Seattle Times Pinball Article
My dad forwarded me this article from the Seattle Times and also gave me a printed copy of the original article from Pacific Northwest Magazine. I forwarded it on to Jeff Patterson for This Week In Pinball, but thought I'd touch on it briefly here because it's some fascinating stuff. First, the link:
Some of my favorite parts of the article (re-arranged due to excerpting):
"Then, at 12:39 a.m. on Oct. 10, 1957, Seattle got its first pinball bomb. Somebody threw dynamite into Century Distributors, a coin-machine business on Queen Anne. The explosion blew a hole in a wall, revealing 24 illegal slot machines, which were immediately confiscated. Detective Chief Frank Ramos complained that the owner, Orville Cohen, was “reticent concerning certain matters” that might help solve the crime. Cohen quickly quit the coin-machine business to run a construction company.
The bombings continued: an explosion at a card, dice and gambling-chip company; a car bomb at the home of Fred Galeno, secretary-treasurer of the Amusement Association of Seattle (and also in the horse-racing business); a similar car bomb for mayoral candidate Gordon Newell; and two sticks of dynamite tossed through the window at an interstate coin-machine distributor’s office, blowing a hole in the concrete floor.
By 1960, a string of pinball-related bombings — including car bombs — startled the city so much, Mayor Gordon S. Clinton called for a total ban on the game. The Seattle City Council balked. People grumbled they were on the take, too. Eleven years and a few dead bodies later, a grand jury indicted the city council president, the police chief, the former King County sheriff, and cops up and down the chain of command on charges related to bribery, extortion, blackmail, sex work — and pinball.
One of those bodies belonged to “pinball king” Ben Cichy, who controlled Seattle pinball licenses — and was a close friend of King County Prosecutor Charles O. Carroll. On May 31, 1969, Cichy was found dead in 5 feet of water near his yacht on Yarrow Point. In an unusual move, his autopsy was delayed until the chief medical examiner (Carroll’s brother-in-law) got back to town, and then conducted without any law-enforcement witnesses — against protocol for such a sudden and high-profile demise. The death was ruled an accident.
The city council complained it couldn’t live without the $325,000 in annual pinball-licensing fees...During the ’60s, Chambliss reported, there were 3,500 pinball machines licensed in Washington, making more than $7 million a year — in 1965 dollars. Adjusted for inflation (per the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics), that’s $56,876,994 per year, or $16,251 per machine. Cash...Little things begot bigger things. “Drowning is a favorite method of eliminating troublemakers,” Chambliss wrote in a 1971 article for the Wisconsin Law Review, alleging there had been at least 13 suspicious deaths affiliated with Seattle’s pinball and the vice scene between 1955 and 1969: a county auditor who talked to a reporter and was found dead in the water the next day, a vice-friendly assistant police chief who drowned on a fishing trip with associates, Cichy by his yacht, etc."
And this:
"The atmosphere at Add-a-Ball, a pleasantly scruffy, subterranean arcade/bar in Fremont, is a little rowdy on any given night — at least by pinball standards. It’s a convivial place where regulars yell hello when a familiar face drifts through the door and down a ramp toward the bar, lighting up for hugs and high-fives along the way.
Tonight, it’s in full-on party mode: 23 machines bleeping and clanging; people yowling in triumph or cursing in frustration; a lusty, retro-rock ‘n’ roll playlist blaring (Iggy Pop, Bruce Springsteen, Guns N’ Roses).
The cozy little warren is packed with 52 contenders, plus friends and onlookers, for Pinfall 2019, a raucous variation on traditional pinball tournaments — with extra antics inspired by professional wrestling. One round requires competitors to play one-handed. Another encourages trash talking. There are costumes.
In the middle of this happy carnival, Hilgard needs to focus. He’s new to tournaments, and his opponent is Hannah Hatch, currently ranked by the International Flipper Pinball Association as the world’s No. 1 women’s player. (Seattle is home to six of the women’s top 20; the currently ranked best pinball player in the world, Raymond Davidson, lives in Everett.)
Pinballs have been clocked traveling 10 to 12 miles per hour — which doesn’t sound like much, but that’s around 15 feet per second, which feels pretty fast in a little, target-crammed box only 4.6 feet long by 2.25 feet wide.
A regulation pinball weighs 80 grams, about half as heavy as a baseball. Hold four of them in your hand, and it’s the weight of a human heart. A standard pinball machine contains between a quarter-mile and a half-mile of wire, the nervous system for around 3,500 parts — springs, diodes, solenoids, capacitors, switches — all wrapped in a wood rectangle and covered by a sheet of tempered glass so tough it can absorb the impact of a full pint glass of beer dropped from above."
