Wisconsin Life

Flipper fingers: finding fellowship through pinball

Angela Fitzgerald: Pinball is part of American pop culture.

Rachel Ristow: It’s been around forever. It’s like this big, gigantic puzzle of chaos, but it’s fun.

[game chiming]

Angela Fitzgerald: Pinball’s popularity has had its ups and downs.

Rachel Ristow: Oh! Seeing a resurgence in the hobby is great.

[game clacking]

Angela Fitzgerald: At home, Rachel Ristow plays a vintage machine alongside her cat, Rigby.

Rachel Ristow: It shuts off everything else in my head because you have to focus on flipping your buttons and nudging the game and hitting the ball.

[game chiming]

Angela Fitzgerald: You can also find Rachel getting her adrenaline kicks at the Plymouth Tap.

Rachel Ristow: When I first started playing in 2019, there were no games basically in Sheboygan County, and now we have a place like here. I think he’s got 12 games.

Angela Fitzgerald: Rachel’s heart pumps on the unpredictable fun of pinball.

Rachel Ristow: It was a good game. I missed my extra ball. One ball to win ’em all.

Angela Fitzgerald: She is a paralegal by day and a pinball fanatic all day, any day.

[dark music tone playing]

Rachel Ristow: Hey, I’ll take that. 232 million, I’ll take that any day. That was a good game.

Angela Fitzgerald: To get others in the game, Rachel founded Ladies Flip Wisconsin, a statewide club helping women take the pinball plunge.

Rachel Ristow: Women’s pinball is a whole different vibe.

[Rachel laughing]

Angela Fitzgerald: The pinball community is pretty incredible. It’s made up of all sorts of people from all walks of life.

Angela Fitzgerald: Home base for Ladies Flip Wisconsin is the Diamond Plate Arcade. It’s a unique private collection near De Pere. Pinball is also a place for these women to connect, converse and compete.

[cheering on pinball machine]

[Recording: Please welcome, from Hollywood, Guns N’ Roses!]

Rachel Ristow: Yeah, whoo!

Rachel Ristow: Women’s pinball creates a safe space for women in the hobby so that they can learn and so that they can feel supported. I’ve been able to meet so many new people in my life. A lot of folks, I think, struggle with where do you meet new friends at different stages in your life? I’m in my 40s. I don’t have children, I’m divorced. Women’s pinball is really important. It’s very important to me.

Angela Fitzgerald: On this evening, Rachel has organized a women’s pinball boot camp.

Rachel Ristow: Welcome to Ladies Flip Spooky Season. Yay!

[group cheering]

Rachel Ristow: This is something new that I started doing last year because we want to build your skills.

[group cheering]

Rachel Ristow: I love to think about pinball as controlling chaos when you’re able to find the skills to control the ball.

[Player: No, no.]

[Group: Yay!]

Rachel Ristow: That’s what I’m talking about. You’re able to score and have a bigger game and more points, and you can win the game.

Angela Fitzgerald: Winning isn’t everything, but for Rachel, it is a close second.

Rachel Ristow: I’ve never been competitive about anything in my life until I met pinball. Get in there, you little jerkface. I played a couple of women’s world championships. My current open women’s world ranking, I think, is 25th overall in the world. I ended last year at 13th.

Rachel Ristow: I think that in Ladies Flip Wisconsin we have some very competitive players and other players that don’t care at all.

Angela Fitzgerald: This magical box with flashing lights is more than a game for Rachel.

Rachel Ristow: Because you get into this hobby and then you meet people that just become your friends, and it becomes more than just pinball. It gives me the feeling of, like, I have always a woman in my corner looking out for me. It makes me happy.

[bells chiming]

Rachel Ristow: That’s pinball. That’s pinball, baby.

[players chatting]