Chicago Pinball Expo: Dirty Deeds, Free Weeds, Cale Succeeds
We get it. You’ve all been frickin’ begging for it, SO HERE IT IS. THE NUDGE RECAP OF CHICAGO PINBALL EXPO 2022. Let’s just get it out of the way now: Expo was one of the best things to happen in pinball this year, and if you weren’t there, you completely missed out. Yes, we’re talking to YOU, Dennis Kriesel. This isn’t an advertisement (though full disclosure: y’all prob know that ROB BERK, the Expo OG himself, was the ONLY person to advertise in Nudge 1 and that makes him tops in our book), it’s just stating the facts: Expo was bigger, badder, and had more playtime than 2021.
So here’s where we say that last year’s expo was… a mixed bag. Did we have fun? I mean, I’ve told this story a million times, but how can you not have fun when you’re microdosing mushrooms while playing Orbitor 1 with your best friend for 3 hours? Like, duh. But also, like, it was kinda weak-sauce to have the free-play games segregated from the Stern section (always the best spot for playing new games) and the extra charge to see speakers felt… lame.
Last year? Well, let’s just say a lot changed for the frickin’ better.
In general, we can say a couple of things about the Expo, but you’ve probably heard this on countless podcasts. They put a lot of effort into making Expo an experience. So to the incessant question, was it the same old same old? We’re happy to report that it wasn’t.
Seminars were free: This meant that attendance for the talks was WAY up. We’ll get to our Expo talk in a bit, but needless to say the vibes were nearly a thousand times better
Freeplay and manufacturers were all mixed together: Gone was the weird veil that cordoned off the haves from the have-nots. This year, all that stuff was mixed together in an orgiastic freaky deaky pinball zone. It ruled
More hours to play: Last year it felt like the stern side closed down at like 9 pm. This year it was open late every night, including until 2 AM ON THE LAST NIGHT OF EXPO. INSANITY.
But Rob isn’t paying for us to gush about this, so that’s enough of that. MOVING ON.
What did Nudge do? Who the hell do you think you are, anyway?
What did we do? What the H did YOU do, man? For the purposes of organization and fun, Ima give you a rundown of what the hell happened at expo day-by-day; a blow by blow of the SEEDIEST pinball ride of your life. TOUR DIARY STYLE. That’s right, for one magical article, you’ll be able to fake hang out with some of your favorite Nudge and Nudge-tangential celebs. So who are these weirdos? What’d we do? Where was the best pot? Hold your horses there, mister. Let’s start with the cast.
Doc Monday: That’s me. The big guy with the big fat head and amazing head of hair. I was there for the vibes man. This is me next to a custom Slayer machine, AKA THE LOUDEST PINBALL MACHINE IN THE WORLD.
Rachel and Cale from Electric Bat: These two are part of the pinball revolution. Cale did all our ads in issue 1 and Rachel is working on some cover ideas for a future issue. They own the Electric Bat in Arizona. They’re dope ass pinball people, and they’re funny as hell. They were here to play games, network, and get down with the homies that they don’t get to see too often.
Rick Brewster: The man, the myth, the legend. Hated by playfield multipliers everywhere, Rick was here for the tournaments — and had an epic time at pinball olympics.
Anyway, other people kinda come in and out, but those are the Nudgers ya gotta know.
Chicago Pinball Expo: Thursday
Does expo technically start earlier in the week? Sure. Was World War II technically going on before America got involved? Absolutely. Same kinda vibes here. We didn’t create this mess, but we knew we were gonna be the ones cleaning it up. That started with me having insane acid reflux on the way down to Chicago. It’s as if my body was pregaming for the amount of toxic grilled meats, cheeses, and assorted sugars that were gonna be forced into it. You know what? Hell yeah. Embrace the burn. Fuck it, just raw dogging Gaviscon. pedal to the floor, driving 85 while listening to pinball podcasts and Nudge playlists for 5 hours (like the sick bastard I am). I felt like an alien driving up to the schaumburg Renaissance Hotel. A classy institution that was about to be all filled up with filthy, filthy pinball. Every damn room.
Here’s what a bunch of free stuff looks like.
