Tag Archives: pinball

Pinball CBGBs 1978

Throughout the late 1970s I stood at the front of CBGBs for the Contortions, Damned, and the Voidoids. Afterwards I drank beer and play pinball at the back of the club. I was never friends with the big names. The bartenders were my friends, the doorman with the yellow construction helmet let me in for […]

CBGBs Pinball 1978 VDO

Throughout the late 1970s I stood at the front of CBGBs for the Contortions, Damned, and the Voidoids. Afterwards I drank beer and play pinball at the back of the club. I was never friends with the big names. The bartenders were my friends, the doorman with the yellow construction helmet let me in for […]

GASLIGHT PINBALL by Peter Nolan Smith

Written Oct 6, 2013 Pinball was banned as a game of chance in New York City throughout most of the 20th Century. In 1976 a pinball wizard proved the contrary to a courtroom by calling out his shots to the amazed judges. The ace later acknowledged that his called shot was pure luck, however pinball […]

El Phoenix Bar – Boston

My friend Jorge posted this photo and I thought ‘pink elephant’. Only one place had one and it was in Brighton, Mass. In college I drank in Concannon and Sennetts’, a Commonwealth Avenue establishment with a mural of a naked woman riding a pink elephant over the bar. The dive offered draft ‘ganseets at 25 […]

Pong

During the late 1960s and early 1970s I played pinball at the arcades on Boston’s Washington Street. My skills flourished and I competed against older wizards on machines such as Centrigrade 37 and Strikes and Spares. We loved the lights and bells accompanying our struggle to prevent the steel ball from ever dropping into the […]