20 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY april 25-may 1, 2024 www.montereycountyweekly.com Pinball is having a moment after a rocky past. Its future is as bright as the flashing lights on the machines. By Erik Chalhoub Photos by Daniel Dreifuss Flipping the Script Todd Brammer grabs a toolbox from his truck parked outside his Salinas home and takes it inside to the kitchen. He sets it on the table, beside various mechanisms that have been pulled from a machine, its guts spread out in an orderly fashion that only Brammer can make sense of. “I’m mechanically inquisitive,” he says. “I like to see how things work and what makes them tick.” These parts in particular are for a coin drawer for two bright, colorful and loud pieces of equipment that tower over the adjacent kitchen table: pinball machines. Brammer is currently renovating old pinball machines to gift to his three grandsons: Epic, Ace and Stellar. With the help of a local powder coating company and others, Brammer is customizing the pinball machines in honor of his grandsons; a 1970 Big Flipper, for example, has been transformed to Epic Flipper, complete with its own unique graphics including a flipper emblazoned with his grandson’s name and many red and gold stars. Brammer is a lifelong pinball player who is drawn to the sights, sounds and adrenaline rush that some people get from playing the games. He and his wife, Kim Brammer, live in a mobile home park in Salinas, where the front entryway of their home is filled wallto-wall with pinball machines; each playable, all in some stage of renovation due to age. He says he owns 12 machines currently. About a year ago he had two, but before that he had 14, probably the most he’s ever had at one time. Machines in his inventory include “Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure,” “Radical!” and “Defender,” most of which were manufactured in the 1980s and 1990s. He paid $600 for his first pinball machine, “Road Kings,” manufactured in 1986. “It was like Lay’s potato chips, you can’t just have one,” Brammer says with a laugh. “I haven’t found one that I haven’t liked.” He admires the designs and technical aspects of pinball machines. But all of them were designed assuming their users have two arms. Brammer does not. For someone
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