What fills the breath of a room?

Is it the predictable exchange of in’s & out’s during business hours,

or the sum of breaths taken & given since the walls were raised? 

do breathless machines not fill one’s lungs with the taste of another time, another nickel?

 

The Great Depression marked the infancy of these machines, from gritty Chicago factories into the hands of seedy hard ups. Banned and bashed, eventually left in the wake of the monstrous vice which birthed it, gambling.

 

Which machines define American Culture? And of those, how many also benchmarked eras of American pop Art?

Pinball machines stand alone.

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They’ve stood alone in forgotten corners of dusty rooms within rooms… corroded and quiet. But there is a haven for pinball brethren to socialize once more. The good people of the Pacific Pinball Museum have gifted these machines with voice once more.

 

Generations apart, the parts are not easily tracked down. Manuals long discarded and manufacturers bleak, 

on hands and knees, preservationists volunteer what they can. Muralists borrow our eye’s devotion to the silver orb, and we pause-

at the scanty women who pose atop fantasies of the American dream. Colors are reimagined, reflecting the glory days, and hopefully the revival.

 

Wide-eyed newcomers walk lightly, hesitating to check the quarters in their pockets as if to come to terms with which of these treasures

they can play. What a relief it is for both young & old to learn they have unlimited play of the pond! The little ones have (at best) played before

on a 1 dimensional screen, so they awkwardly hustle from machine to machine with a stool to peer down at the real thing.

The seasoned become nostalgic, greeting the machines like old friends blissfully reunited. But all are equally consumed with fits of triumph

and loss, compelled to pull the plunger once more…

...well maybe just once more.

 

And yet with free reign of 4 rooms, there is something magnetic about the machines that reawakens an appetite to see and touch more.

Little do they know, there is a warehouse weighted down with stacks of machines just aching to come back to life. The hidden gem of the Alameda Naval Base, similarly discarded, holds its ground and takes in one of the best panoramic views of our beloved Bay Area. Sunset after sunrise,

this industrial complex houses countless art pieces that any curator would covet- if they only knew.

 

Dusty debris whirl about in the beams of light that beat upon the warehouse windows…

the voyeur is transported to another current of dust, visible from a different set of windows- the Carnegie Library’s.

Cold and empty, it’s no bend of the imagination to visualize that this marble giant shares a dormant desire to become a pinball alley.

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