gistfile1.txt

Bo's Pinball Story

what kind of ett
best ett are always person we work with + obsession
glenn and swsw concerts
brendan and cyclone
mandel and laundry

so rather than talk about pinball history
(museum)
or the best pinball machines
(best)
or roger sharpe
(sharpe)
I'm going to talk about how I got into competitive pinball
(IFPA page)
I'm a nationally ranked pinball player, like, I do this shit for real
I play in tournaments
I think a lot about how to make that number get smaller

So how did this start

early 2014 really the start of when I got into pinball
I was hanging out with this guy
(zoom into BW)
at this place 
(State Park)
drinking these things
(State Park)
we would put this record on the jukebox in its entirety
(Rumours)
that's an ETT in and of itself but suffice to say that in the 70s, the combo of FM radio,
(radio)
the AOR format,
(Steely Dan) 
huge label budgets
and massive amounts of cocaine
(cocaine) 
made some of the best rock music ever recorded
(tusk) 
and Fleetwood Mac
(mac)
was totally emblematic of all of it
but that's another ETT
(cyclone)
where instead of a funny guy talking about cool ambient music
(pic of wo)
it's just me talking about fleetwood mac

so anyway back to pinball
so at State Park they had a pinball machine
(addams family)
called the Addams Family
used to play the Addams Family all the time when I was a teenager
(teen wo)
in Atlantic Beach NC
at the arcade
in my cousin's timeshare

So I got super into playing the Addams Family at State Park
but then BW moved to NY 
(bieber billboard)

and I felt weird going to this bar by myself
and playing pinball by myself
(I no longer feel weird at all about playing pinball by myself)

So then I got super into this thing called The Pinball Arcade
(pinball arcade)
We have it here
It has tons of pinball machines on your computer or tablet or whatever
And I learned about a lot of machines, and I learned about the rules

And I also started going to this place in NH called The Pinball Wizard Arcade
(PW)
which had like 100 pinball machines
(PW rows of machines)
including, of course, the Addams Family

But I missed playing with people
So in November of 2014 I emailed this guy
(NEPL logo)
about this thing called the New England Pinball League
turns out there was a pinball league that met on Tuesday nights at Lanes and Games
(LNG)
which is a pretty awesome bowling alley with a great set of pinball machines

That was when I become not just a pinball player but a competitive pinball player
(homer sports pennant + mom's facebook comment)
I had found my sport
around this time I watched YouTube videos of a guy named Bowen Kerins, who played IN MY PINBALL LEAGUE, explaining all the ins and outs of different pinball machines

but it wasn't until the spring/summer of 2015 that I actually played at league night regularly enough to go to finals
(pic of me at finals)
and that's when I became not just a pinball player, not just a competitive pinball player, but a nationally ranked pinball player
(ifpa page)
like there's this guy, Josh Sharpe, who is actually Roger Sharpe's son
and like I said, it's not that kind of ETT, but long story short Roger Sharpe saved pinball from being outlawed as a scam ran by inveterate gmablers
google him
so his son now runs this thing called the IFPA which collects all the tournament results and maintains a ranking (using this point system called WPPR etc etc)
you know what this is probably all inside baseball

so this just made the part of me that wanted to do this thing, to play pinball in competition with other people who really loved pinball, even more
I started going to other tournaments
and this culminated in probably the craziest thing I have done as a grown man
(outside of sanctum)
which is that I drove to Meriden CT
and played pinball at a 24 hour tournament inside a storage unit run entirely by pinball freaks
(inside of sanctum)
This is Steve Bowden, he's the #4 pinball player in America, he won the 24 hour battle at the Sanctum
these guys just ran a kickstarter for 10 grand to move into a way bigger space with better electric, a streaming setup, etc
totally doing that again next year

so what am I doing now
still going to NEPL nights
(game of thrones)
got my wife into pinball- she came to the game of thrones launch party
(sweet talka)
she's going to a women-only pinball tournament next year
I just signed up for pinburgh
(pinburgh )
, which is a huge (700 players, $100K prize money) tournament next summer in Pittsburgh
Yeah Pittsburgh

so that's it, ask me some questions