In Smith's state, the current top-ranked player is Elizabeth Gieske, whose sudden rise began with a 2018 tournament win. But luckily it seems like it's definitely getting more diverse," Smith says. "For for a while there, especially when I first started doing tournaments, it was pretty much all older cis males. Pinball parlors have long been dominated by the bodies of men, their stories painted lurid on the back glass of machines in corny, sexualized images of cartoonishly buxom women. The decision of which bodies can occupy those public spaces - and whose stories are told - is never without political dynamic. Its glorious heft unapologetically loud and bright, a cabinet demands due accommodation for spacious human joy and creativity.Īs Smith says, it's a "meshing of physics, bringing it into technology, using it to tell stories and bring them into a physical space."Ī competitive player, builder and part-time technician of pinball machines, Kalyn Smith edges The physicality of pinball, like that of all arcade games, is the tech's blessing on shared social spaces. But then also, the entire time, it was like a theme park ride where they're throwing sounds and lights and noises at you." You get to the very end of that hike and you feel really good for doing it. "It's like mixing a video game with taking a really good hike. Jeffrey Bilbro once wrote that "the starkest contrast between an industrial economy and a sustainable one lies in the way each deals with death." I'll go home and sleep well from all the jumping around and shifting, and nudging the machine," she tells me. "I'll be tired at the end of the night sometimes after a tournament. Pin-and-ball then quickly became pinball.Īfter dominating the scores of a weekly pinball tournament in June, Kalyn Smith sits outside Louisville's most treasured arcade bar, Zanzabar, in the cooling evening. Then, during a gambling trial, one of our circuit court judges reportedly used the term to classify the new type of games that had never appeared before in legal literature. Louisville newspaper reporters dubbed them pin-and-ball games. What most people don't know about pinball is that the word itself was coined by Kentucky journalists. (Photo by Rae Hodge) The machinery of physical joy The underside of a pinball playfield reveals the seeming chaos of its carefulĮlectrical structure. Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist. Just get up, walk over to that clattering carnival in its magic cabinet and pull the plunger. And the next time you spot a pinball machine in a bar, forget about how others may turn their heads at its sound. Regardless of whether you grew up with pinball, if you've ever been stirred to even a passing smile by the sight of a faded old Bally machine flickering alone in the corner of a dim bar, do me one favor. Silicon Valley makes everything worse: Four industries that Big Tech has ruined
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