My son and I are in as well! We're really excited and very hopeful this is going to work out. To that end, I've made a few successful contacts and have made some early progress, stuff that others here and on Pinball Bash might be interested to know about...

I've done some talking to the folks at Fat Daddy's, and am going there today to meet with the route guy for Thorp out of Rocky Mount, whose machines are in the basement there.

Fat Daddy's has agreed to let me negotiate with the operator to have the current three games there removed and replaced with shopped games, and up to three additional games, fire code permitting.

The management at Fat Daddy's said they would welcome regular league meetings downstairs there, and would allow us to publicize meeting days/times upstairs and in the bar/game area downstairs. Other than Fat Daddy's, Frankie's is the only other public location with at least 3 pins that I'm aware of--I would love to be told that I'm misinformed!

I spoke with the management at Frankie's as well, and they also said they'd welcome us, offering the advice to meet on a weeknight--they said it's dead there at that time, and games are available on a "first come, first served basis"--I asked if they would be offended if this group of people showed up and seemed to be monopolizing a few of their games. I didn't talk to them about their lineup, but will the next time I'm in there.

I left a voice mail for local pinball celebrity Orin Day, but have not heard back from him yet--I certainly hope to! I also contacted the person who ran the former Triangle Pinball League, and though he can't be involved now because of scheduling, he offered moral and logistics support.

Let's get together and play/talk pinball! Maybe a weekend daytime at Fat Daddy's sometime between now and the new year, if not to do anything other than see who shows up and talk about what we'd like to do? Of course, there's a couple of games there, too...

Frankie's has Shrek, Iron Man, Avatar, and Tron. Obviously these are all fairly new games, and all are in good shape and usually running, though I've been there when Iron Man was down because of card reader issues.

Surprising in a place like this, but I've also had to ask the management to come windex the playfield glasses because of all the dust bunnies. No joke. I'm a very tolerant person, but it was really that far out of control.

I'm up for a meeting anytime folks think they can make it!

So here's the update. I was able to meet the tech from Thorpe today at Fat Daddy's and explained to him what we were thinking and hoping. He was very receptive and said he would take what he'd heard from me back to his management, and if they agreed to help us, we'd see lineup changes there in as soon as 2 weeks. My fingers are crossed!

He told me they used to have a Medieval Madness at Fat Daddy's. They sold it to a collector for more than 3 times what they bought it for, and that was many years ago.

The High Roller Casino was down when I arrived; the plunger was shot. The tech promptly got down to fixing it as I was leaving. The DMD on that game has also recently been replaced.

Sounds like we're building some good momentum here and on Bash! I hope we can really get organized statewide in 2013 and do enough playing to identify a rigorously battle-tested IFPA North Carolina state champion.

I think I'm going to head over to Fat Daddy's tonight and eat, then go downstairs and play for a while, if anyone's in the neighborhood...

Really looking forward to it, thanks, David!