Place: Jason's Deli
Lunch: Pastrami melt, Texas chili, Dr Pepper
I keep meaning to summarize the hybrid car deal from the weekend...My rental Altima hybrid got 37 mpg or better (I don't know if the tank was COMPLETELY full when I picked it up, and I completely filled it) on the 2.5 gallons of gas I used over my roughly 40 hours in Vegas. Pretty impressive for a V6. A lot of that is due to stop-and-go and slow moving traffic. I figure my four-cylinder Rogue would have been lucky to get 20-25 in the same scenario. In most situations, where you're driving longer stretches in town at 35-45 and on the highway more, the results wouldn't be nearly as good.
I've also since found out the hybrid Altima is only sold in like a half dozen states for some dumb reason. No wonder I hadn't heard of it before.
Oh...and driving around in a car with no audible motor sound? CREEPY.
Also, apparently to accommodate expansion, renting a car no longer happens at McCarran. It used to be you'd go to your favorite rental car company's booth near the baggage carousels, finalize your rental, and get bussed out to wherever their car lot was. Now you board a common rental car shuttle bus that goes out to a whole new facility about three miles south of the airport property (even south of 215). Enter what looks like a mall food court but with rental car companies instead of corn dogs and rent your car. The cars are all right there. They like to stress to you that, from the garage, it's just "three right turns to the strip".
It's true. I followed this advice and found myself at the bottom of Las Vegas Blvd. I went up past the famous sign, past the Luxor, Excalibur, and Tropicana hotels, and headed east on Tropicana Ave. I drove a few miles into the increasingly poor and abandoned area of town until I hit an area with a lot of empty space where buildings used to be...in some cases foundations still exist...until I saw the non-descript cement block on the left, its windows and glass doors mirrored like an adult book store, with nothing but a vinyl banner up top proclaiming the business inside...the "Pinball Hall of Fame".
The building was bare bones. One big room, save for maybe a makeshift unmarked bathroom in one corner. White walls and a cement floor. None of the overhead lights were turned on. There was a hodgepodge of change machines up front that supposedly were lifted off a casino's trash dock. There were some quarter candy machines.
And there were pinball machines. Over a hundred of them. Working. Playable. From every era of pinball.
I'm in heaven.
It's not a 'hall of fame' at all, per se. It's an arcade, plain and simple, that focuses on pinball. The man behind the machines is Tim Arnold, a lifelong pinball fan and a former Michigan arcade operator. Arnold and his wife invested successfully and sold his arcades in 1990 and 'retired', moving to Las Vegas, his massive collection of machines eventually following.
As he restored machines to play condition, he started having fun night parties at his home (where he has something like 1,000 old pinball machines waiting to be restored) to benefit local charities. Eventually, a building fund was started, and eventually, the Pinball Hall of Fame arcade opened to the public. This 10,000 square-foot location is actually their second building. I'm pretty sure Arnold is the guy with the thick glasses you see in the back of the building tinkering with machines in the dark, but I didn't ask.
Pinball is a dying art form. There's only one company still making new machines (Stern Pinball), and most of their machines are modern licenses of major franchises like Iron Man, Pirates of the Caribbean, and even CSI. Yes, all three of those are here. CSI is a very odd machine, with the actors speaking their lines very matter of factly ("Skull...multiball."). Still, there isn't a whole lot of market for these...Stern claims half of their sales are to private collectors. I rarely see any operating anymore, save for an occasional modern model in a movie theater arcade.
The Hall of Fame has lots of everything, really. Old Gottlieb machines from the 70's with their mechanical scoreboards and bells. Early solid state machines like Bally's Eight Ball Deluxe. Franchise pins like Star Trek, Star Wars, Kiss, and even an Elton John "Captain Fantastic" machine. The legendary but rare Williams 'Pinball 2000'-design "Revenge from Mars". (See the documentary 'Tilt' for more information. I'd never heard of it until @michaelkreagan hooked me up, because he's awesome that way.) Some I was hoping to see weren't here, like Centaur and Spirit of 76, but the Pinbot and Addams Family machines more than made up for that. There's also a few classic video games scattered about, including a Donkey Kong, Centipede, Tron, and a rare working Dragon's Lair.
I spent a good chunk of time here over two days and spent a total of just $16 in quarters playing the machines. The patrons I saw in the building were largely guys who likely were in their prime in the eighties, but a few couples would show up, and parents with kids too.
It's completely awesome, and it's all for charity. Arnold donates any profits to the local Salvation Army.
The Pinball Hall of Fame is at 1610 E Tropicana. They CLAIM the building is right across from the Liberace Museum, but it's not...it's down the street across from an empty lot surrounded by a chain-link fence.
The Liberace Museum, by the way, looks like it's housed in a re-purposed motel. Like an old TraveLodge. Or a really massive old strip mall.
