So this is somewhat embarrassing to say that I am just finding out about the whole situation now. Yeah I am WAY late on that one.
When I first started getting into pinball in '12 my father and I were looking anywhere to find places and I believe pinballnews.com had a piece on Modern Pinball NYC opening along with an article on the "Sunshine Laundromat". My family avoided NYC like the plague due to high prices and traffic. Well we had a week long Christmas vacation and decided to go to NYC to check out those places.
I specifically remember there was very little traffic on New Years Day and there was ample street parking right in front of the place. The hotel rates were cheap in NJ. Modern had just opened about 1-2 months. I was blown away by how many games there were, the condition they were in, and the variety of titles from all era's. I also specifically remember thanking you Ed on keeping the games in amazing condition and Mr. Epstein. The admission was cheap we felt and they were on free play which was also amazing. I believe I had said to Steve "are you that guy that owned the Broadway Arcade" and only knew about him because the article mentioned that arcade back in the day. Again, I was very new into pinball.
After I visited the Sunshine Laundromat and that place was equally insane.
That experience at Modern and Sunshine proved to me what an arcade should and could be. I also had a lot more exposure to NYC rather than Times Square, Yankee hating, etc. Last Summer my dad and I went again (we went a few times over the years) and there was a lot of SS but mainly not really fun EM's. Or really good games for that matter. I'm a sucker for EM's but not tons of them and the games played off. My dad and I however really took a liking to Sunshine and decided not to go back to Modern. Even more when Francisco left. I also noticed they went to the name of "Modern Pinball Museum" rather than "Modern Pinball NYC" and had history cards over the games like Silverball. To this day and always that vacation stands out in our minds. Each time since '12 we were looking for you fixing the games and just figured you were on vacation. Also that Funhouse with Rudy was like glass man. Like NIB quality.
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