The pings and pops and pongs of old-school pinball machines are the sounds of playtimes past. But at Southern California’s Museum of Pinball – which houses close to 1,400 vintage machines in a massive 40,000 square-foot building – the past has come to the present in a cacophonous convergence, the likes of which could send ear-plug salesmen over the moon.
“When everything’s going at one of our annual events, it’s tremendous,” says Chuck Casey, curator of the nonprofit museum in Banning, not far from Palm Springs. “Then add in the boings and the pew-pews coming from the vintage games in our video-arcade room, and it’s really something.
“In fact, the one complaint we got on the pinball website Pinside was about the noise. To me, it’s a beautiful sound.”
Indeed, vintage pinball and antique penny-arcade games are as popular as ever at places like this, as well as at the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda and Musee Mechanique at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, which houses more than 300 penny arcade games and mechanical musical instruments from the 19th and 20th centuries.
And while these spots may be called museums, their collections are not just for erudite examination. They’re still all about their original intention – fun.
OK, “fun” might not be the right word to describe The French Execution machine in the Musee Mechanique – we’ll get to that in a sec. But the whole idea is to encourage play, all while absorbing some history, art, culture and even mathematics – any true pinball wizard knows there’s lots of geometry involved.
At Pacific Pinball, with more than 90 playable pinball machines out of about 1,500 in their collection – everything from a 1946 Queen of Hearts to a 1989 Black Knight – they’ve recently started emphasizing that learning experience along with the fun.
“We will always offer the games for a fun outing,” says Evan Phillippe, the museum’s marketing director. “But we’re refreshing the front of our museum to emphasize the connection between pinball and science, mathematics and education. There are a lot of mechanics involved: the way the machines were made, the skills involved to play. Pinball is so tactile. Unlike video games, you’re controlling something that’s in free movement.
“And the history,” he said. “It’s a really rich history, becoming popular in the 19th century, then really developing during the Depression as a distraction for the masses and bursting even more into popularity during the baby boom.”
Even the backglasses – the designs on the vertical back panel of the games – are works of art. They tell their own stories about the era and the culture in which they were created. Games are all set on “free play” with an entry fee, but there’s no charge if you want to peek in and just take a look at the cool machines.
Banning’s Museum of Pinball takes a different approach. A nonprofit, it can’t afford to be open daily and instead holds huge special events on its 18-acre “campus” that includes a café, bar, theater and outdoor patio. Events – some draw up to 4,000 people – include an annual arcade expo, a professional pinball tournament and even a Halloween-themed pinball party.
“We’re not here to make money, but to share this collection and promote the nostalgia, the whole pop culture of it,” Casey says. “There’s definitely a big resurgence in interest. You have people like me, 50-year-olds who love the nostalgia, and you also have millennials who want something cool to do.
“One thing I really like about this, it’s very inclusive to anybody,” he says. “Anything like this, from Comic-Cons to the resurgence of the arcades – there’s no politics, no race. You can be a weirdo, a lawyer, a nerd. It’s really neat.”
Yes, even jaded San Franciscans love this stuff at Musee Mechanique. While Fisherman’s Wharf may be too tourist-trappy for many, the Musee is a huge draw for visitors and locals alike.
Dan Zelinsky is the keeper of the arcade flame here – and the daily repairer of the working antique coin-operated games. It’s a family tradition that began with his dad, the late Ed Zelinsky, a joyfully obsessive collector of all things mechanical and quirky. The quirkier the better.
“I grew up with this stuff,” Dan Zelinsky says. “My dad started collecting long before I was born, and they were all over our house – in the basement, in the closet, in the hallways, in the kitchen. And not just the arcade games. He had steam cars in the garage, slot machines and player pianos in the living room, music boxes in the den, bird boxes in the library.”
The first public display location for some of the collection was under The Dock restaurant in Tiburon, mid-last century. It was later moved to the basement area of the Cliff House at Ocean Beach in the 1960s, and then to its current popular spot at Pier 45 in 2002.
Each machine is a miracle of mechanical engineering. Zelinsky calls it “just a barrage of wonderful.” There’s a carnival made entirely of toothpicks, with moving merry-go-rounds and rides. There’s a Kiss-o-Meter to rate if you’re “hot stuff” or “ice cold.” A life-size mechanical horse and rider. Weird puppets that tap dance. Old-school photo booths. A tiny golf course with three holes and little mechanical players.
Oh, and there’s The French Execution. You drop in a coin and a curtain rises to reveal a tiny guillotine and its unfortunate victim. A quick slice, and down goes the curtain again. Weird!
“I get a lot of comments on that one,” he says. “Like, why it exists, why someone would build it, and why are we enjoying it?”
It’s free to go to the Musee and look around. And if you want to play, there are plenty of change machines, because these games all take actual hard-copy cash.
“Watching the evolution has been interesting,” Zelinsky says. “The technology for one. I notice people not being able to interact with machines like they used to. Literally there are people who don’t know you can drop a coin in a coin slot, or that you have to look into a machine to see the visual 3D effects.
“That’s why I love to keep this going,” he says. “It’s fun to watch people discover this stuff.”
Museum of Pinball: Open for special events only, including arcade expos and professional pinball tournaments, at 700 S. Hathaway St., Banning. Find prices and event information, including the arcade expo slated for March 14-16, at www.museumofpinball.org.
Pacific Pinball Museum: Open Tuesdays-Sundays – Mondays are fix-it nights to repair the machiens – at 1510 Webster St., Alameda. Admission is $20 for adults, $10 for kids, but games are set on free-play; www.pacificpinball.org.
Musée Mécanique: Open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, including holidays, at Pier 45 on Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco. Admission is free; https://museemecanique.com.
