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Quoted from Eddie:$9000 Monthly when it first opened. I believe it then went up.
That is surprisingly lower than I expected. In downtown sleepy Charlottesville, a storefront will run you $5K. But yeah at say $15 a head that’s a lot of people you have to have run thru to break even.
Quoted from Eddie:There was a devious reason that the machines were priced the way they were.
Modern Pinball opened as an arcade illegally in NYC. There are no Arcades allowed in NYC. Times Square is an exception as it is run by the state under state law. In NYC you are limited to 6 Vending machines, Arcade, Jukeboxes etc on a premises. Laundry mats excluded. In order to circumvent the law. Modern Decide that they would be a Pinball "store" that was "interactive"
In other words you can test a machine you may want to purchase. So what they did was to use your "Entry fee" as deposit money towards buying a machine. Yes you would have to hold onto your receipts for redemption towards your purchase. Of course they were an Arcade and not a store so they offered the machines for sale at an insanely High price in order for them NOT to be sold.
How can you run an arcade if you kept selling the machines?
This they knew would only work for so long so they decided to apply for Museum status as well. As a Museum they could stay in the illegal zone.
As a Museum they would have to be Non-Profit. Non-Profit doesnt make money so they just applied for Museum status so that they could operate as usual until the status was approved. It never could be approved as they never met the criteria which is intensive but they could always reapply.
So in the meantime they just ignored the law altogether as they were never on the radar in that regard.
So basically the insane pricing was just a scam in order to illegally open an Arcade.
The prices were also set so high as to keep buyers returning forever and testing the machines knowing that the "Entry fees" would take years and years if ever to add up to a purchase price.
Another Reason the for the insane (But Logical from their plan) prices is that the first machines in the place did not belong to the owners but to Allen Cihak and he didnt want his machines to be sold.
The machines were rented from him and at an insanely low fee that was to be more reasonable as Modern got rolling.
It was a low fee at first as a gesture from Al to get Modern Pinball open and running in the first place as the owners did not have any capitol to buy their own machines.
Modern was to also pay for the upkeep and repairs of the machines but they never wanted to buy the needed parts.
Modern did get rolling but the owners never lived up to their agreement with Al and never gave him a fair share for the rentals as was the original plan.
Al was caught in a bind as he needed his rental money and therefore couldnt simply pull all of his machines which would have closed Modern.
Al had to wait as time went on for the owners to slowly purchase machines of their own before he could remove his.
All in all what kept Modern floating the first 3 years was my tech work and my wife Dahlias' Birthday parties.
The Parties were the highest grossing days at Modern and they were her brainchild which the owners fought against having, until she offered to Volunteer the first High end Parties for free to show what could be done to improve the business.
After 3 successful parties they tried to take advantage of her thinking she would continue setting up ,Organizing and hosting parties for free!
They Finally agreed to pay her to run the parties for a measly $100 plus any tips she may make.
Dahlia only agreed to that because she loved doing it and wanted to make sure the parties would be to a high standard.
They wouldnt even include B-Day cake in the cost of the parties to give an idea of the cheapness.
Dahlia would use her payments and tips to purchase cakes and other extra party favors as she didnt want to be humiliated by her clients.
Modern was that cheap.
They were Cheap in every way to the point where they fired all the staff so that they could get free student intern labor.
Or they would get people to work for free but they were allowed to play the machines in exchange.
Basically it was also illegal.
As I said Im not sorry that the place finally got what it deserved and am surprised that it took a virus to do so.
I am sorry that the public lost a Pinball Venue and a place that kept Pinball alive in NYC.
Dear god this sounds worse than Gameseum ! This is a tough business to be in. The days of making bank on an arcade are gone, and so almost all of these places that aren't a corporate Dave and Busters usually have some similar origins story. I mean nobody would willingly pour in bucks to a place as a good investment opportunity. Its always someone donating their collection temporarily or permanently for the love of the process. My basic thought is that as long as no one is making money its all good ... community effort to support a dream and everyone stays happy. Its when a profit is wrought out of a place on the back of free labor that it gets testy. Now if they were still losing money even with free labor, well its just a bad business plan. If they weren't losing money and were just pocketing it rather than using to up wages and return machines in good shape, then yeah this is a problem. I would be pissed too. I avoid this problem with my place by giving complete transparency. Most of the people who help out know how much debt we carry, what our revenue looks like, what care we are giving to machines. I upped wages when things were good, and lowered them when we sank to the bottom again now. What I will say somewhat in Modern's owners defense (not much of one) is that running a business is damn hard, and there are quite a few liabilities one takes on in doing so. The debt if any is yours to own, keeping the books is your problem, assuring people get paid your problem, buying insurance your problem, assuring upkeep is performed your problem. I have made zero off my arcade and I don't even calculate in dollar cost what I have given over to it in hours and worry. Again, not defending these guys at all, but to judge intent is a hard thing to do without looking at the books. If their profit was won on the donation of others time then shame on them. If the place was just swimming along with its head partially submerged at the border of insolvency its entire time, then yeah you gotta fire staff and underpay people just out of basic survival. But if you are gonna do that at least be transparent and appreciative to others about how they are enabling you to survive. At least once a month I thank our volunteers for everything they do. Without their help we wouldn't even be in business.
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