This year at Expo, it was our goal to get people hyped on Nudge before Issue 2 came out. We printed 55 Expo-only alternate back covers of the magazine, brought a bunch of daupe T-Petch prints that we would give away for free, and stickers out the wazoo. As such, I had to pack this bad boy full of so much crap I thought the bottom was gonna fall out. I nearly gave myself a hernia lugging this thing into my hotel room. When I walked back to the main floor someone asked me if I wanted help with my bag, I didn’t answer them, just passed out from anger.
Thursday Night: Doc’s giant boo boo
It was frickin’ poppin off, man. Good vibes, and a ton of new Bonds to go around. We got a chance to meet Mike Vinikour, legendary Stern dude, and software guy for a buncha good games. Also he does like concert photography and shit, helluva pinball player and has a beard/five o’clock shadow situation that gives him that world weary detective look that I’ve been tryna master my whole life. Yeah, I was world-weary at 8 years old.
So how was Bond? As 007 himself would say “Dope, very dope, Ms. Moneypussy!” or whatever. It shoots awesome. The art is hella cool. I know that people were crapping on the Dr. No backglass, but frankly I don’t see what the hell those idiots are talking about. It looks classic and it pops and that yellow is directly up my alley. Don’t crap on Stern for taking chances with a yellow cab — this is the kinda shit we need in pinball. Anyway, Rick ended up getting the high score of the night on the leader board, an absurd 2.4 Billy. That was the first game of the weekend I played. I just spent it watching Rick have fucking 45 minute long balls and then I’d get up there and drain down the outlane in 15 seconds. Literally. Sucked. I don’t blame Bond tho. I blame Rick.
8:00 pm: Ur bois got backstage at Stern
I’ve learned two things about Cale Hernandez of Nudge and Electric bat fame.
Everybody loves him.
He can get away with whatever the hell he wants.
Within like five minutes of me being in the main area, I had a text from Cale to meet him backstage at the Stern stage. I was like c’mon dude, of course I can’t in there. Cut to literally thirty seconds later, he’s walking me back there giving high fives and playful sack taps to anyone and everyone. What’d we see? Well nothing that crazy, but I did watch Jack Danger eat some Chinese food and have a big glass of water. Celebrities! They’re just like us.
The homebrew section at this year’s expo was the best its ever been. There were all the classics, Ed Owen’s Ghost in the Shell, Sonic Spinball, and Elf. But we gotta have a special shout out for our boy Tanner’s machine Trashland which looked and played awesome this year. The dude is doing some wild stuff in pinball, and we’re just glad people are paying attention.
8:45 PM: I’m an idiot and my camera broke.
Are you wondering why we don’t have many pics from this part of the trip? It’s because a bunch of us wanted to go to Logan Arcade for their Bond launch party, and me being the fuckin’ standup guy that I am offered my Prius up as a ride. Anyway, longstory short, I left my camera on top of the car and didn’t notice until it was bouncing off the fuckin’ highway. We did a completely illegal u-turn, but even by then the camera had been smashed to oblivion. Luckily Rick had an extra.
9:00 PM - 11 PM: Logan Arcade officially rules
What do you wanna know about Logan? It rules. The drinks are p strong, the vibes are good, and Gary Stern was walking around with a pleasant lil’ smile on his face. Oh, when I stopped for gas this guy made kissy faces at me a lot, but other than that it was a pretty good experience. Logan has a ton of games, all in great condition. Me and Rick jammed on the hardest T2 we’ve ever played in our lives. They also had a new bond and were streaming it on stream. There was this bigass camera rig and I realized how hard it must be to stream with lights streaming on you. Fuck that. I met this cool guy named Marc who streams pinball and does a buncha pinball league/tourney shit in Boston. I gave him a couple mags to take back and felt like a rockstar.
There was a birthday party going on in back. They had a buncha food and cupcakes, but weren’t aware that there was a pinball expo in town. Somehow (because everyone loves him) Cale got a couple cupcakes. Here’s him scarfing one.
Friday: Nudge Talk and blowin’ trees
I’m not gonna give you a blow by blow of everything we did on Friday, but I will say it was pretty daupe to be able to wander expo and meet folks for the first time in person. This year has been great for us in terms of connecting with y’all, so please — if you see us out and about please say hey. Also special shout out to that one funny couple who like aggressively didn’t want any free stuff because they’d bought everything we’ve done already. Like, thank you and also I didn’t know how to handle not being able to buy ur affection with free stuff. To everyone else, thanks for taking our stuff, deadbeats.
Queen’s surprisingly dope playfield.
