Studio City, CA
I'd been obsessed with arcade games growing up in the 80s, heyday of Chuck E. Cheese and Atari 2600 -- dreamt of a home game and actually found out there was no Santa Claus when my parents finally said there was no way he'd be bringing me a POPEYE machine.
Attended the Tisch School at NYU undergrad and played endlessly on the Penn Station arcade, which was immense at the time. Always had a thing for movie franchise based titles, as I was studying film & TV. Sadly they're not always the best titles, but the wonderful exceptions hold up today.
Living in a studio in Manhattan on Avenue A (back when a college graduate could afford to) I decided to spend $400 on Ebay for an old ALIENS arcade game and as soon as I moved to LA to enter the film/tv industry I dragged that poor cabinet across the country and picked up STAR WARS as well. But consoles HAD ruined video games for me. They were nice furniture, but the games were like some endless time loop, a numbing 'groundhog day' of endurance that wasn't as "fun" as nostalgia promised.
Then I discovered pinball - A Data East Back to the Future game I bought off Ebay from a fellow with a DeLorean in the driveway, he was culling his old collection and I was beginning my new obsession --- no two games were ever the same, the mechanics were alluring, the 'feel' of being 'in the zone' on a good game suddenly made me want more. So I picked up three more "trilogy-based" machines - Sega Star Wars (which I later traded for Data East,) Williams Indiana Jones and (this being 2004) LOTR from STERN, which was the first pin I ever bought brand new.
Over the years games came and went as income and housing allowed - several places I lived had back houses or sheds where I'd store an entire arcade, these days I'm in a 3-br with my wife and baby daughter and have only two pinball machines plus a bunch of novelty Pachinkos/Pachislos in storage.
As of this writing Williams Indy stayed with me, being one of my favorites - it's a theme I adore and I truly like the gameplay - and STERN LOTR, which I was finally learning to mod thanks to a fellow pinsider and local friend. But then a pinsider contacted me about trading it for Williams Star Trek Next Gen, and I'd always desired a Trek machine - especially Next Gen, since my wife and I were married in front of 200 nerds at a masquerade wedding on the bridge of the Enterprise in Las Vegas. (it was 2007, the last year of the Star Trek Experience)
I want my daughter to enjoy the hobby, I love seeing collector passion grow, I think it's great there's such community to be found here on pinside and I have much to learn - so I've been interacting a little more but am mostly still lurking and learning and experimenting.
I hope to one day fill up a game room again but as long as I have one machine going and the ability to clear my mind over a good game I'm happy.
