22 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY april 25-may 1, 2024 www.montereycountyweekly.com their fellow husband-and-wife neighbors Matthew Talley and Meredith Sherwin were also pinball fanatics. Talley says he and Cary would travel to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk on their lunch breaks from work, just to play the Tron pinball machine. The four decided to start their own local pinball league, after Cary found himself traveling north to the Bay Area every Thursday night to compete with the Bay Area Pinball Association, not returning home until 2am. The Monterey Flipper Pinball league started off small at Angelina’s Pizza with six games, but the buzz was growing, going from three players in the summer of 2014 to 15 players by the end of the year. “It steadily started to grow from there,” Cary says. “We got interesting folks from all different walks of life.” They eventually outgrew the pizzeria and moved to a warehouse in Salinas owned by Cary’s father, Lynn, where more than 40 people consistently showed up, many unknown to the original league founders. Attendees were encouraged to bring their own beer when inspiration struck. “There were a lot of empties,” Talley says. “If we sold that…” After crunching the numbers, forming a business plan and securing a location in the University Plaza Shopping Center in Seaside, the group headed to the Seaside Planning Commission in April 2019, needing approval not only to operate a pinball arcade, but also to request a variance to operate to midnight on school nights. Seaside’s municipal code specifically prohibited arcades from being open past 10pm on nights preceding school days. Nikki Carmichael notes they were nervous going in front of the commission to make their case. Turns out it was for naught, as the plan passed unanimously with little discussion and plenty of excitement from some of the commissioners. It was representative of shifting attitudes toward pinball. Once considered as a sleazy gambling device that contributed to the delinquency of children, forbidden in city code, it’s now viewed as a legitimate form of competition that builds community and camaraderie. But it took decades for the general public to realize it. Historians generally agree that pinball’s roots trace back to tabletop games in late-19th-century Europe called “bagatelle.” Players would use a stick to push a ball up an incline, where it would roll down and bounce off pins to rack up scores. Electronic, coin-operated machines burst onto the scene in the 1930s, eventually adding sounds, flippers and bumpers. But in 1942, the game, now referred to as pinball, was banned in New York City, with other major cities following, due to the rise of gambling centered around the machines, according to history compiled by Princeton University. It wasn’t until 1976 when magazine writer Roger Sharpe proved in a city council meeting that pinball was a game of skill, not chance, which led to the overturning of the ban in New York City. At the same time, pinball was competing with the rise of arcade machines and home video game consoles, which were easier to operate and took up less space. Pinball manufacturers came and went. The arcade craze hit the Monterey Peninsula, and cities scrambled to come up with plans to regulate it. In September 1982, the Seaside City Council passed an ordinance which prohibited arcades from being within 1,000 feet of schools, and prevented them from being open during the daytime on school days. It also set a 10pm closing time on nights preceding school days, and required potential arcades to be considered during a public hearing. “Based on an increasing number of applications in Seaside to establish electronic game centers…the need was identified to establish regulations for the operation of electronic games and game centers,” the ordinance reads. “The Seaside City Council finds that it is both appropriate and necessary to establish regulations for the operation of mechanical and electronic games and game centers to preserve the public health, safety and welfare of the City of Seaside.” That ordinance remained in effect until 2020, when the Seaside City Council determined that such an ordinance was now out of date, given that children can have arcades in their pockets at any time of the day thanks to smartphones, and the fact that police reported that it has received no complaints regarding Lynn’s Arcade, which opened the previous year. A new ordinance instead allows arcades to be located in commercial zones and be approved administratively, without special hours of operation. Pinball machines, however, are banned from service stations in Seaside. A review of other municipal codes among cities in Monterey County shows a mixed response to pinball and arcades in general. The City of Monterey prohibits minors from playing at an arcade after 9pm on nights before school days, or after 10pm on any other night. Arcades are also banned within 300 feet of a school. The “purpose” of the ordinance, as laid out in the code, reads like a scolding parent: “The intent of these regulations is to control the location and hours of operation of game centers so as not to allow school children to play the games during school hours.” In the City of Salinas, anyone who operates a business with coin-operated machines must pay an annual license tax of $100. In addition, businesses must pay $50 per pinball machine per year, except for arcades. There is no mention of arcades or pinball in the municipal code for the City of Carmel. The City of Pacific Grove, meanwhile, had once banned arcades for a brief spell, but repealed that ordinance in 1982, the same year that saw the city codify a ban on dog excrement in public places. Arcades are subject to approval from the planning commission. In Greenfield, businesses with pinball machines must pay a tax of $3 per quarter-year for each game. Across the state, Oakland and San Francisco had little-enforced pinball bans on the books up until 2014. “Pinball went through a dark period of time,” Cary Carmichael says. “Now Above: Matthew Talley updates the crowd during a recent league night at Lynn’s Arcade. Left: Nikki Carmichael (left) and Carlene Malack share a laugh during a break in the women’s league championship night. “When you’re playing, you’re not thinking about anything else.”
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