She's a pinball wizard

A story of pinball, billiards, and weird NYC laws

Sep 27, 2023

I’ve come to realize that a talent of mine is finding local pinball bars. It seems like every city I go to has one and any money that most people would spend on drinking I will sink into playing pinball. My airbnb happened to be a short walk from The Coin Slot and I went there every single day I was in town. I grew up with a pinball machine in my basement and never thought that my love for pinball would follow me this far and yet here I am - Grand Champion of the Guardians of the Galaxy pinball machine at The Coin Slot. Stick around til the end of today’s newsletter for a bit of pinball serendipity.

1. Noshing 😋

A couple weeks ago Alicia and I took a trip to Salty Lunch Lady’s Little Luncheonette in Ridgewood. This place opened to a lot of hype a few months ago and is run by Dria Atencio, who previously worked at Mission Chinese. Like many of us, she began baking during the pandemic but unlike many of us, her treats were actually delicious. She gained quite a following and was giving away cake bits and frosting from her stoop until she was able to secure a permanent space for a luncheonette in Ridgewood, Queens.

I’m gonna call it now - luncheonettes are coming back! And while SLL doesn’t have egg creams (le sigh), it does serve the two big cornerstones of a good luncheonette - great sandwiches and decadent desserts. You either die young or you live long enough to appreciate the beauty of a great sandwich and I’m happy to report and I am alive, baby! I’ve been very into sandwiches lately the the one I had at SLL was excellent. Alicia and I both got the Dill Party, which contained all things dill: dill mayo, dill havarti, dill pickles, avocado and turkey. You might think “that’s too much dill” but I’m here to tell you that you’d be wrong because it was in fact the perfect amount of dill.

The space has a decent amount of seating indoors, with a few tables outside. After ordering at the register and grabbing a table, stay alert to hear your name called from the pickup window all the way at the back of the space. All of the food is served on the cutest fucking dishware that Atencio largely sourced secondhand (we love a thrifty queen) and you’re expected to bus your own table into the bins near the front door. I didn’t grab dessert while I was there because for once in my life, I was actually too full. But I have been following SLL’s Instagram religiously and all of the desserts truly look out of this world 🤩

2. Watching 👀

Some possible good news on the strike front - WGA + AMPTP have tentatively reached an agreement! This may mark the end of the nearly 5 month WGA strike. This could mean things are going in the right direction to end the SAG-AFTRA strike as well!

I watched Inside, which was basically a one man show with Willem Dafoe leading. Our man on the inside, Nemo, is attempting to rob an art collector and gets trapped in his fancy, expensive, high tech NYC apartment when the security system malfunctions. It’s unclear exactly how long Nemo is stuck in there, but it’s weeks at the minimum and months at the maximum. In that time the temperature fluctuates wildly from 40F to 100F+. Nemo tries carving his way out through the front door and eventually builds a scaffolding so that he can burrow out of the skylight. The dude eats fish from the fish tank to stay alive and shits in the bathtub because the toilet quickly fills up. He hallucinates and draws on the walls. Shit gets real.

Is there anything Community hasn’t done?

It’s really hard to shoot a movie with a single character. Who do they talk to and how does the audience know what they’re thinking? How do you create suspense when you only have a single character in a single location? I feel like the filmmaker did a good job of surpassing these limitations by using lot of closeup shots. The audience is stuck inside along with Nemo, so we’re also constantly looking for ways out. Did he try that door, what about the phone? By showing us lots of closeup shots, bits and pieces of action, we’re putting things together in our heads trying to figure out what our hero is doing. In one scene, Nemo breaks a window, grabs some cloth, and starts tying them together. Only later do we learn that he was making protective glasses so his eyes wouldn’t get dust in them while he whittles away at the skylight.

Some might view him being stuck inside as a pandemic allegory, but I sort of viewed this as a commentary on NY billionaire housing (because of course I did). In NY we have a thing called Billionaires' Row at the southern end of Central Park. The buildings are tall and ugly and are some of the most expensive residences in the world. Aside from these buildings being disgustingly expensive, they’re barely even occupied, meaning that there is literal empty real estate in the city while we are currently in the midst of a housing crisis.

