{"id":24071,"date":"2019-06-10T13:13:41","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T17:13:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=24071"},"modified":"2019-06-10T14:13:39","modified_gmt":"2019-06-10T18:13:39","slug":"abandoned-billiards-and-pinball-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2019\/06\/10\/abandoned-billiards-and-pinball-hall.html","title":{"rendered":"Abandoned Billiards and Pinball Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I used to play pinball here, at the now-abandoned Paradise Pool Hall and Arcade on Barnett Avenue and 48th Street, in Sunnyside. Before its closure Paradise housed the only pinball machines I knew of in the Long Island city area. The owner of the place seemed proud of this when I expressed to him my surprise at finding them. The place closed some years ago. Any time I entered Paradise the place was nearly empty, save for a couple of teenagers making out in a far corner, or a small group of elderly Spanish-speaking men playing pool. Such a sprawling space would seem desirable to developers, but I&#8217;ve heard no chatter regarding plans for the structure or the lot. I like the smiley face for its crass declaration of self, and for the ability to get this photo with no trace of myself in the door&#8217;s reflective surface.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_24072\" style=\"width: 778px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-24072\" data-attachment-id=\"24072\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2019\/06\/10\/abandoned-billiards-and-pinball-hall.html\/abandoned-billiards-and-pinball-hall-20190607_141208\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/abandoned-billiards-and-pinball-hall-20190607_141208.jpg?fit=3024%2C4032&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"3024,4032\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;2.4&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;SM-G965U&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1559916728&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;4.3&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;50&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.0166666666667&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Abandoned Billiards and Pinball Hall\" data-image-description=\"&lt;p&gt;Abandoned Billiards and Pinball Hall&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-image-caption=\"&lt;p&gt;Abandoned Billiards and Pinball Hall&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/abandoned-billiards-and-pinball-hall-20190607_141208.jpg?fit=768%2C1024&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/abandoned-billiards-and-pinball-hall-20190607_141208.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Abandoned Billiards and Pinball Hall\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" class=\"size-large wp-image-24072\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/abandoned-billiards-and-pinball-hall-20190607_141208.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/abandoned-billiards-and-pinball-hall-20190607_141208.jpg?resize=225%2C300&amp;ssl=1 225w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/abandoned-billiards-and-pinball-hall-20190607_141208.jpg?resize=1080%2C1440&amp;ssl=1 1080w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/abandoned-billiards-and-pinball-hall-20190607_141208.jpg?w=2160&amp;ssl=1 2160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-24072\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Abandoned Billiards and Pinball Hall<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I used to play pinball here, at the now-abandoned Paradise Pool Hall and Arcade on Barnett Avenue and 48th Street, in Sunnyside. Before its closure Paradise housed the only pinball machines I knew of in the Long Island city area. The owner of the place seemed proud of this when I expressed to him my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aslic","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/abandoned-billiards-and-pinball-hall-20190607_141208.jpg?fit=3024%2C4032&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-6gf","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24071"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24075,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24071\/revisions\/24075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}