Hey, why not.

I’ve done a few trips since the last thread, but this one will be a month long drive around California and Nevada, meeting Pinsiders and playing pinball, so it’s worth documenting with some photos and words.

The previous threads:

1/ Hearse across America:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/rotordaves-route-66-odessy-is-underway

2/ KIWI Pincade tour around NZ:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/kiwi-pincade-2015-the-biggest-weekend-of-pinball-on-the-planet-

3/ LA to Vegas to NYC to PAPA to Tennesse:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/another-rotordave-usa-travel-odyssey-thread

4/ Texas or bust:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/yet-another-rotordave-usa-travel-odyssey-thread

(I actually forgot I did some of these lol)

Follow along!

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We landed in LA today.

I’d prepaid for a Full Size at Alamo car rentals for 35 days ... when I got there they had surplus mini-vans so they offered me one for the same price. Hey, why not ... it’s way too big for three people, but what the heck. We chose a Dodge Caravan GT. I don’t know what’s GT about it, the words GT and Mini-Van usually aren’t mentioned in the same sentence. Haha! It’s got 7 seats, leather, sat nav, sat radio (which unfortunately I haven’t got a subscription too or I’d listen to Eddie Trunk...) and almost enough horsepower to drag all that stuff around.

5 minutes from LAX is Randy’s Donuts, a LA landmark. Danni and I grabbed one “classic” donut each - $1 each. Always funny when everyone else is ordering a dozen donuts for themselves and we order one each. Lol!

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We hit the highway straight up the coast.

First stop - Malibu.

Lovely day in LA today, about 27c/80f, with a nice breeze. It was really nice up the coast.

The store on the Malibu pier had a cool Bally speed boat ride, and they also had a really tidy Gottlieb Surf Champ pin inside the store. Retro!

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Welcome aboard team.

After Malibu, we headed up to Santa Barbara.

This is the area where the big fires are at the moment. The highways are covered in a smokey haze.

The photos don’t really capture it very well ... as we got closer to Santa Barbara, you could see flames in the hills and fire planes and choppers dumping water and retardant on the fire.

Santa Barbara is a lovely little town, all done in traditional mission style. We will look around in the morning and take a few more photos.

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Yeah man, Tennesse was real fun, made better by you guys of course. We will be back again ... maybe next year, we shall see.

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We are on the way for this weekend Gene! Sorry, meant to send you a message weeks ago ...

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We saw that theatre last night, and went back for a look this morning. What a cool building!

I used to be involved with the Save the Civic Theatre Trust which saved the classic “atmospheric style” Civic Theatre in Queen St, Auckland ... so theatres are sorta my thing.

Unfortunately we couldn’t look inside the actual theatre, the ticket lady was there by herself but invited us to come back when a movie was playing and we could have a look through. Alas we needed to make tracks, so we will look through next time!

Even the outside was cool. You can see the ash from the fires on the tiles.

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“Yous” will be there.

Yeah, you need a car. The location is about 90 miles out of LA in Banning. You could also fly into Palm Springs, it’d be a bit closer. But you’d need a car either way.

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Odins back!

For those who don’t remember, that photo was taken 1 second before Odin dropped the stinkiest Mexican food fart the planet has ever smelt. Even the locals were holding their noses! Haha!

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Oh, it was ...

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After we went to the Arlington Theatre, we walked around the rest of State Street in Santa Barbara.

As I mentioned before, they’ve done all the buildings in traditional “mission style” so all the new buildings match the old ones. Very cool.

The streets were pretty deserted, due to the fires in the hills. Most people were wearing face masks to ward off the smoke. These photos were taken around midday .. check out the lack of people ..

There were a couple of other theatres in the street too. Very nice area!

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There was a cool little store called Rocket Fizz, with candy and funky sodas. Some of them we had seen before at Pops Sodas over on Route66.

They even had a John5 soda for SpookyCharlie

Bacon soda and Bacon Cotton Candy for all!

