In February of 2012 I went to Portland to visit a girl and happened upon the Rose City Showdown happening at a bar. I didn’t know what that was, but a friendly person asked if I wanted to join in on the tournament. Since I enjoyed playing pinball in the past, I thought, why not?

The first machine I played on was Iron Man and on my first ball I tilted before I barely even got to play it. I realized then that these machines were set differently than the ones I had played in the past at the laundry mat or bars back home in San Francisco. I had a ton of fun even though I didn’t place well, but I realize later that they were amazing players like Keith Elwin, Robert Gagno & Cayle George in the same tournament. At the time I didn’t know who they were but I do now.

When I returned to San Francisco I googled pinball and found that there was a lot of stuff going on here. Jonny O runs bunch of tournaments and he had something going on at Vitus in Oakland so I checked that out. After that I was officially hooked!  You can see my current pinball ranking here: http://www.ifpapinball.com/player.php?player_id=13052

I started playing in my neighborhood in the Mission district a lot at places like Zeitgeist and Gestalt Haus and have been ever since. Since I’m a photographer I decided to take photos of the scene here which have been published quite a bit and that’s exciting. You can see these photos at this URL: http://store.orangephotography.com/sfpins – I’ll be continuing to add photos to this gallery so you can check back periodically to look for updates.