Archive for February, 2009

Radikal GK Sunday Meeting!

This Sunday (March 1) the CFF meeting is at Ground Kontrol! Officially starts at 10pm. But you have my permission to show up earlier.

I don’t know if we’ve ever met here before for a meeting. But after tomorrow I will know for sure that we have. We’ll all know that for sure.

See you there.

Posted: February 28th, 2009
at 5:01pm by ROM


Categories: Events

Comments: 1 comment


Spring Pinquest 2009

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A week on the road, and so far I’ve managed to track down pins in a few locations. Our first night in Eugene, Danny B, Superloops and I nosed out a filthy, but fully working Spiderman (nicely done Ms. Loops,) and I managed to almost get hero mode on my first game, GC’d it, then followed it up with a totally shit game and went back to work. It was nice to see a choice recent game in a downtown that, like most of America, seems pretty barren on the pinball front. Still, just a few hours outside Portland, Eugene seems as pinball-blind as most of the rest of the world has become.

I’m busier than I’ve been in the past, and working on small stages, have less time than usual to cruise around and browse for machines. I typically have two hours at most, all day, and we’ve played few venues that were close enough to businesses that I could go hunt things out. Inspired by our random walking quest, I’ve been deciding to go analog and word of mouth during this trip, rather than wasting precious time on broken and out dated pinball links on the interweb.

The pic at the top is the inside of this bizarre, massive burger bar called the bear barn or something– yes, it sounds like a good place for hairy hot-tubbin, but in reality it’s a kind of fast food joint covered floor to ceiling in bizarre bric-a-brac, like a more western and over-the-top max & erma’s, or a junkyard hard rock cafe run by schizophrenics. It’s three stories tall, brick, full of winding overlapping rooms, and has little league scoreboard bolted to a fence out back along with pieces of cars and trains and shit. I thought I was out of luck as I wandered through, a little hung over, with a cup of coffee, but saw some old school video games scattered between a few of the rooms, so I kept hunting, and finally spied this:

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That’s right– A LOTR side by side with Monopoly. I threw some quarters into the lord, and quickly found that although it felt sort of ok, before I’d plunged my first ball it was apparent that the Balrog was toast and permanently stuck out blocking the center ramp. Goodbye fellowship multiball and all modes. There was a huge lean, which I tried to work with. High scores were all defaults and I did my best to crack the board, but the condition of the game was really frustrating. A pin or something about the entrance to the path of the dead was fucked up, so balls rarely got diverted in; it was very difficult to get anything at all running. I put up a little over 30 million but couldn’t get it to 40, tried a couple of different strategies on my replay, and gave it up. I managed to make those two games last an hour, with that low of a score, and I had to get back to unload the truck. I notified the manager on duty about the balrog situation, and he said (guess what? guess guess guess!) they almost never see the operator, but he would be sure to let him know (wink wink) that there was a problem with the pin. I will say that the one good side of the whole thing was impressing the shit out of a 10 year old kid who got up from his food to watch me, and had to be dragged off by his folks when it was time to go.

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That was Chico, and at least I was 2 for 2 on *finding* pinball. I didn’t have such luck in Visalia. We played a cool, weird little theater. The locals did tell me there’s a nickel arcade they thought might have some super old school games, but nothing in walking distance from the venue; there’s a decent little strip of downtown businesses you’d expect to have something, but I walked all over and asked around, only to get weird looks.

In LA, despite the best efforts of our friend Eric to hook me up with some locations to play, I was trapped all day at the Palladium in Hollywood and had family out to the show as guests, so I couldn’t go on the hunt. That’s sad because our next stops were in the pin-bereft southwestern towns of Tempe and Albuquerque. Surely, with ASU in town, there are some pins hiding out in Tempe, but I couldn’t get further than a couple of miles from the show on foot, and there was nothing there.

