Big Bang Bar
Capcom, 1996
Wizard Blocks
Williams, 1999You're currently viewing posts by Pinsider Bryan_Kelly.
Click here to go back to viewing the entire thread.
Quoted from swampfire:I can’t wait for Ace Pinball to weigh in on this thread. But if he’s smart he’ll publish a book, he has some amazing stories.
There are a LOT of people that dealt with Gene that could publish a book in regards to their dealings. I doubt much would be positive.
Quoted from mjsbowl:I have seen a lot of positive stories about Gene in this thread and I imagine there are many more. Every time I met him it was positive, and to top it off he never once charged me tax. Keep the thread going!
You must be talking about a different Gene Cunningham than I knew.
Quoted from Ballypinball:Oh my god this is the biggest load of bullshit I have read, none of what you say is even close to true
I have all the contracts between IPB and Williams and what gene did and didn't buy, could and couldn't do
Williams never licensed James from Pinball Inc to make any Ramps
Gene had exclusive rights to make replacement parts for 5 Years then non exclusive after that, and never had any rights to make Bally Williams Games ever.
I have to admit, Wayne, your version is what I've always heard. And that was from those who initially tried to work with Gene in the very early days.
Quoted from pinballlife:Damn it! I took those EXACT pictures. I just gotta find them.
Terry.
Me and a couple friends also took the tour. I took no pics but the other guys did. Maybe Brian Millard has them?
It was obvious Gene had no interest whatsoever in selling anything, no matter what you offered. He just loved knowing they were all his.
The sad thing was, we weren't allowed to turn any of them on. So many of them had water and corrosion issues. Something like 700 games just sitting there rotting.
Quoted from TenaciousT:So who were the guys that actualy built the BBB games ? Remember they went under the name - Bear cave or something like that ? I'd like to here their story ! I think they got burned in the end ?
Bearcave was the name of the company owned by a couple guys that helped Gene sell his parts initially. You would send your want list to the Bearcave guys, then once a week, they would go to Gene's and see if they could find what you wanted. I forget how long this lasted but it ended the day Gene caught them with about a half dozen playfields in their car that they hadn't paid for.
Quoted from JodyG:How did Gene amass his fortune during the good years? Surely it wasn't from owning a skating rink and a couple of warehouses?
He owned rental property. Some would say he was a slum lord. Word on the street is, he ended up in one of his rental houses that was so bad the bank didn't want it back.
Quoted from chad:Would part of it be the hit he took on Big Bang Bar? $4500 a game that should have been a higher price.?
I doubt it. Most who dealt with Gene would tell you he was a horrible businessman. He was happier just owning the pinball parts than he was selling them.
Quoted from Tilt:Surprised no one had mentioned the painting of Genes wife, Georgianna
I've been told of a number of pics of his wife hanging in the house. None of which you'd be able to post here without having them removed.
Quoted from Mr68:From my observations as a casual friend, Gene flew by the seat of his pants with most everything in business and life.
Gene authored a book titled, Mad Dog and his Art. It's an Illustrated Book about the artist Dave Christensen and Gene self funded its publication. He gave me a copy and I asked him to inscribe the inside cover with the phrase, "From one badass real estate investor to another". He smiled as he knew I was a RE investors too.
But then he hesitated for an awkward moment and asked me to write that down on a piece of paper. He then copied what I wrote, letter by letter, word by word from that paper. I found that odd. And he always had his wife Georgie write things down for him and she did all of the office work. Just wondering if anyone else had a similar experience?
When you bought something from Gene at a show, he would write down the dollar amount in a notebook. He wouldn't write what the item was, just the dollar amount. I always found that interesting.
Quoted from pinball_keefer:I THINK you mean "just before Rick came in and assumed possession of everything he legally bought at a federal-government-forced auction due to Gene being a massively leveraged college-town slumlord who got into unbelievable financial trouble from bank margin calls and IRS inquisition when they got wind of his mostly-cash business during the crash of 2008."
Or, more simply, karmic justice.
Gene was the embodiment of "he who dies with the most toys wins" and wasn't shy about rubbing it in your face. That's why I look back and smile knowing how everything ended up. I probably wouldn't care if he hadn't personally tried to screw me over.
bryan_kelly and mr68 know what's up.
