CARLSBAD: North County has its own Pinball wizard

By RUTH MARVIN WEBSTER - Staff Writer | Friday, August 22, 2008 6:28 PM PDT ∞

CARLSBAD ---- While Michael Phelps was in Beijing breaking world records, Carlsbad resident Keith Elwin was in Pittsburgh winning a world championship too.

The world's premiere pinball champion garnered first place in the Professional and Amateur Pinball Association's yearly tournament last week, winning more than $10,000.

Considered the most competitive pinball tournament in the world, the event attracted more than 500 players and spectators. Top competitors performed on hundreds of different pinball machines with games including Dirty Harry, Lord of the Rings, Demolition Man and The Addams Family.

Elwin's trophy that now accompanies his 2007 International Flipper Pinball Association championship trophy on his office desk at Area Amusements in San Marcos, where he has worked full-time since 2003.

The family-owned and -operated business repairs, restores and sells games such as jukeboxes, video games, pool tables and, of course, pinball machines. Frank Rizzo founded the company 60 years ago in Chicago. He moved it and his family to North County nearly 30 years ago.

"It's very cool working with the world pinball champion," co-owner Mark Rizzo said. "When I go out on home repairs and I tell them I work with the pinball champion, they're always very impressed."

Elwin became a professional in 1994 when he won the second tournament he ever played in. Since then he has won many competitions and nearly $100,000.

Lately though, Elwin has decided to play fewer tournaments. He plans to travel to the California Extreme Arcade and Pinball Show in San Jose in July and the 24th annual Pinball Expo in Chicago in October, but may pass on the smaller Amusement and Music Operators tournament in Las Vegas.

"I love competing, but I don't play casually anymore," he said. "I probably only play 10 minutes a day now when I used to play for hours when I was in school."

After Elwin won his first professional championship, in 1998, a writer for GQ Magazine asked him what it took to be a pinball champion. Elwin told the writer that he practiced pinball five to six hours a day.

"When the article came it out, it said that 'to win at pinball is to lose at life,'" Elwin said. "He (the writer) was just in a bad mood, I guess ... does that mean that anybody who practices their sport for hours every day is a loser?"

He had T-shirts printed with the slogan and often wears one to tournaments.

Elwin was born and raised in East County. He started playing pinball --- five hours at a time --- at age 8, when his older brother took him to the Family Fun Center in La Mesa, which had about 50 machines. First attracted by the colorful graphics, he said that he would "play (the game) Frontier to death."

"I loved the artwork on that one, with the bears and owls," he said.

Soon he was biking to the arcade and playing for eight hours at a stretch.

Elwin plays considerably less now. He pursues other hobbies ---- mountain biking, hiking and photography.

He also is designing a DVD called Pinball 101 that teaches the fundamentals. He plans to release it in time for Christmas.

"I have always wondered whether good pinball can be taught," he said. "It's really the physics of it that challenged me. And the geometry ---- you have to learn the angles and shots and spins on the ball."

However, Elwin and the Rizzos know that pinball --- the iconic pastime of penny arcades and later, bars and bowling alleys --- has gone the way of the yo-yo and PacMan, having been almost eclipsed by video games.

"It's a dying game, and a dying business," Frank Rizzo said.

But pinball had a long run.

As early as 1901, there were early wooden countertop parlor games using bearing balls, though the first real machines did not came out in 1947, with the release of Humpty Dumpty by the Gottlieb company of Chicago. That game introduced the flipper feature.

Many of the older pinball machines are coveted by collectors.

"Mermaid is considered the Holy Grail of classic pinball machines," explained Elwin "and probably the most expensive machine is Medieval Madness. It is only 10 years old and there weren't that many made, but it's not in my top 10."

At his home in Carlsbad, Elwin has about 15 pinball machines, including older ones such as Flash Gordon and newer ones such as Dracula. He says his top 10 includes Safe Cracker, The Shadow, Funhouse and White Water.

Every summer, the one remaining company that makes pinball machines, Stern Pinball, comes out with a new machine. This year it will be Batman. The company issues about 3,000 machines, which retail for nearly $5,000 apiece.

But Elwin said he doesn't have to get a new release. It seems that he --- along with pinball --- has moved on.

Contact staff writer Ruth Marvin Webster at (760) 901-4074 or rwebster@nctimes.com.