So as I watched this movie, I watched a man essentially starve and suffer in another man’s shell of a home. The fridge was pretty empty already when Nemo arrived and it was pretty clear that the space was largely “for show”. This art collector simply had the space so that he could use it to impress fancy friends when he happened to be in town. It was never a space meant to be lived in, as evident by how harsh the environment was to Nemo.

This is one of those movies where the reviews are probably better than the actual movie

3. Exploring 🛼

I’m throwing it back to a Spring party I went to with today’s exploration! In April I celebrated my fabulous friend Sandy’s birthday at Sour Mouse in the LES. I’ll admit, I was skeptical when I saw that this is where we were going. The place looks like doucheville from the outside - for some reason all of the neon green & those tiny velvet ropes just gave me a bad vibe. But I’m very happy to report that I couldn’t be more wrong and it was actually very cool!

He concentrated so hard only to lose every game to me - did I mention I also had a pool table in my basement growing up?

We got there around 5 on a Saturday night and it was surprisingly not crowded at all. I had no problem grabbing one of their many full-size pool tables (this is rare in NY). If billiards isn’t your jam, they also have a few ping pong tables, foosball, and board games. The space itself is really spacious with lots of seating and tables around for holding coats and snacks. An hour of pool or ping pong costs $25 and you can open up a game or drink tab at the bar. I didn’t get food while I was there but they have a bunch of pizzas on their menu (pool + pizza hands = 😝).

Now I’m an old fart, so I stayed there from about 5-8pm, at which time it was nearing my bedtime. It definitely started getting more crowded around then and that’s likely when the music gets louder too, so if that’s your vibe then by all means head over there later. But if you really just like to play pool, then early afternoon Sour Mouse is what’s up!

I know there are some other pool bars around the city, but I haven’t been to many. I’ve been to Break Bar in Queens and it was a bit crowded, but lots of fun (sorry to Danielle and Frankie for going off on an insane run that night). I’ve passed by Amsterdam Billiards a bunch, but felt intimidated because it always seems filled with dudes so I’ve never gone in. I worked next to Society Billiards in Flatiron for a hot minute and had a work happy hour planned there that never happened (shoutout to my old employer for laying me off after only 2 months). Space Billiard recently opened in K Town and it looks like….a lot. I really do miss playing pool regularly though and if anyone knows of a great place to play in Bushwick I’m all ears!

4. Learning 🧠

A thing about me is - I love pinball. I mentioned earlier that I grew up with a pinball machine in my basement. My dad acquired it when I was little (he was strangely shady about the details) and I would play it religiously. I became familiar with every target, with how hard to launch the ball, which angle shots would get me the biggest score bonuses. And this was an old analog machine, so when the score got to 99,999 it would reset back to 0 and every time that happened I was absolutely verklempt. I’m telling you about my childhood pinball machine because everything is about to come so fucking full circle I can’t even believe it.

Pinball used to be illegal in NYC, as well as in a few other major cities across the US, from around the 1940s - 1970s. Basically, pinball was thought to be a form of gambling run by the Italian mob. If this sounds strange and slightly racist, that’s because it kind of is. I happened upon a Pinball movie while I was on my flight home from Michigan that finally helped me understand why pinball was perceived as gambling and it all comes down to the idea of skill vs chance.

Early pinball machines were more akin to Plinko boards - you would launch a ball up a chute and it would kind of trickle down various pegs and land in pockets. It was very manual and you had no real control over where the ball landed - chance. However, innovations were soon made to the game, including the addition of a spring-loaded launcher & flippers. These were both added in response to the accusation that pinball was gambling because players gained more control over the gameplay with these additions - skill.

But leave it to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, hater of pickle pushcarts, to forge a crusade against pinball. He claimed that it was a mafia run racket aimed towards stealing money from children who didn’t know any better (imagine if FLG lived to see Candy Crush?). Most think he was picking on pinball as an easy target to boost his mayoral success, but in any case tons of pinball machines were dumped in the Hudson River because apparently that’s just what we did with things we didn’t like. Oh and Mayor La Guardia even claimed to have made 2,000 police billy clubs out of pinball machine legs. Can you even imagine if Mayor Adams did that today? Actually, I can imagine exactly that.