I'm glad some of you have pleasant memories of him. I do not.
I'd like to think there's something good in everyone, but it's hard to say that about Gene. The man just seemed to want to screw every and anyone he dealt with.
Some say he was such a wonderful guy to be able to make BBB and he must have lost thousands doing so. I call bullshit. I've talked with some who were involved in the process and they say it wasn't anywhere close to as bad as Gene claimed. And most of why it cost him extra was because of himself. He took for granted he could just go to suppliers and they would make him the parts he needed. With some he could but with some others, they basically told him to go fly a kite. They may have told him to go do something else to himself, but I'm trying to be polite. They knew of his reputation and refused to work with him no matter what he was willing to pay.
Here's another story, if you really want to know what the guy was like. Once Gene had most of the BBB parts he needed, he was ready to start assembly. Problem is, he had no idea how to do that. He then hired a very prominent individual in the pinball community to help with this. This guy set up various assembly stations and told Gene he would hang around and help until 10 games were made. In return, this individual was to get a BBB for free. I forget the exact details, but after 8 or so were made, Gene told him he wasn't needed anymore. When asked about the free BBB, Gene said sorry, you only helped with 8 not 10. This individual did eventually get a game at maybe half the cost.
And trust me, this individual isn't the only one to get screwed by Gene while making BBB.
Quoted from metallik:Yea, at a minimum Gene owed Mike Pacak a game in return for parts Mike provided to Gene. Gene stiffed Mike and that was the end of Gene's attendance at pinball expo. All Gene had to do was deliver Mike's game and he's be welcome again... obviously that never happened.
Instead, I was with Mike at Kennywood one day when he got a call from his guy at the Westin that Gene had booked space in the same hotel for his pinball show at the same time as Expo. Mike just about drained a cellphone battery shutting that shit down pronto, and Gene had to move his show down the street to the no-tell-motel.
I know who got Mike's BBB. He may tell his story here. He may not.
Speaking of shows, it was a blast dealing/fucking with Gene in his booth. He would let guys like me and Chad Keller dig through all his bins of stuff under the tables. We'd get a box of stuff together and ask him how much. Sometimes he'd just look and give us a price. Sometimes he wanted to add everything up. You never knew. I'll never forget the time he wanted to go for lunch and was going to cover everything up. Chad and I said we'd take care of things for him. We got a lot of funny looks when people walked by. Sold a few things for him though.
Gene was too tight to bring help with to shows. He'd pull up in his box truck and offer anyone lunch if they'd help unload his truck. I helped a couple times. That way I got to be one the first to see what he had. Don't know anyone that got lunch.
And finally, while mingling in Gene's booth, you would eventually hear someone ask about buying the stock from Williams/Bally. Gene would say, "sit down. I'll tell you about it." I shit you not, you could walk past the booth 20 minutes later and the poor guy would still be there and Gene would still be talking.
Quoted from Mr68:Yes she is and your question prompted me to call her just now. She's 80 years old, in good health and living on her own in Gene's childhood home.
She's one of the sweetest ladies you could ever meet and she misses her husband very, very much. Gene married way above his station.
I only talked to her twice on the phone. She sounded like a sweetheart! I'm glad she's doing well.
Quoted from elcolonel:You hate the guy...That's all I can surmise from that.
I didn't hate Gene. He never did anything to me personally. What I hate is what he did to some really good people.
I was in on buying Gene's BBB remake. Knowing some on the inside, I was told things weren't going well and the quality of the game was questionable. Initially, I think we put half down and the remainder was due on completion. At some point during production, we all received a letter basically saying Gene wants the balance or else. Needless to say, many questioned whether the game would ever be completed.
The straw that broke the camel's back, as they say, was finding out that Williams had bought the rights to BBB from Capcom. I was told by more than one, there were people in pinball that wanted to see Gene fail big time and they wanted to hurt him financially. The plan was to wait until the game was nearly complete, then take Gene to court claiming he had no rights to make BBB as it was a Williams/Bally game, not a Capcom game.
I never received my game. I sold the rights to it to a guy from Australia. I thought all Gene had to do was cross my name off my number and add the new owner's. I was wrong. It was quite the process I went through with Gene's wife to get things transferred. It was such a hassle, Gene said they wouldn't allow that to happen again. If you ordered a game, you had to take possession of it.
