St. Louis pinball repair techs fix ‘worlds under glass’ with specialized skills

Sunday night is women’s league night at the Bevo Mill bar Silver Ballroom.

A group of players in the league are racking up points on a 1990s-era pinball machine called “Junk Yard,” one of the 20-odd machines that line the south city bar’s back room.

“Each one of them has a completely different objective, and each one of them is telling you a story,” said Kristi Wilson, one of the league’s members.

More than half of the machines at Silver Ballroom are branded with existing properties: a WWE Royal Rumble game emits grunts in the corner; the screen on the Iron Maiden-themed machine scrolls through the band’s tour dates. “Junk Yard” is one of the few independent games. By completing certain shots, players collect “junk” and — if they’re good enough — use it to build a spaceship and ascend to outer space, becoming a junk master.

Pinball machines in bars take a lot of abuse. They're used dozens of times during the week, and patrons smack them, sit on them and spill beer on them. The Silver Ballroom is one of the few pinball-only establishments in the region, and it takes a real-life group of junk masters to keep the games flashing and squawking.