My mom was visiting on the weekend and available to watch the kids, so Robin and I could have a date night.
“Do you want to go play some pinball?” I asked her. “Sure”, she responded, but she hadn’t played pinball in many years.
I discovered the Church online, just following some Toronto pinball links. It is a private collection housed in a warehouse by Mike & Christine Hanley. Every once in a while they open it to the public, and they happened to be doing one of their “Pinball Faith” nights this Friday.
We drove to the Mississauga warehouse, which was fun just to drive too… driving the car into a deserted warehouse district, but then seeing a bunch of cars parked in one area. Reminiscent of our old days.
We went inside, and were greeted by Mike. It was $10 per person, any games that had power were free to play. His collection spans from older Electric Mechanical games, on through solid state and DMD. The crown jewel of his collection was the complete “jpop” collection of pins, from World Cup Soccer, Theatre of Magic, Circus Voltaire, Tales of the Arabian Nights, and Star Wars Episode 1. I would find out later him and jpop are actually really old friends and Mike actually inducted him into the Pinball Hall of Fame the year previous.
Mike had a game open and Robin was immediately intrigued by all the guts, so she asked Mike to show her some more which he was happy to oblige. By the end of the night Robin declared “We’re getting one!”. Usually the wives are the resistance on any pinball acquisitions :-).