Mistake on my part? Yup. But I made a nice profit on my spot without doing anything, so I can't complain.
Quoted from flynnibus:What we really need is james and darren (sp) from Phoenix arcades to tell us about james days before the “north amercian pinball parts alliance”... how that whole three way came together... fell apart... and the closing chapters of how he helped pushed him into bankruptcy
Kerry Stair with Mantis Amusement, James Loflin with Pinball Inc and Darin Jacobs with Phoenix Arcade. The three if them could write a book about dealing with Gene.
Quoted from flynnibus:What were the names of the bearcave guys? That was something that always seemed to be some sort of unspoken thing... after their involvement with bbb blew up they seemed to disappear?
I only knew them as Bob and Steve. Never knew their last names. If I'm not mistaken, their day jobs were accountants. When they first started helping sell parts for Gene, things went pretty smoothly. By 2004 or 2005, they were getting difficult to deal with. Their communication was horrible. I think that may also be about the time they were helping Gene with BBB. Keep in mind, not only were they filling orders for individuals, but they were filling orders for vendors like Marco and others.
Purely speculation, but I can't help but think the parts selling gig started out simple enough. Gave them something to do in their spare time but I would imagine it didn't take long and it started blowing up and the demand on their time got to be too much. Hence the horrible communication towards the end.
Quoted from KevinCPR:So it was more about labelling the IPB/Gene "family" of businesses that (at the time) still worked with Gene's license, and paid Gene a royalty.
If it had been as simple as paying a royalty, NAPPA may have lasted longer. With most repro deals, the vendor makes let's say 100 items and would send maybe 20 of those items to the licensor, in this case Gene, as a royalty while the vendor was allowed to sell the other 80.
With Gene, it was kind of the other way around. Most of the items were sent to Gene. Gene would pay a wholesale price for the items, mark them up and sell them at a profit. Sounds like a win for everyone. Problem was, Gene didn't have to pay for the product until he sold it. It didn't take long for Gene's payments to be late and threats would start, then lawyers got involved and everything fell apart.
I was once told, Gene spent more on lawyer fees, in one particular case, then what he owed the vendor that was suing him. Gene loved his possessions but didn't seem to have any business sense at all.
Quoted from Ballypin:WMS Gaming is/was a publicly traded company and Neil Nicastro would have had his head served on a silver platter by the stockholders if a new owner made a go of the pinball division after the realization that more profit could be made by keeping the division intact instead of decapitating the operation and splitting it up so that it could never be put back together.
Hence the reason things were sold to Gene? They knew he'd run things into the ground? I was aware at the time, of at least one other offer for roughly twice what Gene paid. It was not excepted.
Quoted from unigroove:From what I understood from Gene, he preferred working with third parties that would manufacture new spare parts. As a royalty, let's say 10%, Gene didn't ask for money, but he wanted 10% of the products made. So if someone was making 100 cabinet decal sets for a certain game, he had to send 10 sets to Gene, who would then be able to sell them. I found that an interesting concept.
That may have been what Gene told you but I'm aware of one vendor that had to sue Gene for into 6 figures, which is what Gene owed him at the time.
Quoted from Mr68:The website was a joke and even the phone ordering service was bad. .
LOL I had forgotten about that. If I remember correctly, you wanted to call before noon? It seems Kim did a lot of the parts picking in the afternoon?
Funny thing is, Kim was aware of how pissed people were. She followed that on RGP. Yet every time you were able to get through, it would be a 20 minute conversation. Two minutes to place your order or ask questions and the remaining eighteen minutes was her telling you about how her day or week was going.
Quoted from EJS:I bought mine at expo 03 from one of those two, not sure who. But I bought it as a lot of 5 different translites for $100. I picked BBB, Pinball Magic, Apollo 13, Big Guns and Barb Wire.
I should have grabbed all BBB there was a huge stack of them.
I have a feeling you bought it from Mike Pacak. I think Mike ended up with all of them, or most...not sure how. Part of the deal with Mike getting a BBB was a trade for the translites Gene needed for the game.
Quoted from pinball_keefer:Feel like Dave was his lawyer's name but not 100% on that. Would have to look it up.
