Unrelenting Sunshine, EMs, and Pinball Rivalries: Welcome to the world of Tyler White

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you already know Tyler White is a cool dude. How’d he come into our lives? I mean, how’d he come into all our lives? He just appeared. All of a sudden there was a cool guy in an insane picture winning a pinball machine at Walt’s in LA in front of what looked to be no less than a million screaming fans. Oh yeah, and the pic was by Elizabeth Fuckin’ Weinberg. Not too shabby. 

But beyond that, who the fuck is this guy? More than just an overall cool dude with good music taste, Tyler White is a pinball host, brewery manager, and pinfluencer. Is it cringy to say pinfluencer? Cheugey even? Yeah, it really feels like it fuckin’ is. I’m sorry, and Tyler never said those words. He never said the word pinfluencer once, and neither again will I. Let’s move on. Woof. 

Anyway, he’s doing a lot of dope stuff these days – and helping to develop a strong, small LA pinball community that encompasses everyone. And when I say that, I mean it. Literally everyone. 

“We have young people, but I mean, it gets up there too. Everyone plays. There are people in thier 50s, 60s, sometimes 70s at our tournaments,” White says on a recent call. “LA has a ton of different kinds of players. The women’s tournament at Walt’s is dope.” 

Maybe that’s because an LA 70 is like a Wisconsin 35, but still. Wild, man. Buck wild. Especially because just about every pic these dudes post is full of raucous, fun energy – some serious LA beach counterculture vibes, brah. 

We sat down to ask Tyler to learn more about the pinball scene in LA, how to blow up Munsters, and why EMs are actually doper than you think.

NUDGE: How’d you get into pinball?

TYLER WHITE: I got into pinball when I was hired as a bartender/manager hybrid position at a Barcade. :You’re familiar with them? At first I thought it was going to be dope, because I was like video games and booze? How could I go wrong? Those are two of my favorite things. Later, I helped them develop their first west coast location – in Highland Park. 

As a manager you have to fix shit. You’re the guy when someone comes up and they’re like ‘Hey it’s broken.’ and you have to go over with the little keys and make it seem like, ‘Hey, I know what the fuck is going on!’ *laughs* 

Up until that point, I hadn’t played much pinball because I was trash at it. I like to be good at things. But as a manager, I had to learn to start fixing the pinball machines – even though 90% of the time you’d luck out with a customer because you’d just have to say, “oh did you press start?”

N: Right. 

TW: But that other 10% That’s not the issue, so you’re like, oh shit. So I got a very basic introductory level knowledge of on-the-job pinball repair. But then I actually had to learn what it looked like when they worked. So I started playing them. It was a whole new experience for me, like this reverse-engineered way of getting into a passion. I’m super grateful to Barcade in that sense, because it was where I first learned to love pinball. 

Nudge: You’re good. You play good people. It’s natural for pinball rivalries to develop. Does that beef carry over into real life? Or is it more like the skateboard community in the 90s? You’re competing, but you’re learning from each other. 

TW: Pinball rivalries are natural and they’re fun. However, they’re not real. My biggest rivals are all my homies now. And even beyond that, people that I once looked up to, someone where I’m like ‘holy shit, this person beats my ass.’ Now we’re peers. Now we take turns. 

There’s this player here in Los Angeles named Raymond Ashby. He’s notorious. He wins the majority of the tournaments. Just a very skilled player. Period. I’ve come in second to him often. But you know, that’s the homie. And I’m not gonna shun that guy for being great.

On the contrary, raymond has helped me countless times. I just got on the leaderboard last week at Revenge and got like a $20 gift certificate because Raymond saw me trying to crack Munsters and he was like, “oh do this, here’s a tip. Here’s a tip. Literally in 35 seconds. In the time it took me to put two tokens and start the game, he concisely summarized it – 

N: OK, so I gotta interrupt you. Give us the 35 second Raymond Ashby guide to Munsters, cuz I also suck at that game. 

TW: There’s two things I’ll mention real quick. One of them is for that technique when you’re in the lower playfield. SO there’s going to be times in the game where you have a ball going on in the main playfield, but you’re still playing in that tiny playfield. It was real simple. He just told me to trap the ball in the main playfield and only play the bottom one. I had a multiball going or something, and I was holding both balls on the main with my flippers, but then using my other fingers to just rip the bottom playfield. 

N: What’s the second?

TW: The second was just a rules thing. Understanding how the super jackpot works. I just kept taking it early on. But if you hold the button you cancel it, which you should almost always do. Just cancel and stack. If you take it right away you might get a mil or two, but if you keep building it up - i think with Eddie shots and stuff - you can get 16 or 20 million a pop instead of just one or two. 

Nudge: You’re really into this *laughs*. What would you tell someone just starting out? 

TW: I love teaching people pinball. But like, only if you want to hear about it. I’m not trying to fucking mansplain anything. But yeah, I’m super passionate about this shit. 

Usually what I tell people is that there are easy points and there are hard points. I always try to educate people about easy points because it's like, yeah, dog so if there are easy points and there are hard points then, spoiler alert: they're hard. They're not easy to get. 

So while it feels good to get hard points, maybe let's get these easy points first and let's work our way up to getting the hard points. 

N: That makes sense. You play a lot of old EMs (electro-mechanical pinball machines). The machine you won at Walt’s was an EM. Tell us: why are EMs cool?

TW: I love EMs. It’s like bare-knuckle fighting. If you can play on an em, you can play anything. It is one of the best ways to learn fundamental pinball. 

N: Like what? 

TW: Fundamental pinball is like catching, controlling the ball, even post passes and stuff, which I rarely use, but that's when you're getting really, you know, tactical. Aside from that – just learning to nudge and being able to know when the ball's going over to the outlane. I got good at nudging on EMs. It's not about scoring points. It's about staying alive. 

Want the rest? READ IT IN THE PRINT ISSUE OF NUDGE 2, YOU DIRTY, DIRTY GOOFENBACHER.