Pinball state championships will be held in this New Yorker’s tiny apartment: ‘I have a couch and a bed, that’s it’
Her arcade’s fire.
A pinball diehard loves the classic pastime so much, she has converted her Park Slope abode into a plinky-plonky paradise — giving up the usual comforts of home to squeeze in 16 of the hulking, colorful machines into her railroad-style apartment.
“I have a couch and a bed, that’s it,” Kaite Martin, a 34-year-old bartender told The Post of her 80-by-15-foot living space, crammed with $100,000 worth of themed pinball machines, from “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” to “Robocop,” and more recently “The Walking Dead.”
Her oldest machine, which has an interstellar-themed layout, dates back to half a century ago, in 1978. Martin acquired it just a week ago for $1,800. Typically, her hunt for vintage and unique machines involves lots of begging and pleading on Internet forums, the bumper lover confessed.
Martin’s collection — now worth $40,000 more than she originally paid — isn’t just for fun and games, though.
On Saturday, Martin will pull off a New York City pinball first: She’s flipping the script by hosting the International Flipper Pinball Association state championship, the first time the tournament will be held in a Big Apple residence.
“I have better games than a lot of the public locations and we can close off the location so that there aren’t random Tinder dates interrupting you while you’re playing,” she said.
Martin, who fell in love with the game a dozen years ago while working in a pinball bar, will also host and compete in the state women’s tournament inside her home on Sunday. As the 2023 NYC women’s champion, she’s stiff competition.
Pinheads unite
Tournaments typically rotate between NYC, Western New York and the Hudson Valley at bar or arcade venues. And it’s not Martin’s first rodeo: she’s hosted ten tourneys over the years
For this weekend’s competition, Martin crafted a potluck subcompetition so attendees can compete for best dish, too.
To make some space in her cramped quarters, she tried fitting one of the machines into her closet for more walking room, but that didn’t work out as planned. Once things are over, she will downsize to 12 or 13 machines, leaving just enough room to reach for essentials like toilet paper.
At first, Martin admitted she thought pinball was “old and lame and stupid,” but fell in love with the competition.
“When I knew there were rules and that you could win, I got really competitive and I got really into it,” she said.
She bought her first machine ten years ago and realized quickly that having the coolest spot in the city means regularly hosting people to play for friendly, nontournament rounds, too. She’s known to order pizza for the gang during large gatherings to play on holidays and nights like Super Bowl Sunday.
Martin also runs a women’s league — the Belles and Chimes, which is the New York City chapter in the global operation — and her friends often compete in multiple leagues around the city.
“Half of the women there are people that you meet that casually play pinball and get really, really into it,” she said.
As for noise complaints around her home, Martin said they are few and far between. Her upstairs neighbors are seldom irritated by the games since Martin lets their kids play. Even better, the machines don’t use much electricity, which would devastate the host’s upcoming ConEd bill.
“It’s very fortunate,” she said.
Come gameday, she expects 24 contestants, possible reserve players in case of cancellation and a Twitch broadcast crew to livestream the competitive matches. After all, a mechanic recently tweaked the machines to make them more challenging.
Normal gimmes like hitting certain parts of the machine one time for points will need to be hit three times, rubber bands are taken off posts to make the ball bounce around less, and the machine has been calibrated to be more sensitive to tilting.
Players also have to show the diversity of their skill sets by competing on three different types of machines: a graphically sophisticated modern one, another from what Martin called the “golden age” of the 1990s, and an earlier, less electronic one from around the 1970s.
Although the older games don’t give out scores as high as the modern ones, that won’t matter for the tournament as it is a pure win-loss model in head-to-head play rather than total points accrued.
The winner receives over $1,000 and moves to the prestigious national tournament in March, which will take place this year in Rochester. The runners-up in the invite-only tourney also pocket a few hundred dollars.
“Everyone that shows up gets some money because we pay into a prize pool all year,” Martin explained. “Every player in every tournament pays $1 and each dollar goes somewhat towards New York state and some towards nationals.”
A game rolling forward
Reigning state champ Greg Poverelli, a 34-year-old Astoria resident and real estate manager, welcomes the change of pace of playing in a house.
“I personally love playing in a home collection rather than a bar,” he told The Post, lauding how well Martin has hosted tournaments in the past. Despite the close quarters, everyone feels comfortable.
In addition, Poverelli said that although the stakes are high, the local pinball community is quite close, and meeting at Martin’s place feels more like a gathering of friends.
“There’s definitely a desire to win and do well, but it’s much more community-driven than a lot of people realize,” he added. “If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t still be doing it — despite my success.”
The NYC pinball big shots — about 300 players regularly in the mix — are stoked to watch the game grow and welcome newcomers. But rookies beware: the reigning champ said all are invited to play, as long as you don’t make a played-out reference to “Pinball Wizard” by The Who and later Elton John.
And while the city has always been a pinball haven, Poverelli noted that since COVID-19 and streaming services like Twitch became easily accessible, more and more folks are getting their quarters together for a few rounds.
For newbies, Poverelli passed along this advice to help them score high.
“One immediate thing that you want to shoot are the blinking lights. That’s never going to be a bad start,” he said. “However, I always tell people to remember that it’s a game that heavily involves physics.”
The pinball aficionado — we wouldn’t dare write wizard — stressed being methodical in keeping with the laws of gravity instead of sporadically banging the flippers rapidly.
“You can slow the ball down if you’re in control,” said Poverelli. “You’re much more likely to be accurate and you’re far less likely to put the ball in danger.”