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Leaving Santa Barbara, there was a road sign for all you Slayer fans out there ...

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We headed to Solvang ... a small township founded by Danish immigrants around 100 years ago.

All the buildings in the Main Street are built in the traditional Danish style. There are windmills, Carlsburg beer bars, all sorts of stuff.

Interesting place to pass through.

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It dawned on me today that the mini-van will swallow a pin ... so maaaaybeee!

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Santa Barbara looks like an awesome town. I bet it is usually pumping, especially at holiday time.

Understandable that it’s empty right now, what with California’s 4th largest ever fire taking place a few miles up the road ...

I heard yesterday that there are 900 fire trucks and 8000 firefighters in the area. We saw some trucks from San Francisco.

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We stayed overnight in Monterey.

This morning we went to Cannery Row. This seaside street was a huge area for canning sardines back in the 20s-50s. By the 1960s, all the Sardines had dried up and the factories went out of business.

These days the old plants have been turned into a trendy area, and down the end of the street there is a huge aquarium.

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Then we drove up to Santa Cruz.

Santa Cruz has the biggest boardwalk on the west coast. Famous for being featured in The Lost Boys, maybe one of my favourite movies. Alas, David and Michael (or even Max) weren’t around today .. they probably only come down there at night.

Being winter, most of the boardwalk was closed, but still free to walk around.

The Charles Looff wooden carousel was built in 1911 and the Big Dipper coaster in 1924.

There are two arcades, both feature modern Stern pins. Gary would be proud!

Only one thing wrong with Santa Cruz ... all those damn vampires.

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Then we drove up to San Francisco.

We have a hotel in town, so we walked 25 minutes down to the waterfront to check that out. First stop was the Musee Mechanique, which is a collection of cool coin op stuff dating back the last 100 years. Entry is free, you just pay for the games/attractions.

They had about 6 EM Pins, plus an Addams, POTC and an Indy. The EMs were all good condition, but Indy has a touch of PF wear. They don’t build em like they used to!

Lots of other cool stuff which you don’t see every day.

The place was busy, which was great to see, and everyone was dropping their quarters and trying things out.

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Then off to the Hard Rock to collect another glass for the Bogan Wall of Shame. (TM)

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Or the flippers would fall off ... one or the other.

I played a couple of the EM pins. Played well!

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Tonight at 11.30pm we met up with Jessica twazu at Free Gold Watch for a game session.

I got a few games in on GOTG Pro, cool game. Bobbily bo bo!

Free Gold Watch has around 50 Pins there, I’d guess. All of them looked in good condition and the ones I played all worked nicely.

Thanks to Jessica for organising it!

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Yes, the high kicks have been lacking. I’ll crank them up.

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Drove out to the Bay Area today (about an hour from the city) to play in a GOTG Stern Launch Party at Galaxy Games in Concord.

Lots of Pinsiders here, IdahoRealtor @RTS, rolandthoms and more!

Good lineup of about 20 pins plus arcades, all in nice order.

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Plus they have the coolest bathroom light switch I’ve seen. I need one of these in my life!

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Made the final 4 of the GOTG Launch Party (knocked out Danni in the process lol) ... I had been playing pretty well all day but left my worse game till last and came 4th in the 4 player final. Oh well ...

After that finished about 9.30ish, we drove 45 Mins across town to the mof house!

MOF has a great collection of 80s games. He shuns DMDs so be sure not to mention them in his presence!

He has a Defender. Say no more.

Thanks for the hospitality MOF and Ann!

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What better way to start Sunday than with a egg/ham/cheddar and a triple shot up in Haight Ashbury!

Outside the cafe, the locals show that they are eco-friendly with their graffiti! Chalk is very kind on the environment. No spray paint fumes here!

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We went to Free Gold Watch to watch the finals of the Papa Circuit Event. There was a side pingolf Comp at 1pm, but we were all tired from two late nights so we skipped it.

