Kensington Brewery and 3030 Present: Those Elite Guilty Pleasures... and a Pinball Tourney!

Bright Lights Bumper City is always on top of the latest breaking pinball news! I just got word that Kensington Brewing Company and 3030 Dundas West are putting on a neat event this Friday, November 1st, dig it!

Click on the image to RSVP!

An evening of retro music on vinyl by DJ WHAT'SHERPROBLEM?!! and pinball sounds like a real good ol skool time! That and the beer that will be there! Kensington Brewing Co. is going to be crackin' open a few kegs of their very own beer, Augusta Ale, FISH EYE-PA, and the new pinball-themed beer, TILT! Very nice! But beer is not the focus of BLBC, it's the pinball that we're interested in! As the poster indicates, there will be a FREE pinball tournament going down on Friday night and from what I've heard, it's gonna be ELIMINATION STYLE! Head-to-head elimination battles to determine who is the king of pinball... at least for the night with a prize pack by Kensington Brewery and 3030! There might even be a few challenges to prove that you are a true pinball wizard! I suggest RSVP'ing with the Facebook event to keep up-to-date. If you're not familiar with 3030's tables, take a quick look!

One helluva vintage lineup! Most tournaments I have been involved in usually have lineups of later model tables. For example, the 2013 Canadian Pinball Championship's lineup was mainly 90's era DMD tables...

Although they did have a classics tourney with a couple of EM's and early SS tables. 3030's lineup is a mixture of EM's and classic 80's SS tables so it will be a blast to play in a tournament setting on these tables.

Ottawa Pinball Expo 2013 Part II

Even though the Ottawa Pinball Expo was more than a month ago, there is still a lot I want to talk about and show you! You should catch up on the first look at the Expo if you haven't already!

In the last post, I gave a general view of the entire Ottawa Pinball Expo and talked a bit at length about Williams' System 11 tables, many of which were present there. There was one particular System 11 table that I omitted for a special reason. I figured since Halloween is coming up very soon, I could hold off on speaking about this table until the time was right. Well, I would say it is quite right so why don't we kick this off with an...

What better time of the season than Halloween to take a peek at Elvira and The Party Monsters! Based off of the late-night TV character, Elvira, Mistress of The Dark, the table is packed to the gills with puns and sex appeal. If you're familiar with Elvira at all, you know that is her schtick...

And I gotta say, it makes for a helluva pinball table! The strongest point of this table has to be its art package. The artist, Greg Freres, has a comic-book influenced style, especially with the use of red and blue to highlight Elvira's hair as well as the bright and bold colours throughout the table. It just came to me that I often mention the "bright and bold" colours of pinball tables and that is true, I do that but pinball tables are meant to have eye-popping visuals and I tend to notice these tables moreso than others. For example, if you look at really any Bally or Williams table, they tend to have the bright colours and bold black outlines on many of their tables which really make them pop. Even some Data East tables have standout artwork like Tommy.

Pinball Update for October

There has been quite a bit of shakeup to the pinball lineup here in Toronto so I think it is time to get around to an update!

Stern's latest table is Star Trek, I spoke about it in a post when the table was first announced.

The first of the Pro tables have been shipped out and a few Star Trek tables have been reported in the wild around North America. I would also like to report that I've located a Star Trek table right here in the city!

DANG DOES THAT THING GLOW OR WHAT? Star Trek is the first table where the Pro version is completely outfitted with LEDs and boy is it beautiful! Another innovation by Stern is that the backglass is somewhat tilted as to reduce the glare on the playfield from the backglass. I like it most because it makes taking pictures that much easier!

Oh yeah, I suppose I should mention where this table is located. OK it is now residing at California Sandwiches! That's on Claremont just off of Dundas West. The table was recently placed on location and is in near-new condition. Go check it out!

Not only is Star Trek now at California Sandwiches, The Sopranos has taken the place of Batman! I had a strange feeling about this table when I returned to California Sandwiches and saw the new line-up. I got a bit of deja vu... that's because this table used to be at Leisure Lanes in Whitby!

I was hoping that since the table got shuffled, it was going to get fixed up but it's the same as it was when it was back at Leisure Lanes; the saucer hole that is for the mystery award, extra ball and episode mode is still as finicky as before and rarely activates, the playfield is still pretty dirty and the safe sometimes doesn't acknowledge hits... All that and MJS is the Grand Champion. Shane and I have a feeling it is just MJB with different initials but who knows.
 
During my trip to California Sandwiches to grab some photos of Star Trek, I happened to catch sight of these two tables sitting in a bar on Dundas West....

YEP! Stern's TRON Legacy and Duotron have taken up residence at Mây!

Pinball Crawl Trip Report

This past weekend I went on my very first pinball crawl! BIG THANKS to Kensington Brewery and 3030 for putting on this great event. I had a blast, met many great people and played some serious pinball! There were seven locations in all throughout the west end of Toronto that we had to venture between and obtain the highest scores we could muster on their pinball machines.
 

The crawl started at 4 PM at Handlebar in Kensington Market. A Gottlieb Pro Football was brought in for a one-time appearance at Handlebar to kick off the crawl.