jamesdeluxe
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2020
With heavy rain the previous three days and more in the short-term forecast, I chose a pretty lousy week to take my first vacation from work in six months. Instead of the multiple golf and mountain bike outings that I had planned, I spent a lot of it at home catching up on household chores; however, yesterday was penciled in on my calendar for a mission to a place I'd been threatening to visit for years but somehow never got around to. The fact that the pilgrimage site is located only 45 minutes south of me made it even less forgivable, so amidst on-and-off rain I headed down the Garden State Parkway.
Past the Jon Bon Jovi service area:
And the express-lane split:
... to Asbury Park, the well-known seaside town that had gone from a popular destination for beachgoers to a symbol of urban decay and neglect to once again a popular shore destination. It's also known as the stomping grounds for Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny, and the aforementioned Bon Jovi:
Instead of gloom and rain, the weather cleared up nicely for a mid-morning walk down the boardwalk:
Tillie, the iconic face of Asbury Park:
At the far end of the boardwalk is the Asbury Park Convention Hall, which I knew as the site where many 1970s bootleg live albums were recorded, including my personal favorite Black Sabbath on their 1975 Sabotage tour.
A few months ago, a $20 million grant was awarded to the city to renovate and reopen the complex, which includes the Paramount Theater:
With sightseeing finished, I moved on to the reason for my visit, the Silverball Arcade and Museum, which houses more than 150 vintage pinball and video games. Growing up in the 70s, I spent countless hours playing pinball and really miss when you could find them in all sorts of locations: malls, hockey rinks, bars, department stores.
For only $20, it's "all you can eat" and you can play any game for as long as you like. Truly a "kid in a candy store" effect.
I prefer the older "electromechanical" versions with the analog score counters. When they started making them with computerized scoring and effects, I checked out.
As a quasi museum, above each machine is a "bio" that explains interesting details about its manufacture and how to play the game:
Back to the mid-70s!
,
Check out the scoring -- this was back before "point inflation," where numbers were counted in the tens and hundreds rather than millions:
I took pix of every machine I played (about 40 of them) and ended up staying for almost three hours, an almost religious experience! To point out the obvious -- if you're a pinball geek, it's very much worth the trip.
Past the Jon Bon Jovi service area:
And the express-lane split:
... to Asbury Park, the well-known seaside town that had gone from a popular destination for beachgoers to a symbol of urban decay and neglect to once again a popular shore destination. It's also known as the stomping grounds for Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny, and the aforementioned Bon Jovi:
Instead of gloom and rain, the weather cleared up nicely for a mid-morning walk down the boardwalk:
Tillie, the iconic face of Asbury Park:
At the far end of the boardwalk is the Asbury Park Convention Hall, which I knew as the site where many 1970s bootleg live albums were recorded, including my personal favorite Black Sabbath on their 1975 Sabotage tour.
A few months ago, a $20 million grant was awarded to the city to renovate and reopen the complex, which includes the Paramount Theater:
With sightseeing finished, I moved on to the reason for my visit, the Silverball Arcade and Museum, which houses more than 150 vintage pinball and video games. Growing up in the 70s, I spent countless hours playing pinball and really miss when you could find them in all sorts of locations: malls, hockey rinks, bars, department stores.
For only $20, it's "all you can eat" and you can play any game for as long as you like. Truly a "kid in a candy store" effect.
I prefer the older "electromechanical" versions with the analog score counters. When they started making them with computerized scoring and effects, I checked out.
As a quasi museum, above each machine is a "bio" that explains interesting details about its manufacture and how to play the game:
Back to the mid-70s!
Check out the scoring -- this was back before "point inflation," where numbers were counted in the tens and hundreds rather than millions:
I took pix of every machine I played (about 40 of them) and ended up staying for almost three hours, an almost religious experience! To point out the obvious -- if you're a pinball geek, it's very much worth the trip.
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