We saddled up and drove over the Golden Gate Bridge out to Sausalito.

Cool bridge! But the Bay Bridge is even more impressive, with upper/lower decks and huge spans. You can see it in the background of the cityscape. The island to the left is Alcatraz.

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When we were in Sausalito, I hunted down the old Record Plant, where dozens of famous albums were recorded. Probably the most famous one was Fleetwood Macs Rumours.

This place has an amazing history. The drug use there in the 70s and 80s was legendary, and at one stage it was even seized by the feds because one of the owners was making Meth.

It’s all pretty well summed up on the wiki page, it’s some great reading:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_Plant#Sausalito

It’s in a very unusual place for a studio ... small seaside village, only about 100 yards from the waters edge.

it’s not a studio any more .. it had a sign on the door that said “yoga retreat” or something. The building had for sale signs on it.

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Most of the big studios had 2-3 studios in them, so you’d have all sorts of artists in there together and going crazy. Rick James lived in the Sausalito studio for a period, imagine hanging out with that crazy dude!

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No, I was only a little RD in 1980.

The drummer in my old band went though. The show was at Western Springs which is an outdoor speedway track in a valley. He said that Gene came onto the stage via a flying fox from the hill ... which would have been pretty cool. I have a mint program and ticket from the show which a lady gave me years back.

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Insert cliche tourist cablecar and Alcatraz photo here ..

The hills really are steep. Yesterday we were driving up a hill and the car behind me started wheelspinning cause the front wheels lost traction. In the dry ... imagine in the wet ...

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We went to Alcatraz today. Somewhere I’ve wanted to go pretty much all my life.

Weather was really nice, a little chilly in the shade, but nice in the sun.

We booked on the 12.30pm boat and headed over.

It was pretty darn cool. The US Parks service runs it, and as always, everything they run is pretty sweet.

One thing I didn’t know was that Indians occupied the island in 1969 (after the prison closed), demanding land rights and compensation for stolen land. This lasted till 1971 when they got kicked off. The two burnt out buildings below (the offers club and the Wardens house) were burnt when they were there, although nobody was ever charged with anything.

It’s a lot bigger than I thought it’d be, around 26 acres.

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Tonight we drove over to Oakland for the local Belles and Chimes meet.

For those that don’t know, Belles and Chimes is a Woman’s only pinball league that was founded in Oakland a few years back. They are now in most major US cities, and last month Danni started the NZ Belles and Chimes, the first chapter out of the USA.

Tonight’s meet is being held at Stay Gold Deli, a hipster joint over in Oakland. They only have 4 machines but it’s working out ok for the ladies.

They do BBQ food here, plus beer. The girls got a Reuben which was chock full of pastrami, and I got a BBQ brisket roll with bacon, spicy mayo and jalapeños which was AWESOME but it sure was spicy!

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Only on me.

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That’s the original prototype backglass that has now been re-run. The prototype was drawn by Paul Faris and the production is by Python Angelo.

Originally the displays were in a different place too, but the new glass is altered to place the displays in the “stock” position.

They’re also making new plastics to match the prototype glass ....

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Walked down to Ghirardelli Square this morning, and rode the cablecar all the way to the end of the line in Market Square.

$7 per person one way, it was mainly tourists on there, but a few locals jumped on as we drove along.

Very cool. There used to be heaps of cable car lines around San Fran but most were wiped out in the 1906 earthquake. Only three remained, and they’re still in use today.

The photos don’t do justice to how steep some of the hills are.

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While down in Market Square, I grabbed $5.75 worth of solid gold goodness!!

And then proceeded to slop half of it on my sweatshirt. lol

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We had a good walk around downtown San Fran ... very cool city.

Walked up to Chinatown and Danni scored a Totoro bag.

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I have a new man-crush ... the Bay Bridge!

