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RED HOOK, Brooklyn — A go-to spot in Red Hook, Brooklyn, was inspired by a fateful trip to the Jersey Shore.
The Red Hook Pinball Museum is an analog oasis where machines beam with light and sound but screens are sparse. Musicians Wesley Michalski and Kevin Murray met at the record store next door to where their museum now stands. They eventually realized they were both pinball fans and visited the Silverball Museum in Asbury Park, NJ. The museum inspired the duo to gather vintage pinball machines and spread the love at home in Brooklyn.
They built a collection of pinball machines ranging from early versions from the 1800s through the 1970s, when the game found mainstream popularity. Murray and Michalski had to learn the machines’ ins-and-outs as well as how to maintain them on their own. They give a lot of credit to The Pinball Resource, a company that still manufactures hard-to-find parts for the vintage machines.
New York outlawed pinball in the 1940s under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, equating it with gambling. Decades later, City Hall lifted the prohibition following a famous hearing where, “Roger Sharpe played pinball in front of the City Council to prove it was a game of skill and not a game of chance,” explains Murray.
Michalski says the neighborhood has a way of bringing its people and businesses together. “There are a lot of places here in Red Hook that as much as they’re a business they’re also a social gathering place. Which we’ve tried to keep that energy here, as well.”
The museum also has a variety of other analog tech and games, like a payphone and jigsaw puzzle corner. Donations are encouraged at the door and everything inside is free to play. Murray is proud of the community they’re helping create.
“We’ve assembled this funny community of different people with all their passions involved. Yeah, it’s fun,” he says.