Enter Roger Sharpe - real life Pinball Wizard. He was a pinball enthusiast from Chicago that made his way to NY as a writer for GQ Magazine. He testified during the 1976 NYC pinball hearing to prove that it was a game of skill and not chance. To trip him up, the City Council even switched machines on him last minute, but he played the damn game and made what he called a “hail mary” move. This is portrayed beautifully in the movie and this is where my own history with pinball comes in. Take a look at the machine Roger was playing:

It’s a bit hard to see, but that triangle in the middle is a rack of billiard balls and you can see a big arrow pointing up from the gobble hole. Zoom in!

Now take a look at the pinball machine in my mom’s basement:

That’s mothafuckin right, the pinball machine that my dad somehow “acquired” is the same style pinball machine that Roger Sharpe played to legalize pinball in NYC. And that Hail Mary shot that Roger made to prove that it’s a game of skill? It’s the exact same shot that I made countless times when I played, pulling back the plunger just so that way the ball will hit the right billiard light at the top of the board and I could light up the whole set.

Naturally, I went down a pinball rabbit hole and further found that there were two versions of this particular game made: Sure Shot and Bank Shot. Sure Shot allowed players to win free games, a feature that’s common in pinball games now. According to La Guardia, this was akin to gambling because the player could pay money to potentially win something. However, Bank Shot would reward players with extra balls. This way, the player was still playing the same game and wasn’t technically winning anything extra. It’s a super small distinction, but enough that Gottlieb specially made 730 Bank Shot machines just for New York and Wisconsin, to skirt the pinball laws.

I’ve impressed upon my mother that she better not get rid of this pinball machine like she did my Astro Lounge CD because it is quite literally, history. NYC used to have a big pinball bar in Manhattan, but it closed during Covid. We have some machines scattered throughout and I found 2 maps online that seem to have pretty good listings: map 1 + map 2. Sunshine Laundromat in Greenpoint looks especially promising and I absolutely plan to make a trip there soon!

5. What’s Good 😎

The NY Coffee Festival is next weekend, Oct 6-8. Tickets are $45 and they allow you unlimited coffee samples. I would simply pass away if I drank that much coffee, but if you love coffee then this is definitely the place for you! There will also be latte art competitions, demos, and other fun events happening.
The Brooklyn Book Festival runs through October 2 and includes both virtual and in person events. One of my favorite cookbook authors, Abi Balingit, is speaking on a Food Writers panel this Sunday.
If you have dreams of being an epic dinner party host then you should attend Your Dream Dinner Party: A Workshop on October 15. It’ll be a mix of presentations and group work and you’ll learn all about the logistics of planning the chicest dinner party. It’s being hosted by the folks from Dinner with Friends and Recreate Collective, two events that I have been on waitlists for forever.
If you’re looking for a kiddo friendly event, stop by Popup Grocer Sunday October 1 for Family Day. PUG regularly hosts a variety of events and this one lets kids decorate snack bags and features face painting. Remember the absolute thrill of getting your face painted to look like a fucking tiger?
It’s Mid-Autumn Festival time y’all! There are about a million events going on in Chinatowns across NY and Send Chinatown Love has a roundup of a few events for you here. And apparently the mooncakes to get this season are from Kuih Cafe. If you want to brave the crowds, they’re available this Friday Sep 29, walk-in only.
And finally, because we love free things, free MTA bus routes have begun running! Of course real NYers know that all buses are free if you go in the back door 😏. This is limited to just one route in each borough and will run on a pilot for about a year. I’m lucky to have the free B60 route near my apartment, but I’ve heard that most of the routes chosen aren’t super popular, so I’m not sure how helpful this will be to folks. If you have a free bus route near you, let me know if you find it helpful!

For any children reading this - this is Fonzie and when I was a kid he was cool and he played pinball because it was illegal and he was a leather jacket wearing rebel. TV was very on the nose back then.

I am cool - I am The Fonz