The Heart in the Middle of Nowhere

I remember I was first introduced to the small town of Lyons, Colorado several years ago in a most incidental fashion.  A post on DDRfreak said “Lyons Classic Pinball x/x” (wherein the x’s represent dates).  Pinball was not intensely familiar to me at the time, something which remains more or less true.  In addition it suffers from a lack of being ITG.  Nonetheless I found myself going, and I ended up being fascinated by what I saw.  It also turned out that the reason I was supposed to be there was because it was someones birthday party, but now that every DDR player in the Southwest region hates me I don’t have to feel guilty about not getting him anything.

With that nostalgia and fascination still inside me, I decided to make an adventure to Lyons again, and even to bring Mazo.  I do not regret it.  The city has maintained every ounce of its character and beauty.  In fact it might even have gained some.  When Mazo and I first rolled into town, this is what we were greeted by:

Uncle Sam is as ornery as always

The details of the seizure of; wait, subway!?

Yes, it seems that a Subway Sandwhich shop was closed down due to tax evasion, the noblest of all human pursuits.  If one wants to measure the love a man has of his country and for freedom, he need only count the number of dollars he refused his government.  In this case, $10,048.47.  Thoreau would be proud, I am certain.

Shortly after this, Mazo and I both partook of food and drink, and there was great merriment.

This is actually his 7th beer

Thereafter, we were fully prepared for our journalistic duties.  In this case, principally taking random pictures while terrorizing the locals.  Our first branch of investigation placed us conveniently close to the bathrooms.  We adventured deep into the walkout basement of Oskar Wilde’s Blues, and proceeded to examine their arcade.  It is a very nice arcade, filled to the brim with classic games including Donkey Kong, Paperboy, and Missile Command.

You don’t have to just take my word for it here though.  You can take it in video form instead.

At last being more or less done at the restaurant, we headed off to what was arguably the point of our going to this town in the first place, if such a point could indeed be said to exist.  This involved walking, unfortunately, but thankfully it was only for a very brief number of feet.

It strikes me that more of this article is picture than is text.  However the experience is so visceral I feel pictures do it a sort of justice even my standard level of verbosity cannot match.  We arrived at last, after countless seconds of walking, at Lyons Classic Pinball.  It was beautiful.

I intended to make a video tour of Lyons Pinball as well, however I accidently let myself get distracted while pondering the Godlessness of modern liberal culture, and hence it slipped my mind.  Fortunately, someone else made a video tour which is a good deal better than anything I ever could have made, perhaps even if I had technical competency, a decent camera, or a computer.  You can find it here.

Lyons Pinball is an amazing place.  It has everything a place should have: Diligent workers of character and class, an assortment of miscleaneous people who are good at things, a slightly smaller assortment of people who aren’t good at things so that you can tell the difference, and most importantly, the things it proclaims to have on a large sign outside of it.  In addition to all of this however, it has something ever more important: competitions.

Yes, fullblown double elimination tournaments with prizes a colorado gamer like myself could only dream about.  The most I’ve ever won at a tournament was $600 dollars, and that was at a once a year tournament held in Las Vegas.  The only dance game tournaments left in Colorado happen on a Stepmania machine in Colorado Springs and standardly involve pots as large as $20.  They also occur anywhere from once to twice a year.  By comparison, the pinball tournament scene is practically the PGA tour.  Just to send this home, take a look at this tournament schedule.

Even worse, that’s just the scene here in Colorado!  Just based on this sheet of paper alone it doesn’t seem farfetched at all to imagine a person could pay their way through life simply by playing pinball.  All these years I’ve been playing the wrong damn games.  I suppose it doesn’t help that there are people with 30+ years of training on me though.  This is one game that I honestly doubt I could ever become competitive at, regardless of my ambitions or level of dedication.  It makes me feel sad.  It also, however, imbues me with a new found sense of respect.  Respect for a type of gamer that I hadn’t even had the sense to give attention to before.

Just so you can see how terrible Mazo and I are at pinball, here is a video of us playing Joust.

I think it’s safe to say that making a jump into a scene like this is probably beyond either of us at the moment.  That’s ok though, I suppose I don’t have to try and become competitive at every game I ever see being played competitively.  Although in my heart there is nothing I would like more.

The size of the bracket sheets along imbues a sense of insignificance.

So that’s that.  Lyons as a town is essentially magic.  This in the sense that most of what’s there is as equally substantial as it is beyond me.  The people, based on my limited experience, are basically awesome.  There are a few hangups, like that time the book store owner sold me a defective book that got me in trouble with all of my college professors, and how the prevalence of art galleries in the town suggests people there might actually consider art a legitimate subject or pursuit.  I can ignore that though, because when it comes right down to it I am just as transfized and awed with what’s there now as I was when I first set eyes upon it, so many* years ago.

To play us out, here is a hard hitting interview I conducted with one of the employees of Lyons Classic Pinball.  In it I ask a number of highly important, significant questions, if I do say so myself.  Please enjoy with a proper degree of reverence and dignity.

-Kilroy

* two.  two years.

Also here is another video that I took that I couldn’t find a place for within the body of the article.