Jonathan Backman represented Gene at one point. He also had someone named Tim F. do some stuff for him. I know Tim was into arcades.
Quoted from jeffspinballpalace:Tim Fife was into arcades and pinball skulduggery. He ended up in the center of the SkitB controversy when it was revealed he held the production Predator machine. Tim might have held the Experts of Dangerous cabinet too. As he whispered sweet nothings into the CONman’s (Kevin Kulek’s) ear, Tim ended up with the Predator pin and was sued for it in the Kulek’s bankruptcy case and won. Somewhere during this timeframe he traded the one-of-a-kind Predator for a JJPOTC CE. Mentioning Tim’s Predator pinball story here because of the crossover and his ownership of Gene’s prototype BBBr. He may have held as many as three BBBr prototypes at one time.
Nah. This Tim’s last name was Frealich? Not sure on the spelling.
Gene spent a LOT of money on attorney fees.
Gene Cunningham
Illinois Pinball Company
1409 Butchers Lane
Bloomington, IL 61701-9512
Dear Mr. Cunningham,
May of this year, 2009, Pinball Inc. and your company Illinois Pinball Company willingly and knowingly entered into a legally binding agreement which Pinball Inc. purchased certain assets of Illinois Pinball Company. The assets which Pinball Inc purchased from Illinois Pinball Company listed in Schedule 2 of that agreement included:
ALL pinball parts inventory (including all populated playfields and partial pinball playfield plastics).
ALL tools and tooling used in manufacturing of pinball parts
ALL documents/engineering drawings and files related to pinball manufacturing.
ALL P2K (Pinball 2000) kits
To date Pinball Inc has met ALL it's obligations of the purchase agreement.
You and your company have breached this agreement by not fulfilling its obligations by refusing to turn over assets which Pinball Inc legally purchased.
In addition to the aforementioned breach, you have been and are actively selling the assets legally purchased by Pinball Inc and keeping 100% of the proceeds. This too is a direct breach of our agreement which clearly states that "any schedule 2 items sold or shipped by IPB will be processed through Pinball Inc and IPB will receive 25% commission for the sales." We have video and photo evidence to support this claim.
In addition, against the will of Pinball Inc., you are actively using tooling which was legally purchased by Pinball Inc to manufacture pinball parts. You have been actively selling the parts made using tooling which were legally purchased by Pinball Inc. and keeping 100% of the proceeds. We have video and photo evidence to support this claim.
Because you are in breach of our agreement you are hereby notified that you must cease and desist using the tooling or allowing any other party to use the tooling listed in Schedule 2 of the agreement to manufacture pinball parts for pinball machines.
You must cease and desist the selling of ALL parts inventory listed in Schedule 2 of the agreement.
If you do not cease and desist selling the assets which were legally purchased by Pinball Inc without any intentions of compensation to Pinball Inc. you can find yourself in a position of being found criminally liable of theft, theft of conversation and larceny to Pinball Inc. Any possible claims whether civil or criminal will be pursued vigorously.
To fulfill your obligations to agreement we demand that you immediately turn over ALL assets which Pinball Inc. legally purchased. These assets include but may not be limited to the following:
1. All Injection tools which by agreement includes all tooling for the manufacturing of pinball machine parts. This includes tooling to make inserts. (as per line #4 in Schedule 2)
2. All Metal die tools and any additional Metal die tools. (as per line #4 in Schedule 2)
3. All fixtures and test fixtures including Capcom test fixtures and Pinball 2000 test fixtures. (as per line #6 in Schedule 2)
4. All pinball parts inventory, including ALL Capcom and "Show" inventory. (as per line #1 in Schedule 2)
5. All shop equipment. Including all riveting tooling. (as per line #6 in Schedule 2)
6. All documents/engineering drawings and files. These include ALL files (including all film files) and ALL drawings including but not limited to ALL playfield files and drawings, ALL cabinet files and drawings, ALL backglass files and drawings, ALL plastic set files and drawings and ALL translight files and drawings. (as per line #5 in Schedule 2)
7. All populated playfields and Pinball 2000 kits including all Pinball 2000 Wizard Block Playfields/kits and Pinball 2000 Playboy playfields/kits. (as per line #1 and #2 in Schedule 2)
8. Proceeds for the sale of goods listed in Schedule 2 must be turned over to Pinball Inc. minus 25% for commission.
Unless these demands are met, the agreement shall be considered breached by Illinois Pinball Company and Pinball Inc. will not be under any further obligations pursuant the agreement.
