Che Curnew has a passion for pinball and he is not alone. The coin-eating pop culture icons are experiencing a renaissance of sorts as pinball wizards and their beloved machines make a mature return to mainstream.
“Guys my age who grew up with arcades and spent all their allowance quarters on video games and pinball machines are at the age now where they have a little bit of disposable income and can kind of relive their childhood days,” said Curnew. “They harken back to that thing they were really passionate about when they were young and for many my age that happens to be pinball and arcades. That was a big thing in the 70s and 80s.”
Curnew is part owner of Doogie’s and Pablo’s nightclub in downtown Guelph where they have a collection of classic pinball machines and members of the newly-formed Guelph City Pinball League meet and compete.
“It used to be the Guelph Pinball Club that my friend Dan Beeson was hosting in his house,” said Curnew. “City Pinball League started in Toronto as a bar league at different locations in Toronto. It was something Dan was involved with and I talked to him about bringing pinball machines into the bar. We moved the Guelph Pinball Club here to what we now call the Guelph City Pinball League.”
D’Arcy Mosher has been playing pinball for more than 30 years and was a founding member of the Guelph Pinball Club when it started five years ago in Beeson’s home in The Ward. Beeson is an avid collector and accumulated several classic machines but because they were in his home access to the machines was limited to club members.
“It started out as a fun way to socialize with friends,” said Mosher. “It was competitive and friendly with good, like-minded people.”
Mosher is now a member of the new league where anyone with a pocket full of quarters can test their flipper fingers and try their luck with the silver ball.
“That’s the beauty of being a bar league,” said Curnew. “We have a couple different iterations. People can come out and just play their six games and put up their scores. They can come in and join a group that is playing or join anyone else that’s playing so it’s not so rigid that they have to be here at a certain time and play with this group.
We try to make it more open and social like that.”
The social aspect of pinball and arcade culture is one of the biggest factors for Mosher, Curnew and other members of the league.
The rise of video games such as Pac-Man in the early 1980s began the quick and steady decline of arcades and pinball machines that were expensive to make and maintain.
“Video games really killed it but the funny thing is, it was really a double-edged sword because what came after that was the consoles and the console killed the arcades completely,” said Curnew. “Now you could play a game at home that was just as good as you saw at the arcade. It pushed it more and more into a home collectors market and went underground for a long time.”
That has changed over the last decade with the growing popularity of bar leagues and organizations such as the International Flipper Pinball Association that tracks league points.
“Players that accumulate points can qualify for larger events, usually in the States where they have some big pinball tournaments,” said Curnew.
He and some members of the Guelph City Pinball League have competed at IFPA tournaments but their main focus is having fun.
“We usually have 20 to 25 players out,” said Curnew. “The league runs every other Tuesday (next one is Oct. 3). Everyone comes out for some fun and a little bit of competitive play.”