Pretty wild!
Some of my favorite parts of the article (re-arranged due to excerpting):
"Then, at 12:39 a.m. on Oct. 10, 1957, Seattle got its first pinball bomb. Somebody threw dynamite into Century Distributors, a coin-machine business on Queen Anne. The explosion blew a hole in a wall, revealing 24 illegal slot machines, which were immediately confiscated. Detective Chief Frank Ramos complained that the owner, Orville Cohen, was “reticent concerning certain matters” that might help solve the crime. Cohen quickly quit the coin-machine business to run a construction company.
The bombings continued: an explosion at a card, dice and gambling-chip company; a car bomb at the home of Fred Galeno, secretary-treasurer of the Amusement Association of Seattle (and also in the horse-racing business); a similar car bomb for mayoral candidate Gordon Newell; and two sticks of dynamite tossed through the window at an interstate coin-machine distributor’s office, blowing a hole in the concrete floor.
By 1960, a string of pinball-related bombings — including car bombs — startled the city so much, Mayor Gordon S. Clinton called for a total ban on the game. The Seattle City Council balked. People grumbled they were on the take, too. Eleven years and a few dead bodies later, a grand jury indicted the city council president, the police chief, the former King County sheriff, and cops up and down the chain of command on charges related to bribery, extortion, blackmail, sex work — and pinball.
One of those bodies belonged to “pinball king” Ben Cichy, who controlled Seattle pinball licenses — and was a close friend of King County Prosecutor Charles O. Carroll. On May 31, 1969, Cichy was found dead in 5 feet of water near his yacht on Yarrow Point. In an unusual move, his autopsy was delayed until the chief medical examiner (Carroll’s brother-in-law) got back to town, and then conducted without any law-enforcement witnesses — against protocol for such a sudden and high-profile demise. The death was ruled an accident.
The city council complained it couldn’t live without the $325,000 in annual pinball-licensing fees...During the ’60s, Chambliss reported, there were 3,500 pinball machines licensed in Washington, making more than $7 million a year — in 1965 dollars. Adjusted for inflation (per the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics), that’s $56,876,994 per year, or $16,251 per machine. Cash...Little things begot bigger things. “Drowning is a favorite method of eliminating troublemakers,” Chambliss wrote in a 1971 article for the Wisconsin Law Review, alleging there had been at least 13 suspicious deaths affiliated with Seattle’s pinball and the vice scene between 1955 and 1969: a county auditor who talked to a reporter and was found dead in the water the next day, a vice-friendly assistant police chief who drowned on a fishing trip with associates, Cichy by his yacht, etc."
And this:
"The atmosphere at Add-a-Ball, a pleasantly scruffy, subterranean arcade/bar in Fremont, is a little rowdy on any given night — at least by pinball standards. It’s a convivial place where regulars yell hello when a familiar face drifts through the door and down a ramp toward the bar, lighting up for hugs and high-fives along the way.
Tonight, it’s in full-on party mode: 23 machines bleeping and clanging; people yowling in triumph or cursing in frustration; a lusty, retro-rock ‘n’ roll playlist blaring (Iggy Pop, Bruce Springsteen, Guns N’ Roses).
The cozy little warren is packed with 52 contenders, plus friends and onlookers, for Pinfall 2019, a raucous variation on traditional pinball tournaments — with extra antics inspired by professional wrestling. One round requires competitors to play one-handed. Another encourages trash talking. There are costumes.
In the middle of this happy carnival, Hilgard needs to focus. He’s new to tournaments, and his opponent is Hannah Hatch, currently ranked by the International Flipper Pinball Association as the world’s No. 1 women’s player. (Seattle is home to six of the women’s top 20; the currently ranked best pinball player in the world, Raymond Davidson, lives in Everett.)
Pinballs have been clocked traveling 10 to 12 miles per hour — which doesn’t sound like much, but that’s around 15 feet per second, which feels pretty fast in a little, target-crammed box only 4.6 feet long by 2.25 feet wide.
A regulation pinball weighs 80 grams, about half as heavy as a baseball. Hold four of them in your hand, and it’s the weight of a human heart. A standard pinball machine contains between a quarter-mile and a half-mile of wire, the nervous system for around 3,500 parts — springs, diodes, solenoids, capacitors, switches — all wrapped in a wood rectangle and covered by a sheet of tempered glass so tough it can absorb the impact of a full pint glass of beer dropped from above."
Pretty wild!
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