Pinball in the Wild: Part 3 - The Pacific Pinball Museum!

I'm not sure The Pacific Pinball Museum counts as "in the wild" because their collection of games is carefully curated, their old woodrails have been meticulously restored and all the games are perfectly maintained.  It is without a doubt one of the great pinhalls out there, and no trip to the Bay Area is complete without visiting this fine establishment!

So I walk in the front door and the guy behind the ticket table is reading Drop Target #4!  I said to him, "I'm Alec Longstreth!  I make that zine with my buddy Jon!"  The guy (whose name I have forgotten - sorry!) asked me to sign the copy, and as I was doing so he said, "You'll never guess who's here... Keith Elwin!"  This was especially cool, because Jon and I had interviewed Keith in DTZ #4 and reviewed his Pinball 101 video.

I introduced myself to Keith and asked if I could get a photo with him, which he said was okay.  I'm glad I wasn't the only one wearing a pinball shirt at this place!

I guess there was a big pinball festival somewhere North of the Bay Area and Keith was in town for it.  I didn't have a car, so I couldn't get up there, but I still got a pinball fix at the PPM.

The cover charge is now $15, so I was determined to get my money's worth.  I play a lot of the 80s and 90s machine in the back room, and then when I started getting burned out, I moved to the quieter front room to play some older machines and read the historical info on top of each one.

When I caught back up with Claire, she was having an awesome game of Road Show.  At the end she got to enter her initials for the #2 score.  We were both kind of amazed by this.  Don't get me wrong, Claire is a pretty darn good pinball player, but #2 at the Pacific Pinball Museum?!

It turns out that it was the #2 score of the day.  A feature I didn't even know existed!  Now I want to see if I can turn that on for my Medieval Madness.  I like the idea of more people getting the thrill of entering their initials into the machine.

After hours and hours of playing these machines on free play, I dropped a few quarters into the pay machines in the lobby.  I tried the new AC-DC machine (with dropped playfield!)  It was a lot of fun.

NEXT UP: The Musée Mecanique!