker 1: hub of white supremacists, which I was not expecting from
40:09
Speaker 1: a pinball place. But you know, you never know. Uh.
40:14
Speaker 1: If you are a pinball fan, if you are a
40:16
Speaker 1: pinball player and you want to relive those glory days
40:23
Speaker 1: of winning cash and prizes in the world of pinball,
40:28
Speaker 1: then why not consider joining forces with what's called the
40:31
Speaker 1: International Flipper Pinball Association. They're the ones who run the
40:35
Speaker 1: World Pinball Player Ranking, which is a thing, and there's
40:39
Speaker 1: serious money here. There are almost two thousand pinball tournaments
40:43
Speaker 1: every year across the US, and they offer more than
40:46
Speaker 1: one million dollars in cash and prizes, as as noted
40:52
Speaker 1: by by this great article in History dot com Boy
40:55
Speaker 1: Mayor La Guardia would be steamed about that. Yeah, absolutely,
40:59
Speaker 1: rolling grave And if you know, for whatever reason you
41:02
Speaker 1: you would like to do a little pinball ask gambling.
41:06
Speaker 1: Uh Pachinko in Japan and elsewhere in the world still
41:10
Speaker 1: very very popular, and games like Plinko that you do
41:13
Speaker 1: you shoot the ball up and and it shoots up
41:15
Speaker 1: into this it's upright. Actually, I don't know if that's
41:17
Speaker 1: what the I think probably the original pinball machines that
41:20
Speaker 1: we're talking about, we're still like laying out like a table,
41:23
Speaker 1: but these are upright and you shoot the ball and
41:25
Speaker 1: then it or maybe you push a button and it
41:26
Speaker 1: drops down and then it like ping bing ming mingming,
41:29
Speaker 1: makes a little sounds and it goes down and then
41:31
Speaker 1: you know, it lands in a certain little slot at
41:33
Speaker 1: the bottom, and that's how you you make your your money.
41:35
Speaker 1: Um Nicolas Cage actually has done a fantastic series of
41:40
Speaker 1: television commercials exclusively in Japan for this uh pachinko company
41:46
Speaker 1: called Sanchio, I believe. So if you want a real treat,
41:50
Speaker 1: check out Nicolas Cages Pachinko commercials. You can watch them
41:53
Speaker 1: all in like a super cut on YouTube and they're delightful.
41:56
Speaker 1: And if you are in Oakland now in good news
42:00
Speaker 1: as you can play pinball. The weird news is pinball
42:04
Speaker 1: was banned in Oakland up until like one of those
42:08
Speaker 1: dusty on the book's laws that getting on the sidewalk
42:11
Speaker 1: or whatever, it was like owning your spouse's hair or something.
42:14
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody ever seriously enforced it. Somebody discovered
42:18
Speaker 1: it and they were like, oh ha ha, here's our
42:21
Speaker 1: story for a slow news day, and so there you
42:25
Speaker 1: have it, folks. Uh, pinball used to be maybe not
42:28
Speaker 1: public enemy number one, but definitely like the rogues gallery
42:33
Speaker 1: of public enemies in the in the moral panic fiber
42:37
Speaker 1: of the US. That's right, how far we've come, how
42:41
Speaker 1: far we've come? Um. I really enjoyed digging into this story.
42:45
Speaker 1: I didn't know any of this stuff. I always, you know,
42:48
Speaker 1: thought about the classic kind of greaser image and and
42:52
Speaker 1: the you know, but I just thought that was just
42:53
Speaker 1: because like arcades were places that, like all ages, kids
42:56
Speaker 1: could hang out and skip school at or whatever. I
42:58
Speaker 1: didn't associate much differently from like the Putt putt of
43:01
Speaker 1: our youth, et cetera. But very interesting to know. And
43:05
Speaker 1: and another reason why the Pinball Museum in Vegas it's
43:08
Speaker 1: probably a fascinating place because this is a game with
43:12
Speaker 1: a history, um that you can really track this attitude
43:16
Speaker 1: and the changing technology, but also the changing way that
43:19
Speaker 1: pinball was perceived. Agreed, Agreed, This is this is a
43:23
Speaker 1: fascinating look into a uh somewhat overlooked part of American history.
