Crime, Culture, and Chicane Lanes: The Hidden History of Michigan Pinball

Описание: Crime, Culture, and Chicane Lanes: The Hidden History of Michigan Pinball as Told By Tim Arnold, Founder of the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In pinball parlance, a chicane lane describes the curving, zig-zagging path that slows the silverball down and lights features that earn points as the ball passes through it. In my proposed video, I will use the chicane lane as a visual metaphor to explore the hidden underbelly of Michigan pinball as it began in East Lansing’s Pinball Pete’s establishment and criss-crossed paths with organized crime that existed in Durand, Flint, and Detroit during the 1970’s. Using Clay Harrell's archived interviews at TOPCast with Pinball Pete’s founder, Tim Arnold, and connections made to convicted organized crime members like Harry Mahoney (founder of the Déjà Vu Nightclub), this video will explore the culture of pinball as it connects to the culture of crime. Outlawed in many cities until the mid-1970’s, pinball and its culture was no stranger to a general association with sex, crime, and gambling, not only in terms of its bagatell gameplay but its racy imagery. Untold in previous stories is how an actual syndicate touched one of East Lansing’s more iconic locations. Building on an a collection of “MLArcade” scholarship that first appeared at the Modern Language Association Conference in Boston in 2013, this work seeks to expand the available literature on pinball's storied past.description