In this photo men in suits and hats are smashing pinball machines with hammers

A portrait of New York City’s 30 year ban on the machines for being a form of gambling, from 1942 as a matter of moral imperative and a shortage of materials for the war until 1976 when a looming bankruptcy made them think twice about gambling revenue

The pinball world champion himself, sworn in in a courtroom in front of god, bureaucracy and TV cameras, said exactly where the silver ball was going to go, to prove skill over luck, and to the astonishment of everyone watching, the called shot happened exactly as he said it would.

And here we have two rooms, in one the cracked facades and burned out bulbs, the boxes like coffins, like the dead clocks of the future, gathered up into a heap, all quarters stripped from their bellies

The other room is empty, here is where the machines that were saved were kept, under oil rags and tarps, sleeping time machines, locked and keyed, one day forgotten, then another day, vanished, taken away all once from the damp brick vault

Here in the space between catastrophes where we attempt our immurement

It’s so easy to believe that the past was populated exclusively by children

Led out of their pastures by a pillar of smoke, a bonfire of their own discarded naivety, armed with pitchforks and torches like the mob at the end of every Frankenstein movie, out of an iron prison, and into a fire growing in color and beauty

Here is a forest growing, here, a place where all the bucks are worth five points and there’s unlimited ammunition

To discard one game for another, oh so easy to believe, that this was the day, all those men with hammers, had just that very morning, put away their teddy bears or stitched shut their beady eyes for the day’s bloody work ahead, here was the very day the rats took over, we don’t remember exactly what it is drove them out again, but the sugar cubes you can find on the street, are best not eaten, unless you’re sure where they came from, and no one really is