43:30
Speaker 1: We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please tune in for
43:34
Speaker 1: our upcoming episode, by the way, where we do something
43:37
Speaker 1: completely different. Uh. No spoilers, well, no serious spoilers, but uh,
43:43
Speaker 1: spaghetti not in the way you think. Definitely spaghetti, definitely
43:47
Speaker 1: not in the way you think. Uh. Thanks as always
43:49
Speaker 1: to our superproducer Casey pegram thinks, of course, as always
43:53
Speaker 1: to Alex Williams, who composed that that slam and jam
43:58
Speaker 1: you hear at the beginning are very pinball theme music,
44:01
Speaker 1: exactly huge thanks to Christophrosciota is here in spirit, Gabe Lousier,
44:06
Speaker 1: Research Associate Extraordinaire, Jonathan Strickland, the notorious quister. I wonder
44:11
Speaker 1: if he's any good at pinball. He seems like you
44:14
Speaker 1: think he's got a collection in his like villainous lair.
44:18
Speaker 1: I would like to think that. I'm sure he I'm
44:21
Speaker 1: sure he's played people. If I would bet all the
44:25
Speaker 1: nickels in my house that he's done an episode on
44:27
Speaker 1: pinball for tech stuff, I also would bet that all
44:31
Speaker 1: the pinball machines in his collection are Shakespeare themed. Oh boy,
44:36
Speaker 1: that's that's a lot the Taming of the Shrew the
44:40
Speaker 1: pinball machine, right, Oh Hamlet. To tilt or not to tilt?
44:46
Speaker 1: That is the question. Uh. We also want to direct
44:49
Speaker 1: you to uh Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, where you can find
44:53
Speaker 1: our show. Honestly, there's not a lot of gas in
44:57
Speaker 1: the Instagram and Twitter feeds of the official Ridiculous Historians,
45:01
Speaker 1: so we like to recommend the Facebook page Ridiculous Historians. Uh.
45:04
Speaker 1: If you want to meet our favorite part of the show,
45:06
Speaker 1: which is you and your fellow listeners, you can also
45:09
Speaker 1: find us as individuals. That's right. I am at how
45:12
Speaker 1: Now Noel Brown exclusively on Instagram, and I am at
45:16
Speaker 1: Ben Bolan on Instagram at Ben Bowling hs W on Twitter.
45:22
Speaker 1: I know we gotta wrap up. But this is this
45:23
Speaker 1: is something I wanted to ask you guys about. Like,
45:28
Speaker 1: I always thought it was so unfair that pinball tables were,
45:30
Speaker 1: you know, big and clunky and expensive. It reminded me
45:34
Speaker 1: of growing up when I have friends who have pool
45:36
Speaker 1: tables and it would be like, wow, you're terrible at pool.
45:39
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, dude, I'm eight. I don't have one
45:41
Speaker 1: of these at my house. Do you ever feel that
45:44
Speaker 1: way about stuff? We had a we had a pool
45:45
Speaker 1: table at in my basement at my parents house, and
45:48
Speaker 1: I was still pretty bad at pool. I just didn't
45:51
Speaker 1: take to the game very much. What about bumper pool?
45:53
Speaker 1: Do you guys even know what that is? I don't
45:54
Speaker 1: understand now, I don't think so. I think it's it's
45:57
Speaker 1: it's pool with uh with a little class tick obstacles, right.
46:01
Speaker 1: I think that might be right. But there's a reason
46:02
Speaker 1: you gotta hit the It's almost like pool and pinball
46:05
Speaker 1: combined because I think you have to hit the little
46:07
Speaker 1: bumper things or something. I don't know. Let us know,
46:10
Speaker 1: a bumper pool is? Um? Is it snooker? Snooker is just,
46:14
Speaker 1: I believe, just what the Brits called pool. But I
46:16
Speaker 1: don't know. There may be maybe it's a different style
46:18
Speaker 1: of the game, but um, I don't know. Let us know, folks.
46:22
Speaker 1: What is snooker? What is bumper pool? What kind of
46:25
Speaker 1: pinball machines do you like? What's your favorite game? We'll
46:28
Speaker 1: see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my
46:37
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
46:40
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.