I just got back from a little trip to the Bay Area, of course I made the usual stop at the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda and it was good to see some new blood in there! Among the highlights of their current stock is an early 80's solid state room with a Tri-Zone, a very nice 8 Ball Deluxe, as well as what I have to imagine is probably a 9.5 example of Sea Witch. I think Chris Nash had also just done his stint at the Expo for the year and every machine I played there was working quite well. I can't recommend visiting this place highly enough, you can feel the history and the reverence for the silver ball there and it can make a person slightly weepy, they are truly some inspired folks over there!
Sadly almost everywhere else I found machines it was a totally different story in the quality dept., take the Elbo Room for instance, great location in the Mission district on Valencia and unlike anywhere else I have seen all the machines are tucked in a little cove, all 5 of them. These were all leaning to right or left and the WCS 94' looked like it had not been cleaned in at least 3 yrs. I did find a few nicer looking tables at a bar in the Castro district that appear to be serviced on a regular basis at the Pilsner Inn The NO FEAR is in great shape and the TZ and TOTAN looked pretty nice though I did not play them, the down side is all of these are .75 per play (2.00 for 3 games) but you do get 5 balls for your coin.
The pinball map for SF seemed to be pretty much spot on save for the large amount of updates that will need to be done for the PPM, I am going to try and recall to the best of my ability and update what was new and what is out of there when I get the chance.