This is just the West Side .. it was opened in 1936 and is about 3 miles long. It’s a double decked bridge ... Oakland bound traffic is on the bottom and city bound traffic is on top. 5 lanes each way.

It goes through the island, then the East Bridge (opened recently) is another 3 miles long. It costs nothing to travel over to Oakland ... but it costs $4-6 to come back over to the city.

It’s about 160 metres high.

Awesome.

Click on the photo for a sexy panoramic view.

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Tonight - the first visit to a proper restaurant!

We have been grabbing fruit and food from Sprouts and Whole Foods this time round ... healthier, cheaper, winner.

Tonight though, I spotted a Paxtis, a place that did Chicago Deep Dish pizza, and also gluten free pizza for the high kicker.

We got a 12” Deep dish for me and Danni, we rather pathetically made it to half way before we had to call time on it. So lame. Haha. Great pizza though!

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I’ve been there, done that. Always good!

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Yeah, might head out and drive that tomorrow ...

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twazu told us about the Wave Organ, a cool art piece that plays music with the tides.

Pretty cool! While we were there the tide wasn’t ideal, but we got some bloooops and blops out of the tubes. It is a cool place to sit and watch the sea, quite peaceful.

That’s Alcatraz in the background. Great place to view the Golden Gate Bridge too.

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The Full House house! The row of houses is called “the painted ladies”

And all the tourists taking photos of the Full House house.

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Mrs Doubtfires house!

If you look through the window, you can see her tits catching fire.

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If your name is Michael Phelps I’m sure it wouldn’t be a problem.

The current looks pretty funky though! If you were floating in your raft made out of raincoats, you could end up anywhere ...

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We drove down to Fort Point, which is under the Golden Gate Bridge. There’s a big fort here, unfortunately it’s only open Friday-Sunday.

Great place for a Bridge photo though!

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Here is our trusty stead for this trip.

Dodge Caravan GT. Comfy enough to drive, plenty of room for 6 people, let alone 3.

Got 28mpg on the drive up, that’s probably plummeted around San Frans hilly roads.

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Then we drove around Golden Gate Park. Lots to see there, including a Japanese Tea Garden (a steep $9 each entry though!) and several museums.

There was an art exhibition on at the de Young Museum of Maori Portraits by Lindauer. These are awesome portraits if you ever get the chance to see them. Look them up on line for $0.

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Of course, we had to drive down the famous Lombard Street curvy bit.

The locals installed this to stem the flow of cross town traffic ... unfortunately for them, now more people come here than before. Haha!

Non stop flow of cars coming down ... and plenty of stupid tourists standing in the middle of the road taking selfies and almost getting run over. Some people ... sshesshhh

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I just walk around the place like I own it. Haha! Seriously though, we have a few places we know we are going to check out when we hit a city, a lot of the stuff we find we just ... find ...

We just got back from the MOF trip ... we left Lombard, drove through downtown, over the Bay Bridge, down past Alameda, stopped for In and Out Animal Style, hit the freeway again down to the 92 bridge as per the MOF instructions. Quite the drive! And yes, nice view up towards the city ...

Thanks for the tip, MOF!

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Rather them than me!

I struggle to do a length of the Olympic swimming pool in one go lol

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I was just saying yesterday ... if you had a manual (stick) Ferrari around here you’d be buggered! You’d be in for a $10,000 clutch job every few months!

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Today we left San Fran. Great city!

Pretty easy to get around. The hills make walking some streets a mission! Traffic was generally pretty light for a big city, except for the main roads that lead to the freeways.

A couple of shots of the trip through the city and crossing the two Bay Bridges.

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Shit! What do you know! It does fit a pin!!

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We drove north around 90 minutes to Woodlands to meet Peter @pinheadpierre.

Peter has a cool pad and 5 pins, including two he is painstakingly restoring. Check out the neat San Francisco playfield he has bought back from the dead with some great airbrush skills.

