Wisconsin Pinball

So i'm kind of curious to get some opinions from some of you "old-timers". I'm recently back into the hobby and the main issue i have is space, well that and not pissing off my fiancé by having too many machines in the house.

We don't really have any great locations in the Madison area with ALOT of machines, Having visited the Seattle pinball museum and then hitting up Blainbrook Entertainment center this week, it would be nice to have something like that around here where you could play a huge assortment of machines. Trying to open a public museum or anything else is obviously a huge can of worms and requires staffing and legality issues and all sorts of things. I've started and ran my own business, so i know a bit about that and the parts that suck and are great.

My buddy and i were talking and my thought was simply this, find a decent warehouse space. Set up pins and "overflow" pins, so find people who have pins just sitting around in storage, see if they would be willing to have a place to set them up and get them played. It would be a private club where the machines would be located and secured and insured. Everyone would have key fob access or something and it would just a place to hang out with friends, play a multitude of machines. Not for profit or anything like that, just a nice location to store machines and make sure they get played. As long as the rent and utilities gets covered, then everything would be good.

I mean hell, i'd pay a few hundred a month just to have more space and get past the "fiance-imposed limit" for machines. Very similar to wishing i had more space for my cars and motorcycles.

So just want some thoughts from some of you that have been around longer, has anything like that been tried, does it make sense, do you think it's stupid?

I mean i know we'd all love to have 20-30 machines in our basements, but that isn't always practical. So what if we had a place to store those and share that hobby with fellow enthusiasts?

I know Clay (pinball ninja) did something similar in MI for a number of years. He ran into problem after problem and finally shifted to buying a place to store his LARGE private collection where he can leagally open to the public a few times each year to help cover overhead.

A few of us kicked around the idea a year or 2 back and realized it was logisitcally tough (doable but tough).

Shortly after that a few of us started up Madison Pinball as a way to share our games (and in some cases provide overflow for personal collections ). There is now Pooleys with 4 good playing games and Schwoegler's with 12 good playing games currently. We also have a new eastside location opening soon which will have 4 more games to start (hopefully more if things go well and the bar sees it is worth the footprint). While not all under 1 roof, Madison has gone from virtually no good playing games to 18 and a wide variety in just under 2 years. There are also a few other locations which have since stepped it up, so now there are around 25 games worth checking out in town.

I know I would love to have a private club for overflow of my colelction and a place to hang with other collectors and play each others games, but I am not sure how to logistically make it happen. I know my personal collection is bursting at teh seems and I still dont like selling to make room for others

Logistics aside, it would be tough. I co-founded and run a user group and that's tough as well, coordinating and keeping it "alive" takes time/energy.

I think as with most things, it takes someone to drive it and deal with it. When that person doesn't have the time or steps down, then unless someone else takes the reigns, it usually dies.

I haven't gotten a chance to get over to Schwoeglers yet but i'll make sure to in the next week or two. I kind of wanted to do something for myself anyways to get more "Space"... but then after going to the Seattle Pinball museum, i was just like, man we need something like that, with this many machines... it was such a cool experience. I wish there was a great way to have a location not in a bar, so that it's more family friendly and we could get more people introduced to the hobby. Kids these days don't even know what a pinball machine is, or how to play it. Hell bust out a gameboy and my nephews would probably not know what the hell to do with it.

It would be *really* tough to pull off. The first thing you would need is to NOT have children.... LOL.... Keeping something like this running is tough as people's living situations change frequently. A lot of the big ones out there you see are simply private collections that grew large enough to open to the public to offset some of the costs of keeping such a large collection. Look around at all of them out there- how many of these are co-op are started off that way?

Best way to pull off what you would like to do is get some property in BFE Wisconsin that already has a large pole barn, and fill it up. That keeps it somewhat affordable, and you can set your own rules instead of having to follow "the man's" rules.

Having gone from 28 setup at one time down to 11, I can say personally, that I have never been happier. I am actually going to sell a couple more to fund another toy purchase for my family (the beauty of expensive toys).... I have also been doing this for awhile, and have had a LOT of games come through.

chrisnack wrote: I haven't gotten a chance to get over to Schwoeglers yet but i'll make sure to in the next week or two.

I wish there was a great way to have a location not in a bar, so that it's more family friendly and we could get more people introduced to the hobby. Kids these days don't even know what a pinball machine is, or how to play it.

Schwoegler's is no Seattle museum but it has a reasonably diverse lineup and some rarities to share. It is also VERY kid friendly. Almost every time I stop by I see a kid or a fmaily on the concourse playing a game. Puts a huge smile on my face!

Yeah, seems like the arcades attached to a bowling alley are generally more kid friendly That's what most of us remember growing up anyways. Still pretty fun to have a frosty beverage and play some pinball though too...

ralphwiggum wrote:Having gone from 28 setup at one time down to 11, I can say personally, that I have never been happier.

Blasphemy!

Eric_S wrote:

ralphwiggum wrote:Having gone from 28 setup at one time down to 11, I can say personally, that I have never been happier.

Blasphemy!

LOL

C'mon guys, you cant still think that size matters do you?

"it may be small, but it still get used a lot"......

Cool. I'll take Indy and sinbad. Yes I'm downsizing as well.

ChrisS wrote:Cool. I'll take Indy and sinbad. Yes I'm downsizing as well.

I refuse to sell you anything you don't already own. first world problems weren't enough for you, you had to start buying duplicate titles ....

*just remembered I owned 6 Simpsons Pinball Parties at one time*......

I thought about doing this at one point. However, I don't want to travel to play pinball. I hate driving to locations or people's homes as I have very little free time the way it is. The only reason I do is because of my son and the social interaction. To play at some club where there are maybe one or two other people present isn't my idea of fun. Plus I enjoy playing against other people. So at this stage in my life...not now.

Like Tim, I am sliming down my collection and projects to fund another hobby and it's all good. As a wise man once said, first world problems.

double post

They've done just exactly this in Pittsburgh. A bunch of folks got together, formed a co-op, and rented out an old fitness center to turn it into the Pittsburgh Pinball Factory. At any given time, there are 30-40 tables there, all owned by Pittsburgh Pinball League members. The Thursday night crowd of the Pittsburgh Pinball League meets there (since there are around 200 members, they meet on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday) and they host a majority of the local tournaments there. It's where the West Virginia and Pennsylvania State Championships were last year. Sometimes they're open on weekends or weeknights. All the machines are coin drop.

One of the big things I think they have going for them is that they've got Doug Polka and a bunch of the other folks from PAPA doing a majority of the maintenance, so everything is in excellent shape. They even teach pinball repair classes every once in a while.

I honestly think that we could do this here. I'll even donate my one pinball table to the cause. I'd be happy to do introductions for anyone who wants to coordinate a knowledge transfer.

I'd be curious to talk with those guys to find out what has worked or hasn't. Never hurts to get more information and learn form their mistakes.