4:00 pm
Our panel was awesome. We had a couple folks on our panel who had to bow out last second (including Bmoen who came down with a bad case of the ‘Vid and had to miss Expo entirely). Rachel from EB came up huge in the clutch. She was by far the smartest one on-stage. I’d say probably then Tanner in terms of intelligence, then obviously me, then Cale. What was our panel about? Well, instead of telling you, I’ll let ya watch.
OR TLDR
5:00 PM, 6 PM, 7 PM
I’m gonna be honest with you here: I was stressed about that seminar. And you know what? It turned out pretty damn good, so good that we had a couple enterprising Nudge fans smoke us up in the park after. They were some cool dudes who are operators in the midwest. Like, real men’s men. The kind that actually do sorta scare you, but only like 20% scary and 80% cool. You dig? Anyway they made their particular city sound like the pinball scene still had ties to “the Italians” which is absolutely wild to me. The true seedy underbelly if pinball. Hell yeah. Anyway, this time kinda runs together in a very thick indica smoke, ya dig?
Here’s someone playing the extremely questionable Christopher Columbus, 1492 themed game from Europe. Those Europeans, I tell ya!
9PM - midnight
Somehow Cale got us backstage at Stern again. That was dope. This time I just took a little water bottle, and by little I mean tiny. When I mentioned it, Cale told me to shut up. That it was a sore subject. Let’s just say I wasn’t the first person to bring up the water bottles. Went out, played some games, got my butt kicked in everything by Rick. Cale hyped us up some more. The guy is a battery, like always charged up. Not me.
Saturday: Pinball Olympics and TX Sector
8 AM - 8 PM.
I had to get up way early on Saturday to meet at Scott Danesi’s house for pinball olympics, the best open-secret tournament in pinball. If you wanna know more… you’re gonna have to wait. UNTIL ISSUE 3 OF NUDGE. Trust us, it’s gonna be worth it. Let’s just say it’s so good that someone barfed. And we will never let that person forget that.
Anyway, it was all day, insane, exhausting, and one of the more exhilarating experiences of my frickin’ life. But were we done? OH NO, NOT BY A LONG SHOT.
9 PM - 1:30 AM
This is the line for Magic Girl. It was busy the whole time. Seemed cool, but to be honest I’ve never been a fan of those vom-green art packages. I’m shallow. I’m also not too proud to admit that I ate not one but TWO of the mini pizzas that they were selling at the concession stand. I just stood there at one of those standing tables, staring off into the middle distance, completely disassociating and thinking about everything I’d already experienced with Scott. Just slamming diet Pepsi. Sheesh. Grim.
Luckily Rachel and Cale found me. And what did we find? Maybe the dopest game from 1988 that you haven’t played yet (or maybe you have if you’re a total nerd.)
Where to start? TX Sector in general is a wild ride: A Gottlieb system 80 from 1988, but this one in particular was extremely pimped out by owner and pinball enthusiast, Josh Kushner. The game itself is about teleportation, and while the original backglass is sometimes made fun of for having Ken dolls used as astronaut models, Kushner had modded his to look extremely trippy and 3D. An effect, he told us, was made by using an old translite with “lexan cut to size”. It also had some wild LEDS and a frickin’ sub pumping the jams.
This is why you go to Expo. Sure it’s cool to see Bond, it’s dope to compete in tournaments, but where it really rules is when you get a moment by yourself playing something that someone has put a ton of time and care into. You know? This wasn’t just any TX Sector, it was Josh’s TX Sector. If he brings it back next year, play that shit. You’ll love it.
Sunday: We left
Sunday was whatever, man. To be honest, I was zonked. I listened to the 1997 Bosstones album like three times in a row on the drive home. I thought about my friends. I thought about Cale and Rachel and Rick and Taylor and Ashley and Mike and Imoto and Kyle and all the dope-ass folks we met this weekend. And then I just frickin’ crashed.
Oh, and someone took a giant uh dump
I had the picture in here for a long time. Someone took a terrible, heinous swamp monster of a poop and the picture got passed around at Expo. I’m not gonna show it. I’m actually mad that I had to spend so long looking at it to try and make an appropriate edit for this piece and then just decided against it. Literally almost vomming right now. K anyway, see y’all at expo next year. Try and eat better, everybody. Take care of yourselves, sheesh. Think of your colon.
