That's a fair description of Kennywood. Sunday we got up, in time to stuff plates full at the hotel breakfastery. The goal: the Women's International Pinball Tournament, at whatever the ``Rezzanine Esports Facility'' was. We had the choice to go there Saturday and at least scout it out, but Kennywood was more important, and it's not likely there would have been many --- any? --- tables for the WIPT tournament that wouldn't be used for New Pinburgh finals or the Bash At The Burgh side tournament. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger was going in cold.
I don't know what you imagine the Rezzanine might be. I was guessing, oh, probably a warehouse or something like that, maybe (like AJH's place in Fremont) a former business turned into a pinball arcade. No. The key is in letters after that R: this was the mezzanine of a movie theater. So along the way I learned there's a Lion King prequel, a Beetlejuice sequel, a Harold and the Purple Crayon movie, and a Wicked movie coming out. Who knew?
Hanging over the edge of the balcony were things I'd imagined I wouldn't see again, the huge banners proclaiming Pinburgh champions from 2011 (Keith Elwin) through to 2019 (Keith Elwin). Also the banners with the winners of the first two WIPT tournaments (Nicole Bernier and Holly Koskinen). Also a banner in memory of Lyman F Sheats, who wrote the ruleset for whatever your favorite pinball game is, and died of suicide in early 2022. Pretty much every pinball organization has made some gesture of respect and call for mental health awareness in memorial.
We got there not quite the moment the doors open, but comfortably ahead of the designated hour bunnyhugger had to check in. The line wound its way up the stairs to the entrance of the mezzanine and I accidentally cheated by not paying the spectator entry fee. Didn't know there was one. I made good after the crowd died down a little. As part of her registration and check-in bunnyhugger got a swag bag, her second tote bag full of random pinball stuff this year. Among the things was a Pinburgh 2019 t-shirt, I assume leftover stock. Other people got other t-shirts, all ones that I guess clean out the storage locker.
Arranged along the mezzanine were several rows of pinball machines, banks of three games each reorganized from New Pinburgh's banks of four. This did mean the slightly awkward case that most banks stretched across two rows. There were also a good number of games in the free play area where onlookers like me could play. Some of them, I now know, had been part of the Bash at the Burgh side tournament. Some were left over even past that, I assume the games that could have been played had we been there the day before. Many of them were familiar from Pinburgh or ReplayFX. At least one --- Spanish Eyes --- even still had a Pinburgh 2019 sign on it, so I know I played that during the free play times.
Most shocking discovery: that there was never a FunHouse in the tournament. FunHouse is a maintenance nightmare --- Rudy's head is complicated and always breaking --- but it's also, in many ways, The pinball game. also startling is that there were ultimately only eight banks, plus two backup banks. With only 64 players registered --- and only 63 attending; people on the waiting list missed a chance --- they wouldn't need more. Even New Pinburgh had only had 12 banks (plus three backups), which gave me the sense that the whole thing was very small. But going from a convention that occupied the Anthrocon Convention Center down to the upper level of a movieplex could not help feeling small.
Also they had breakfast. Bagels and doughnuts, mostly, plus coffee. If there was tea I didn't figure it out. There might have been orange juice or milk too; wasn't looking. If we had known we might have made different choices in what to stuff our plates with at the hotel. Probably not, though; I'll take as many cold hard-boiled eggs as you'll let me get away with.
That's the setting, though. How the tournament went I intend to start telling you tomorrow.
For now, in my photo roll, we're up to mid-November last year and so ... Silver Bells in the City! A parade and everything! Did this one get destroyed by a hilarious fast-moving squall? Just wait and see or remember what I already reported about this.
Our path to the parade went through the Lansing City Center, where they had a couple reindeer on display to be baffled by screaming children! You can almost see the nearer one wondering how it's come to this.
Reindeer has definitely figured out the escape route here and is just waiting to implement it.
And now to our waiting spot to be cold and see things pass in front of us! Here, behind, is the City Hall and the booth where the TV people broadcast from.
And here's the reviewing stand where the Mayor and the Guests of Honor and other dignitaries would sit, where there's heat.
And here's the camera on the boom and the state capitol, everything set up to pass in front of us in a not-bad spot where things would be obstructed only in my photographs.
Camera operator here looks strikingly like a guy whom I know used to be a local-news camera operator, but that guy is older and in Seattle so it's just something in local-news camera operator life that makes people converge on a type, I guess.
Trivia: Promethium --- one of the artificial elements, number 61 --- was first (definitely) synthesized in 1945 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The synthesis was not announced for another two years, when the research team (Jacob Marinsky, Lawrence Glendenin, Charles Coryell) had finished their uranium work. Source: The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World From the Periodic Table of the Elements, Sam Kean.
Currently Reading: The Oregon Trail: Yesterday and Today, William E Hill.
