Photo Essay: Pinball Hall of Fame, Vegas

I'm like a bird.

Or a cat.

I like shiny things.

And bells and whistles.

And flashing lights.

This attraction leads me to amusement parks, Times Square, Hollywood Blvd, arcades, and Vegas, which is full of all of those things.

Vegas' Pinball Hall of Fame is billed as sort of a roadside attraction - a museum of oddities - but really it's just an arcade full of old pinball machines (and some video games) from the last several decades, dating back at least to the 1960s, maybe earlier.

And with enough quarters, you can play almost all of them.


X-Files


Revenge from Mars


The Twilight Zone



The Twilight Zone

Eight Ball Deluxe


Firepower



Pinball Wizard



Nugent


Big Flipper



Dr. Dude



KISS



The Bally Game Show




The Bally Game Show

Lawman

After playing nearly 20 of them, all circa 1970-2000, I realized I have a strong affinity for the pinball machines of the 1980s. Perhaps it's merely because of the familiarity of my childhood and what I must've played at Chuck E. Cheese, but given the fact I wasn't really allowed out of the house and never went to an arcade besides Chuck E. Cheese until I was an adult, I think it's more than that. In the 1980s, the pinball machines hit a nice sweet spot between electronic technology (at least, the score-keeping) and analog, manual mechanism. This era pre-dates the time when you press a button to launch the ball, and the predominant sounds are those of rattling metal, contracting springs, flipping flippers, bumping bumpers and kicking targets. You don't need LED video projections or movie quote sound effects to generate excitement. You feel the entire box quake.

Yet another amusement worthy of a trip away from The Strip.

More to come.

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Photo Essay: Fremont Street Experience, Vegas

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Photo Essay: Fremont Street Experience, Vegas

When I first visited Las Vegas in the late 90s - dragged there by my friend Tony who abandoned me when I got sick on our trip, leaving me shivering with chills under the covers in our room while he galavanted around town, not even spending the night in our hotel - I couldn't figure out where the Vegas I'd seen on TV and in the movies was.

Back then, the Sands was still open, as were many of the other soon-to-be-imploded "Old Vegas" resorts, including one nearby with a mechanical bull, which I gazed at wistfully through the window of our hotel room at the Stratosphere.

But even back then, Vegas seemed too...new.

Now, in the advent of Steve Wynn's Vegas takeover, glimpses of that old Vegas - predating my first visit - are hard to find, but not impossible.

And one of the best places to find Old Vegas is downtown, on Fremont East...







...And at the Freemont Street Experience, where the Neon Museum has preserved many old classic neon signs that are all lit up, which you can whizz by on a zipline under an LED screen ceiling, and see some of the costumed characters you find on The Strip or on Hollywood Boulevard, somehow charming on Fremont Street...

































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Photo Essay: Neon Boneyard, Vegas

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Photo Essay: The Mysteries of Brand Park in Historic Glendale

What draws me to any trail?

Usually, it's some sense of history.

Which there is plenty of in LA.

Airplane parties were numerous in the days of private flying, and Miradero, the estate of Leslie Brand - who had a strong hand in the establishment of the city of Glendale, just east of Los Angeles - was central to the era of private flying parties. Brand had his own airfield on his private property - just south of the mansion and estate which now constitutes Brand Library in Brand Park - but his estate was also situated close to the old Grand Central, one of the many now-defunct municipal airfields of Los Angeles County.

Climbing the trails behind Brand Library, you can see some of the remnants of those private flying days, most notably a light beacon, perhaps having served Brand's airfield, perhaps Grand Central.





But there are plenty of other mysteries surrounding the old Brand estate, including some post-Brand city of Glendale developments whose vestiges litter the historic trails.

When hiking behind the library, I discovered some concrete footings that reminded me of the remnants of the Corralitas Red Car Property in Silver Lake, which would have been bizarre given the elevation of the Verdugo Mountains back there (although apparently there once was a plan to build a funicular in the Verdugos...).









Most certainly there hadn't been another incline railway here, but Glendale does have plenty of rail history...



...And Brand himself (the man often referred to as "The Father of Glendale") had been instrumental in a lot of the railway development in the city of Glendale, where one of the Pacific Electric lines used to end.





So then...what?



The Parks Department thinks that they look like remnant from some old water line components left over after the systems have been demolished over the years. Apparently, long gone are the water tanks and other piping servicing some of the improvements below, but concrete items like these would have been left behind because they were too heavy to move and wouldn't have had any scrap value.

And there are some pipes still up there.



The interesting thing is, no one really seems to know.

"That's Glendale..." said the librarian I visited at Brand Library.

Down below, along the fire road that becomes the Brand Motorway past the Debris Basin, you can find plenty of other ruins - your garden variety stairs-to-nowhere from once-razed structures, etc.



Equally mysterious is the Brand Cemetery, which was once the family's dog cemetery while they still resided at Miradero, and where the family is now laid to rest. The cemetery - and the pyramid-shaped headstone - lie behind a locked gate amidst the ruins...



There is a graffitied shed (reminiscent of Murphy Ranch) that historians speculate could have once served as a meat locker...





But what the heck is this boat doing there?



For now, much of it remains a mystery.

But that doesn't mean I'll stop trying to figure it out...

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