In our continued celebration of Women’s History Month, let’s look at two areas where Americans identifying as “women” have been trailblazers: barbecue and pinball machine design and engineering.
Loyal readers may remember Austin and Lockhart, Texas: 10 barbecue restaurants in 72 hours. We had a good meal at Terry Black’s on a recent visit to Austin, but it wasn’t as great as we remembered. We tried Loro, an Asian-inflected bbq place, and thought it was okay (great sides, though!). The new favorite: LeRoy and Lewis. This isn’t an adventurous choice since the place is Michelin-listed. By the late afternoon they’d run out of brisket, but I preferred their tri tip steak anyway. The Frito pie side is perfect if you haven’t joined Ozempic Nation yet.
In addition to improving our waistlines via at least one bbq meal per day, we improved our minds with pinball. The Austin Pinball Collective is an interesting group of enthusiasts who park their 85 machines in an office building and hold an open house every Saturday during which the rabble can pay $20 for unlimited play. Members remain responsible for maintaining the machines that they place into the location so I’m not sure that it qualifies as a big convenience upgrade compared to having a machine in one’s house. It would be a lot easier on the members if the collective hired a part-time or full-time tech for the machines.
At the collective, we learned that Texas is slowly catching up to Chicago as a pinball machine design and manufacturing center. There are currently three companies in Texas building machines and there was an example of each at the collective:
Barrels of Fun seems to be the most established of the three. Their Labyrinth machine is kind of fun, but their Dune machine is the most beautifully lit pinball machine that I’ve ever seen. (You can play Dune in Minneapolis at the all-white pinball bar that I visited (consistent with my general observation that there was no mixing among native-born white Minnesotans and the Somalis whom they claim to love).)
A pre-flipper Stock Market machine, a Mars machine in case Elon Musk drops in, and one for Muhammad Ali fans.
Our other brain-enhancing stop was at Pinballz (original location on Research Blvd.) to play Hercules, a massive Atari machine with a ball the size of a pool ball.
The game is indeed quite slow. Despite the ponderous size, the game isn’t very heavy and it is possible to move it enough to influence the ball’s trajectory. Comment from Pinside: “The novelty is cool, but wears off quickly, and then there is not much left. It’s like the woman with the big tatas but no personality. OK, maybe that’s a bad example, because that novelty doesn’t really wear off.”