Near the western end of sleepy Waller Street in Haight-Ashbury, the smell of beer, pizza, and spliffs hung in the air.

With the glow of retro arcade machines illuminating the room, Russ Sweetser took to the mic and gave his best Michael Buffer. “Let’s get ready for pinbaaaalll,” he roared with all the bravado of the ring announcer.  

The impression Nov. 15 came ahead of that night’s Jake Paul-Mike Tyson spectacle — but this, in contrast, was a real contest: a championship battle in San Francisco’s oldest, highest-stakes pinball league. 

The San Francisco Pinball Department — or SFPD, for short — has been gathering at Free Gold Watch, a quirky print shop and arcade, since 2013. The roster has grown to 85 players, and there’s a two-year waitlist. The league welcomes players of all levels, from world champions to eager first-timers.

“A bunch of people started competitive pinball when they joined the league, and a lot of them are now in the top 500 in the world,” Sweetser, one of the tournament’s organizers, said. “Once I moved here and learned actual skills from these guys, I got better. And then I try to impart that stuff on people who are noobs as well.”

How a pinball community came to life is an only-in-San Francisco story that stars obsessive nerds, bureaucratic obstacles, and a bit of serendipity. 

Before Shannon and Russ Sweetser packed for their move from Boston to San Francisco in 2013, they knew they would be regulars at Free Gold Watch, at 1767 Waller St.

The couple regularly check the Pinball Map, which tracks machine locations, when they travel.  

“We were like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s on our street,’” Shannon said. They stopped in Free Gold Watch within days of landing and have rarely left since.

Theirs is a love story formed over pinball. On their first date, Russ took Shannon to a Boston pizza joint, where they spent the night playing a “Medieval Madness” machine. 

“He played as a child all the time, so we already had basically some interest in pinball,” said Shannon, who worked at an arcade in high school. “But when we found out we both enjoyed it, we started seeking it out.”

Free Gold Watch, meanwhile, started as a screen-printing company and moved to its current home in 2009. 

There’s still a screen-printing setup, and owner Matt Henri continues to hook up local businesses with custom merch. But today, he’s better known for presiding over 50 pinball machines that form the largest playable collection in San Francisco. 

The shift to an arcade came after a profitable late-night poker run in Las Vegas. Henri went to buy a Leica with his winnings and ended up stumbling into the Pinball Hall of Fame near the camera shop. On the drive home, he saw a sign for a pinball expo, and it clicked: Free Gold Watch needed to get into the arcade game.

Little did he know, transforming a screen-printing shop into a national pinball mecca would require changing San Francisco law. 

In 1982, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors banned arcades (including pinball machines) within 300 feet of a school or playground. The idea was that these were seedy places where kids skipped their studies, rotted their brains, and wasted their quarters. 

Pinball historians said that during the first wave of crackdowns — from the 1940s through the 1970s — underground establishments would get raided and fined for having machines because of the game’s early relationship to gambling. 

For decades, San Francisco’s prohibition remained in place, even as the moral panic around video games and pinball faded. No one bothered to change the law — and there weren’t any arcades left to crack down on anyway. 

The policy was like an appendix, with some previous use that no one remembered, until Henri got a call from his landlord in 2014. 

Unbeknownst to him, Free Gold Watch was operating — and thriving — out of compliance with the law. By that time, the shop had dozens of pinball machines, the nascent league was a hit, and business was booming. 

After a neighbor’s complaint prompted a shutdown notice from the city, his landlord ordered him to get rid of his pinball machines. Henri never learned the identity of “the little sneaky rat” who snitched him out.  

“My stomach really dropped out, because this was something I put so much love, so much energy, into,” he said. 

Alas, the appendix would need to be removed. So he reached out to then-Supervisor London Breed, who enlisted her aide Conor Johnston — himself a pinball machine owner — to address the issue. The city’s fledgling pinball community went all out to protect the neighborhood spot, sending dozens of support letters and participating in city hearings. 

“The first question they asked was, ‘Do you happen to have the Elton John pinball machine?’” Henri recalled. With a sigh of relief, he answered yes.

The Board of Supervisors struck the ban from the books. It also instituted new rules, requiring a Mechanical Amusement Device permit and fees depending on the type of business and number of games.

Free Gold Watch got its permit in May 2015, closing the book on a year-long fight to bring pinball back to San Francisco. 

“I was so happy to get it, I framed it and put it up on the door,” Henri recalled. 

A similar decriminalization effort came around the same time in Oakland. The legislative shift paved the way for a new era of Bay Area pinball. 

Bar-cades like Emporium and Outer Orbit were able to open after 2014. Both welcome a growing crowd of pinballers, whether they’re competing or just looking for a cute date night.

“I think a big goal of having this place was to get people who maybe wouldn’t normally play pinball interested,” Outer Orbit co-owner Elisabeth Kohnke said. 

Alongside more machines and fewer hurdles came opportunities to build pinball communities. 

“I had no idea all the different nuances of pinball — I thought it was just a ‘keep the ball alive’ type of thing,” said Jackie Olson, who founded San Francisco’s Queer Pinball League in 2022. “But when I started to learn strategy and basic skills, I was so hooked.”

Belles and Chimes, a pinball club for women, started in Oakland in 2013 and has expanded to 40 chapters throughout the U.S., as well as the U.K.,  Australia, and New Zealand. 

“At the time I was bitter,” Henri said of his legalization crusade. “In hindsight, going through it all was the best. Now it’s all super legit. We don’t have to worry, and it opened the door to other places.”

Part of the appeal of pinball is the same thing that has recently boosted retro phenomena  like vinyl records, CDs, and in-person speed dating.

“More people are coming back to the roots of ‘it feels good in my hands,’” Shannon Sweetser said. “You still get the competitive fun of playing like you would a video game, but it’s so much more physical.”

Many players said the strategy and skill involved feel like little discoveries, and unlike much screen-based media, playing pinball provides a tactile reward. Plus, there’s a joy to how the game has stayed true to its fundamental form. 

“Maybe the new game plays faster, maybe it’s got more sounds and lights, but it’s really the same game from the 1940s,” said Evan Phillippe, executive director of Alamada’s Pacific Pinball Museum. “When you get three or four generations of a family, it’s really cool, because they can go through each generation of games and play together.” 

The SFPD — as a reminder, that’s the pinball department, not the police — is regarded as the league that catalyzed the hunger for places to play competitive pinball. 

At Free Gold Watch, fall season winner Dan Dempsey was crowned after a six-hour tournament that culminated in a playoff with Andrei Massenkoff, the league’s GOAT and a previous world champion. 

The crowd cheered when Dempsey, after midnight, was awarded the league’s trophy, emblazoned with the initials of previous winners and the status of “San Francisco Pinball Department Ruler of the City.”

“It’s a space where you’re not just a dad or you’re not just a job,” Shannon Sweetser said. “You can be this person who’s just enjoying the moment and living for the next ball.”