Walking into Magoo’s Sports Bar & Billiards is like stepping into your uncle’s nostalgia-fueled fever dream. Neon bar signs, retro arcade games, and big-screen TVs give off a hazy glow. Nice, pretty bartenders serve reasonably priced drinks. There’s the satisfying sound of a cue ball crashing into a freshly racked game of pool. Dings, bells, and whistles surge from a cluster of well-maintained pinball machines. It’s a Thursday evening, when dozens of people meet here for a regular weekly pinball league.
I light a cigarette on the back patio a few minutes before the league games start. Within seconds, a man approaches me, casually but deliberately. I already know what's coming: He asks me for a cigarette, and I give him one.
I ask him, are you here for pool or pinball? He plays pool. When I say I’m playing pinball, he asks if it’s because my boyfriend is playing pinball. I shake my head no. (Actually, I got into this because I fell in love with a woman who loves pinball.)
Most Thursdays, I’m at The Max, where ladies and theydies get free tokens to play pinball, Skeeball, and other retro arcade games for the night. While Magoo’s leans into the classic sports bar vibe, The Max takes a different approach: The giant luckdragon from The NeverEnding Story, suspended from the ceiling, greets you at the door, and the bar serves Ghostbusters-themed cocktails and bright boozy slushies. It’s a ‘90s kid’s wonderland.
Magoo's is a storied pool hall institution. The Max is a dive bar made over to emulate the trendy barcades in Dallas or Portland. Pinball sits at the center of their Venn diagram. The contrasting playing styles and overall vibes at Magoo’s and The Max represent a larger tension within the pinball community. The subculture—which is predominantly male—reveals a world of gender politics as complex as the games themselves.
There is no “men’s league” in pinball. There is an “open league,” which anyone can join, and a “women’s league.” The International Flipper Pinball Association’s new gender inclusion policy codifies that all cis, trans, and nonbinary players who identify with womanhood are welcome to the women’s league without requiring proof of identity.
The reason for this? The competitive pinball scene is marked by gatekeeping and, at times, toxic behavior, according to IFPA Women’s Advisory Board member Samantha Bacon. “Whether it’s from emotional outbursts by men when they win or lose, or the serious attitudes they have when competing, or outright looking down on beginning players, open tournaments can be difficult to jump into by women who do not see themselves as competitive,” Bacon explains.
Local pinball operator Lucas DeWoody points out that a pinball player’s risk of physical injury is quite low: “I've never seen anybody get injured playing a pinball unless they were one of those super rowdy dudes1 who hit the thing so damn hard it almost tipped over and then they had to catch it."