For love of the game | Sow there!

The only good news about the new parking meters downtown is that I can use my quarters on pinball. For weeks, various friends had asked if I was excited about the new pinball place planned for downtown. I knew the lights at La Salles had gone dark, but I had not paid much mind to the renovations on Second and Broadway.

All this talk of pinball had given me a tingle in my fingertips.

Dad introduced me to pinball at about age 7. We often drove to junkyards in the East Bay, searching for car parts. One day, Dad pulled over along Mission Boulevard. I can’t remember if it was technically a bar, but I remember Dad saying “I just want to show my kid my old pinball machine.”

This was Dad’s hangout after work when he was a youthful gas station attendant. His story was that he could play all afternoon on a single dime because he learned to glue thread to a coin.

I might have played once that day, but my main job was to pull the plunger. I was content to follow the lights and Dad’s face as he played with deep concentration.

This was long before my family acquired a second-hand Atari Pong game. We played board games at home, and had to visit our friends to play home game consoles with fancy video graphics.

For all the hours I’ve played pinball, you would think I would be at least a decent player. But that’s not the point. I like the smudges on the glass and the goofy graphics on the backbox, the clang of the bumpers and the surprising speed of a ball launched from a scoop.

My score is never important, but it’s a good night if I play well enough to earn at least one multi-ball.

In high school, my first job was at the Foster’s Freeze in Benicia and I was the gal who had a car. If we mopped up quickly, the work crew could pile into my backseat, smelling like french fry grease, and make a dash to the Scandia arcade along I-80.

Years later, I made it a habit to stop at Scandia when I drove to and from the Bay Area during holiday breaks during college. I remember that feeling of awe as I faced 14 pinball games in a row, immediately inside the front door. The most recent time I visited, I had to hunt for the three remaining games among the sea of digital shoot-em-ups and Skee Ball.

In college, when my friends went out on the town, I’d spend a fair amount of time in the corner with flashing lights reflecting from my pupils. I could have learned to be a much better dancer if pinball had not been an option. These days I keep a roll of quarters in my car and will choose Woodstock’s if a friend asks me where I want to eat. I know Woodstock’s has pinball in the back room.

You’d think with all the quarters that have come and gone I would have gained some real skill. However, my strategy remains to simply keep the ball in play. It’s a quick ride of flash and reflex – loud noise and dopamine rush when the ball accidentally sails through a loop-dee-loop.

Watching others is almost as much fun and it still startles me when I hear the game “crack” when someone wins a replay.

“I think I broke the machine,” the Handsome Woodsman would say if he won a free game.

Ryan Olson introduced us to Pinagogo (hoooottttlink https://www.pin-a-go-go.org), where you can find a few hundred pinball games at the Dixon Fairgrounds, lined up like cars at an auto dealership. Kind folk dust off the pinball games they keep in a garage and lend them to the event organizers. For 30 bucks you can play for free for three days straight.  After one long Saturday my back hurt so much I considered dumping my boyfriend for a chiropractor. Pinagogo offers pinball clinics, and I joined a small group who spent time with a hotshot player. After an hour of coaching I had only learned how to slow down the ball if it was moving too fast.

When traveling, asking around for a pinball game is a good way to start conversations with strangers, or to venture off the beaten path. In Vegas, Dad tracked down the Pinball Hall of Fame  ((((( hotlink http://www.pinballmuseum.org), with games ranging from the 1920s to brand-spanking-new. This was the first time I saw a partially-disassembled machine; We watched with admiration as a guy did pinball surgery with a sautering iron.

When the Coin-op doors opened at 229 Broadway in Chico, I realized I needed to spend more time downtown.

COVID was hard on businesses, and many have come and gone quickly. On my first visit to the Coin op, I was a bit worried. We could hop on a game right away. (They also have Ms. PacMan, Frogger and Donkey Kong for a quarter a play, and the usual shooting and driving games).

I’m happy to report that word must be getting around.

On my third visit, the place was so busy there was a line three-deep at the Deadpool game. I was glad when someone bumped into me and spilled beer down my back.

“If people are buying beer it means this place will stay in business,” I yelled to a friend over the clang of machines. We didn’t mind waiting as that guy hogged the Ghostbusters game. Before he had time to play all his replays, we shimmied over to the Foo Fighters game and hogged it until it was time to reload our pockets with quarters.

Garden enthusiast Heather Hacking loves when you share what’s growing on. Reach out at [email protected], and snail mail,  P.O. Box 5166, Chico CA 95927.