Peter was a cool cat! Thanks for having us around!

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Then we drove over to California’s State Capital, Sacramento.

Looks like another great town!

We had a quick drive around the Old Town (looks really cool) and had just enough time to check out the Capital Building.

Cool building built in 1876! Nice dome!

Check out that door on the treasury!

In the basement, there’s a statue of Ronald
Reagan, governor of CA before he hit the Oval Office.

California is big on the bear motifs.

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Went down to Sacramento Old Town this morning.

First up - Tower Bridge.

This is a very cool vertical lift bridge, built in 1935. It’d be cool to see it go up and down ...

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Sacramento Old Town is pretty cool.

Of course, now the old buildings sell sweets and trinkets, but it’s still cool to walk around.

As previously mentioned, this is where the California Railroad Museum is, which looked excellent, but we didn’t have time for it today.

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Then we headed up the road an hour to the historic gold mining town of Nevada City.

Nevada City was founded in the 1850s and some of these buildings have been around since then.

There are a couple of neat 1930s Art Deco buildings that completely mismatch all the other buildings.

They have lots of gold mine stampers and artifacts displayed around the town.

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Then we headed up towards Reno.

As we climbed the hills, the snow appeared.

By the time we arrived in Truckee (an historic railroad town) the snow was pretty thick on the ground.

White Xmas!

It was dark in Truckee, so only one photo from there.

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We have arrived in Reno. We are staying in Sparks for a few days.

The biggest little city in the world!

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Gotta agree.

One thing that kept popping up in the Hearse thread was how many people had never explored their own states (or in some cases, never driven beyond their state line)

Kiwis are great travellers (useless tidbit of information: the average age a kiwi gets their first passport is 3 years old) ... but most of us have explored a lot of our country as well.

My tour of California showed us there is definitely two parts of CA - SoCal is like a different planet compated to NorCal.
- Climate is different
- people are different

Both places are cool, but they are very different. NorCal is more like say Tennessee in some respects. Except for the “maaaaaam” and the guns.

I encourage everyone to take a week or two, and drive around the countryside! It’s pretty cheap, and the TSA doesn’t need to invade your nether regions ....

These days with the internet, there’s so much travel information available, you can see what tickles your fancy before you step outside your front door.

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Drove around downtown Reno today.

Got to say, she’s a bit of a ghost town around there!

A few of the casinos were closed down, quite a few empty stores.

We parked in Cal-Neva Casino, when you entered the casino there was a 1980s nightclub haze of smoke from the motley crew of gamblers in there. The glass front door had been kicked in, there was a bit of plywood taped over the hole which looked like it had been there for some time.

The Main Street was pretty void of traffic ... so doing a high kick in the middle of the street was as safe as going one on the footpath!

The town has added some art pieces around the place to spark it up a little. The stained glass whale was pretty cool. We joked that the BELIEVE sign may have had the BE added in error lolll

Always a shame to see an area in a state like this ... I don’t know what would turn it around. You can’t have outside drinking like Downtown Vegas, cause it’s too cold ... maybe Winter Festivals or something? But all the casinos would need to clean up their act first ... dunno. It’s a hard one.

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Yep, that looks good. There were a heap of cars in the lot tonight.

We are at the Nugget in Sparks. It’s pretty nice, about the same as a middle of the road Vegas joint. I think it was only like $50 USD average per night!

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Probably not much to see out there Art, if the hippies aren’t there ...

I know a few kiwis that go to Burning Man every year. Not really my bag, but whatever turns them on ...

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Yeah, nobody wants to see me.

And I admit to taking a few quick snaps while driving ... all the other drivers in CA and NV are having hour long, in-depth conversations on their phones while they aim their cars at me, so I don’t feel guilty at all.

Using a cell while driving is illegal in NZ ... really, it should be everywhere. It’s proven to be distracting.

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Here ya go.

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I’ll give you the tip - not much! Haha

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Today we went to Virginia City to see Barry!

