The cooler weather has us reminiscing about a jaunt we took to Las Vegas over the summer. With the city sizzling under the early afternoon sun, we ducked into a paradise of gaming: the Pinball Hall of Fame. Housed in a non-descript strip mall (is there any other kind in Vegas?) the Hall of Fame is essentially an arcade stocked with pinball machines from the '40s through the present. All are playable and most cost just a quarter. The machines have been restored and kept in tip-top shape by the Las Vegas Pinball Collectors Club.The Hall of Fame is a playground for those who appreciate mid-century graphics. The playfields and backglasses are rife with colorful illustrations -- and a pretty comprehensive parade of hairstyles from the past 50 years. Unsurprisingly, our favorite was the Bowling Queen machine from 1964, shown below:
The Hall of Fame is certainly a labor of love and the beneficiaries are us folks who prefer to get our kicks from flippers over one-armed bandits. Heck, twenty dollars will last you a few hours here. How many other places in Vegas can boast that?
Some of us avoided jail time in our youth by being glued to these machines. I remember one place in particular, in Canada. There was a dance hall connected to an arcade with duck pin bowling (two alleys with pin setters) and a bunch of pin ball machines. I was too young to dance but it was fun bowling and playing the machines when I could scrounge a quarter from a willing adult.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the trip down memory lane.
Wait, pinball *and* duckpin in the same place? Are you sure it was Canada -- and not heaven?
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