We have researched and found that the company Pinball Manufacturing was dissolved and have no assets. All assets were inherited by Illinois Pinball Company as Illinois Pinball Company has and is selling the assets and keeping the proceeds. An audit of Illinois Pinball Company will clearly show this to be true. We have video and photo evidence that you are currently selling these assets as the assets belonging to Illinois Pinball Company. Your claim to "hide" assets using PMI is considered fraudulent.
As a show of good faith Pinball Inc. will make a one time offer to resolve this matter. The offer is as follows:
1. Illinois Pinball Company will be allowed to keep all pinball parts currently in its possession. This will include all P2K kits and other playfields currently in Illinois Pinball Company possession.
2. Illinois Pinball Company will be allowed to keep all proceeds from the previous sales Illinois Pinball has made of items listed in Schedule 2 of our agreement.
3. Illinois Pinball Company will be allowed to use the injection tooling which is used to manufacture pinball playfield inserts. The rightful owner of the tooling will be Pinball Inc. but Illinois Pinball Company will have a non compensated lifetime used of the tooling.
4. Illinois Pinball Company will be allowed to keep all films, documents, engineering drawings used in the manufacturing of pinball playfields, pinball playfield plastic sets, pinball backglasses and pinball translights. The ownership of these materials will be transferred back to Illinois Pinball Company.
5. Illinois Pinball Company will be allowed to keep the Capcom test fixture in its possession.
6. Illinois Pinball Company will turn over all other assets listed in Schedule 2 of the agreement to Pinball Inc. These include:
a. All tools and tooling used in the manufacturing of pinball parts (excluding #3).
b. All remaining documents/engineering drawings and files related to pinball manufacturing (minus items listed at #4).
c. All riveting tools.
7. Upon acceptance of this proposal and the exchange of the listed items Illinois Pinball Company will be excused from any monetary or capital obligations to Pinball Inc. pursuant to the original agreement.
8. Upon acceptance of this proposal and the exchange of the listed items Pinball Inc will be excused from any monetary or capital obligations to Illinois Pinball Company pursuant to the original agreement.
This offer is a one time offer and it will expire at midnight December 11, 2009. If this offer is not accepted or responded to at that time then Pinball Inc will take all measures possible to obtain its legally owned property and pursue compensation for damages.
Unless or until this offer is accepted the cease and desist demands previously stated will stand.
Sincerely,
James Loflin
Pinball Inc.
Quoted from dudah:Back for sale! Looks like the contractor gave up
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1409-Butchers-Ln-Bloomington-IL-61701/105639708_zpid/
I'd give my right nut for the disco ball in the pool area.
Quoted from Mr68:Its behind a paywall for me. Could someone cut and paste the article please.
Here’s a snippet.
It`s a place where a husband and wife can go together, either downstairs where the girls are or upstairs for the guy dancers. It is very clean, it is very well run, and the people are nice and make you feel welcome,'' said Georgie Cunningham, 49, of Bloomington.
Mrs. Cunningham and her husband Gene, 52, (parents of six, grandparents of seven) make the 90-mile round trip to Peoria and back at least once a week to visit Big Al's, and earlier this month they traveled to New York to appear on the 'Donahue' show as character witnesses when Big Al's and four of its strippers were paraded out for the whole world to ogle.
You're currently viewing posts by Pinsider Bryan_Kelly.
Click here to go back to viewing the entire thread.
Wanna join the discussion? Please sign in to reply to this topic.
Great to see you're enjoying Pinside! Did you know Pinside is able to run without any 3rd-party banners or ads, thanks to the support from our visitors? Please consider a donation to Pinside and get anext to your username to show for it! Or better yet, subscribe to Pinside+!
This page was printed from https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/artifacts-of-gene-cunningham-illinois-pinball?tu=Bryan_Kelly and we tried optimising it for printing. Some page elements may have been deliberately hidden.
Scan the QR code on the left to jump to the URL this document was printed from.
Lakeville, MN
Victoria, BC