In ‘burque I asked the local production runner after the show where I could find a bar with some pinball, and she said “pinball? really?” with an incredulous look on her face. Our merch manager said “that’s a good question,” even though he knew better than to encourage her. I said “fuck you both” to their faces and walked up the street to a divey punk joint called Atomic, which I instantly remembered from my last trip. It has seemingly the only pin in town, a highly distressed Simpsons P.P. ALL the general illumination was out, backglass AND playfield– only a few flashers were working, and in a dark corner of a dark bar, it was almost like playing blind. Weak flippers, a thick layer of dirt, I managed to get a couple of multiballs out of about 6 games. Unfortunately, in the middle of my best game, a bar fight broke out right behind me between a huge mexican in a zoot suit and some methy white skater kid. They both had posses, and there was a bit of a full on melee. thankfully everyone stuck to throwing punches instead of glasses. I cradled my ball on my right flipper and stepped to the side of the machine, out of the way, so people could brawl past me. A couple of bartenders managed to get the whole dogpile out the door to finish it in the street while the cops came, and I didn’t even spill my drink. Unfortunately it did throw off my flow and I fell short of reaching the board on that game too before last call.

Luckily we got the fuck out of dodge, rather than being stuck in NM for another day. I’ve had most of the afternoon in Boulder, where there’s actually at least one operator, Lyons Classic Pinball, with two locations of their pins posted on their website. Better yet they donate half their proceeds to charity. One was out of my range, but I played a Tommy machine at their other spot. It was fun and mostly working, but I don’t know the game that well, and it leaned right far enough that the ball comes away from the wall off the right loop shot, screwing with your set up for the right ramp (double jackpot) shot. I found a Decently working No Fear in the basement of the Pearl Pub, and put up 4th place. This one had a right lean too, but it was lenient enough on tilt that I could give the right corner a good pop off the rubber and send the ball back into play occasionally. Place was packed and loud, and after I finished up my free games I split, since I was getting bumped into constantly. I rolled over to a place called Smoky Joes that had a champ pub and a monster bash the last time I was here. Champ Pub was gone, and Monster Bash had been moved into the corner of the kiddie game room in the basement, along with air hockey and area 51 and so on. No backglass, no ball save, incredibly sensitive tilt, and the right flipper was doing that thing where it sticks up and you have to repeatedly slap it, or the opposite flipper, to get it to drop back down. I put together a couple of decent games, 1st and 2nd place scores, and a monster bash champ of 81 mil, but although I was close to monsters of rock on my best game, gave it a rest after it switched from *sometimes* kicking SDTM from the scoop to *always* (over 90%) kicking SDTM, hard and fast. Incredibly frustrating, given that I felt ready to gut that machine if I could just be allowed to finish a few balls without that fucked up kickout.

And that folks, is where I am now. That’s your glimpse into the world of pinball outside pinball mecca, Portland Oregon. It’s bad. It truly is.

I will remain undeterred in my search, and will give you an update again when I can. As we know, the dude abides.

Don’t forget to go out and play a little extra appreciative ball for me this week, and to count your blessings.
BOUNCEBACK

Posted: February 27th, 2009
at 11:26pm by BounceBack


Categories: CFF

Comments: 8 comments


Gang Gear?

This site where they put heads on hoodies gave me some ideas about the CFF gear. It would be pretty awesome to have the logo on the hood. Perhaps a pinball head would work too.

I like that skull

I like that skull.

Posted: February 20th, 2009
at 10:17pm by Multiball

Tagged with , , ,


Categories: CFF

Comments: 2 comments


CFF Meeting – Ship Ahoy, Sunday the 15th, 10pm

The regular meeting is taking place at Ship Ahoy tomorrow! Be there or be crappy at pinball forever.

As usual, meetings are casual and open to friends and anyone interested. So c’mon.

Ship.

10pm.

Posted: February 14th, 2009
at 4:54pm by ROM


Categories: Events

Comments: No comments


Clinton Street Tourney

This Thursday 2/12/09 come one come all, down to the Clinton Street Pub.  The current line-up includes: Midieval Madness, Sharky’s Shoot-out, Elvis, Terminator 3, and Champion Pub.  Once again it will be $5 to enter this single game double elimination event.  All of the games playing great including CP and MM.  Start time will be 8:00 SHARP.  I know Louie will be there just in the nick time.  So if you are not there by the time Louie gets there tough shit, unless you let me know ahead of time (Sauce).

Posted: February 10th, 2009
at 7:23pm by dropshot


Categories: Events

Comments: 2 comments