Barry no longer works at the Washoe Club, so the lady on the counter says. But she said we might see him walking around town ...

Check out the pics of the club ... it’s all bent in the middle!

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So we drove about 35 Mins south of Reno to go to Virginia City. It’s a gold mining town that dates back to the 1850s. The TV show Bonanza was based around this area, the fictional “Ponderosa” being “two hours horse ride” from Virginia City.

It’s really cool! Pretty much the whole Main Street is original. Half the buildings look like a decent gust of wind would knock them over.

All the footpaths are the original timber ones like you see in the westerns.

Here’s some pics of the Main Street ....

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We met a couple of characters there.

First up, there was “Stinky” who owned Bernadine the donkey. “Stinky” smelt more than the donkey. Haha! If you held a carrot in your mouth, Bernadine would eat it out of your mouth.

Stinky liked the look of Fiona so he gave her his card (below..) ... I better watch my back ...

We also met a guy walking his pig. As one does ...

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Then we drove down the road to Gold Hill and Silver City.

Both places are a lot smaller, but still a lot of history.

There are still active mines around, and heaps of abandoned ones.

You see a lot of fenced off mines which are basically holes in the ground.

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This whole area is a photographers wet dream. You could spend days around here taking photos of all the cool stuff.

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We got back to Reno at dusk and got some shots of some neon lights.

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Then we met up with local pinhead Michael @bellystyle. He has a heap of games, many out on location around Reno. He also helps out Rick at PPS now he has moved to Sparks (part of Reno)

Michael has some cool games at his place, including Joust, Barracora, Alien Star amongst others.

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After a while, we all headed around to Clint’s house, where Michael has a few other games stored. I wanted to check out the Rotation VIII, which is a rare Midway 4 player cocktail game from 1978/79.

What’s unusual about Rotation VIII is the playfield rotates automatically to each player when it’s their turn to play. Very cool! It’s layout is based off Bally’s Eight Ball ... it’s very addictive to play.

http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=2019

Clint also had this custom VW in his garage ... it was fitted with a custom fibreglass front end which you used to be able to buy. This car was a showroom model for the mods.

We also played Clint’s TX Sector and RoboWars which were great fun.

Thanks guys!

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That’s what happens when you update your thread at 1.30am.

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Merry Xmas Wally. Hope all is good up your way.

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Xmas day in Reno!

Just had a quiet day today ... hung around the hotel most of the day.

Went for a Xmas Buffet at the hotel which was interesting. I’m not really a buffet guy ... I don’t really like them for a couple of reasons:
- don’t really like bits and pieces food, give me a proper meal!
- can’t eat enough to really get any value
- Food is usually crappy

In saying that, we decided to have one for a change. It was pretty good, they had prime rib which I like, most the stuff was pretty nice and they kept replenishing it regularly so it didn’t go cold and manky.

Buffets seem to be the #1 choice of “very large people” and there were quite a few there today, making sure they got their $26.95 worth.

I had effectively a 3 course meal which is far more than I ever eat ... so I spent the rest of the afternoon with food remorse! Haha

We went for a walk around the casino to walk some of it off, there’s not really much going on around this corner of Sparks. The Nugget is pretty busy though, the buffet queue was out the door all day.

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Santa bought me 3x Ghirardelli single chocolate squares and a box of raisinettes!

And darn nice they were too.

We are very minimalist. Except for all the pinball machines ...

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Drove down to South Lake Tahoe today.

The state line is right in the centre of the township ... Nevada one side, California the other.

Very pretty alpine town! There are some large casino hotels there, and lots of small hotels. Lots of people vacation here for the holidays, it was pretty busy. There’s a gondola up the mountain right in the middle of the Main Street.

We drove around the neighbourhoods right up to the highest street to get some pics.

Very similar town to Queenstown in NZ, but not quite as “boutique-y” as QT is.

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