On a recent Sunday in the back room of Seaborne, the Red Hook cocktail bar, Wesley Muchalski was balanced atop several crates of tonic water, elbow-deep in the back of a 1964 Gottlieb “Majorettes” pinball machine that had just glitched, mid-play.

“The ball count stepper unit, which keeps track of what ball you’re on, snapped off completely,” Muchalski said this week, recalling the emergency repair. “We couldn’t pull [the pinball machine] all the way out because there were 20 people in here, so I’m leaning over the back and managed to make it work again.”

“It still has a slight hiccup, sometimes it gives you four balls instead of five when you reset it,” Muchalski said. “So for our tournament on Saturday, we got to make sure we’re dialed in.”

Muchalski is co-founder of the Red Hook Pinb

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