{"id":2908,"date":"2025-06-19T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/walts-pinball-bar\/"},"modified":"2025-06-19T11:30:00","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T11:30:00","slug":"walts-pinball-bar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/walts-pinball-bar\/","title":{"rendered":"Pinball Wizards"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/06\/EC5A4206-resize-scaled.jpg\" width=\"1290\" height=\"860\" alt=\"\"><\/figure>\n<p><strong>The gold standard of dads has to be Walt Johnsen<\/strong>, the man after whom Walt\u2019s Bar, a pinball, beer, and hotdog joint in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, is named. His son Jeff, who founded and owns the bar with brother Brad, tells it: \u201cHe\u2019s one of those fix-anything guys, so he\u2019d always be bringing home weird stuff like mall machines and go-karts, and he was also a classic car restoration dude. He got us into pinball when we were probably like 6.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This was in Washington State in the \u201980s into the \u201890s, and home was Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound. Being handy with things was how it was, so when Walt brought home Surf Champ, a 1976 beauty from pinball manufacturer D. Gottlieb &amp; Co., his boys decided to give it a good clean. \u201cWe were big into motorcycle racing, so we used our carburetor cleaner,\u201d says Jeff.<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/06\/the-dark-side\/\">THE DARK SIDE<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/06\/the-character-assasination-of-mo-troper\/\">THE CHARACTER ASSASINATION OF MO TROPER<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/06\/bruce-springsteen-biopic-trailer\/\">See Jeremy Allen White As Bruce Springsteen In First Biopic Trailer<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>After giving a zappy shine to what <em>Surfer Today<\/em> has declared the \u201cbest pinball surfing machine of all time,\u201d Jeff and Brad learned that carburettor cleaner is so volatile that even a tiny spark triggers a fireball. \u201cAfter it caught on fire and burned all our hair off a few times, says Jeff, \u201cmy mom was like, \u2018That pinball machine\u2019s gotta go unless you teach the kids how to actually fix it.\u2019\u201d Walt did his fatherly duty, instilling in his sons virtues of prudence, respect for craftsmanship, and to avoid explosions in the home.<\/p>\n<p>Jeff learned his lessons well, and now, as a grown man, he has 120 pinball machines of his own to care for. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of maintenance,\u201d says Jeff, who keeps 10 machines at any one time at the bar, rotating them (with the exception of Surf Champ: his childhood machine is a fixture) from his vast stock of vintage games. \u201cEvery single day I\u2019m at the bar replacing bulbs, rebuilding flipper mechanisms \u2014 you name it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To move them around, and to wrangle one as a prize to the home of the victor of Walt\u2019s annual outdoor pinball contest, Jeff uses a method he learned from his dad. \u201cIt\u2019s an old trick from his era: they\u2019d get coffin movers from out the back of mortuaries. They work perfect \u2014 slide right under the game.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Walt, who still lives on Bainbridge Island with Jeff\u2019s mom, gets down to Walt\u2019s from time to time, inserting a coin and showing the kids how it\u2019s done. \u201cHe was just here for a week,\u201d says Jeff. \u201cHe whooped my ass at Taxi [a 1988 pinball machine]. Yeah, he got grand champ at Taxi. The whole bar was screaming.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And what does this old handyman of the Pacific Northwest make of having one of LA\u2019s coolest bars named after him?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think he cares,\u201d says Jeff.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The gold standard of dads has to be Walt Johnsen, the man after whom Walt\u2019s Bar, a pinball, beer, and hotdog joint in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, is named. His&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1832,1833,31,1834,24,1835,1836,1837],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brad-johnsen","category-d-gottlieb-co","category-features","category-jeff-johnsen","category-pushly","category-surf-champ","category-walt-johnsen","category-walts-bar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}