Bowlmor Arcade

I made it to Bowlmor on Times Square tonight. I played three rounds of pinball on the third floor. It was not like playing the Baywatch pinball machine at the old Broadway Arcade but I found the experience close to old school. The three tables at Bowlmor had a common theme of rock bands: KISS, Metallica, and AC/DC. The Metallica table was pretty cool. I would play that one again. The other two tables made less of an impression.

At a buck fifty for 3 plays pinball is astronomically more expensive than it used to be. Gone are the days of 25¢ for 5 plays and easy extras.

I wandered into a pinball hall on Third Avenue a few months ago. I was unaware of how these pinball pavilions work in this year of 2016. I just wanted to go in and throw a few quarters down the drain and blow off some steam. It doesn’t work like that any more, as a somewhat surly security guard informed me. You pay by the hour. I requested to pay by the half hour. I was told I could pay by the three-quarter hour. I paid whatever I paid for 45 minutes of time but I got impatient with the hourly confinement and left after 10 or 15 minutes. I thought it was stupid.

The finances of the game makes sense, though. Pinball cannot survive on 25¢ a game. Compared to something like a Megatouch or similar touchscreen game consoles which hold hundreds of games a pinball machine takes up a thousand times more space and makes way less money.

Arcades take me back to Daytona Beach, and those summer months spent at my father’s place as part of my parents’ separation agreement. I played a “Satin Doll” pinball machine at a game room on the Broadwalk. Some glitch in the table let me get virtually infinite extra plays. I would be at that machine for hours, never spending more than a single quarter. I never tired of watching and hearing the machine’s orgasmic lights and bells ring for 20 minutes, a free game being awarded about every minute. I left the machine there with dozens of free plays for whoever came next.

Not so much tonight, where $1.50 got me about 4 or 5 minutes of pinball play, and no high score. All good, though. The arcade space at Bowlmor felt as much like a casino as a game room. The Arcade area and the bar therein was almost empty but the bowling lanes looked filled to capacity.