I stopped by the Pinball Hall of Fame this evening. Okay, come on! Tell me you aren’t envious that I live in a city that has a freakin’ PINBALL HALL OF FAME! Unless you live here, too, I’m willing to bet you can’t just casually drop into an ordinary-looking strip mall and find 200 pinball machines from every decade since their invention, all in working order and waiting for you to drop in a quarter (well, sometimes a couple more) and start the ball bouncing.

****Update, April 15, 2021: Actually, the Pinball Hall of Fame has moved again! This time to an even larger building, with lots of parking on the LAS VEGAS STRIP. There are even more machines available for play, the new building, at 25,000 square feet, is twice the size of the one on E. Tropicana Avenue. The new address is 4925 Las Vegas Blvd South, Las Vegas NV 89119. The Pinball Hall of Fame is now located adjacent to the world famous “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign.

There’s a really groovy story behind the Pinball Hall of Fame. It centers around Tim Arnold, a Big Lebowski kind of guy who runs the place as pretty much a labor of love of pinball. The Salvation Army is the beneficiary of the PHOF’s excess quarters, which add up to an amazingly hefty sum every month. More on that here, and prepare to be impressed.

What drew me to the PHOF tonight is an impending major event. This Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Tim Arnold and his forest of machines are hosting the World Pinball Championship, a competition that will award more than $14,000 in prize money to competitors from 13 countries.

One such competitor is Trent Augenstein. In Las Vegas for the tournament, Trent is a pinball champion from Ohio. He explained how the competition will work, a system that allows 64 players to compete on a wide range of machines. Of particular interest to me is that spectators are welcome. I don’t know exactly when I’ll head back over to the corner of Pecos and Tropicana (map), but the balls’ll be ricocheting Friday, Saturday, and Sunday beginning at 11:00 a.m. More information is online here.

As I watched Tim apply epoxy to a screw with his finger and learned that Trent had been been playing pinball “as long as I can remember,” I realized I had stepped into a world I had previously only caught a glimpse of through old Who songs. As Trent explained, the world of pinball includes “players, collectors, and mechanics.” The players travel the globe in pursuit of worthy competition. The collectors provide the means, often transporting pinball machines hundreds of miles—by U-Haul if necessary—to have them available for tournaments. The mechanics—the fixers—are the grease that makes all the proper wheels turn. Learning this, I realized that Tim Arnold really is a big Lebowski—he’s a collector AND a mechanic.

As I left the Pinball Hall of Fame this evening, I almost wished I had a talented trigger finger and a desire to rack up a lot of ding-ding-dings. All I could do was hope that, in addition to the three sacred vocations of player, collector, and mechanic, there might be room for one more. Is there value, pinball wizards, in someone who likes to watch?