He prefers to bring his own regulation puck, which is heavier and more robust than the flimsy plastic ones that you find at barroom tables. Another complication arises from the fact that some of the few places in the city that can fit a bigger table don’t seem to want Mr. Competition air hockey tables are eight feet long, but space considerations in New York bars typically only allow for one that’s a foot shorter. Finding a Dynamo of a certain length - which by design features no blinking, distracting lights alongside it - is now the Holy Grail for enthusiasts. to begin making what’s now considered an acceptable facsimile of the original table. His hope was that, at the very least, he and his friends could keep playing for the rest of their lives.īy 1985, he had persuaded a company called Dynamo Corp. Bar patrons clearly preferred digital table tennis air hockey tables briefly went out of production in 1978.Ī fanatic named Mark Robbins, who happened to be the son of Atari’s former president, rejected his birthright and rented a van so he could drive across the country and hold air hockey exhibitions at arcades, buying as many tables as he could along the way.
Aficionados blame the arrival of the video game Pong, released by Atari in 1972 - the same year that air hockey tables first went to market. So far, he hasn’t had to.īut even there, competitive air hockey is relatively obscure. Flores has posted fliers around Ontario Bar (the only place in the area that would give him permission) and on Facebook groups like New York Air Hockey Club (which has fewer than 100 followers) with his challenge: He will buy a beer for anyone who can beat him.
In a city that has no less than five Quidditch teams and a competitive musical chairs tournament, almost no one seemed interested in his passion. “It’s a level playing field,” he said, “and what someone does with it is up to them.”īut when he moved to New York in 2013, he found that few people felt the same way. But for him, as much as he thinks it’s corny to say, air hockey is an art. He’s an engineer in training, a really no-nonsense guy. He can’t sum up what he loved about the game in a single sentence, or really at all - it’s just “too big” for him. Flores became hooked on air hockey while shooting photos of the national championship for his college paper a decade ago in Houston, a hotbed of elite players. “I’ve never seen anyone play like that,” he said. One bearded observer took the Juul out of his mouth and looked stunned. The subsequent annihilation of his opponent drew stares. Flores let the Canadian score a few points. Both he and his mentee are attending and fully expect to achieve glory if not win much in the way of money. He himself was also getting ready for the World Championships that were set for the end of July in Colorado Springs. He’d recently found a student - a New Yorker named Liz Cash, who hoped to become the top-ranked female player in the world, and he had her training with the appropriate intensity. His name was Justin Flores, and he had been coming to Ontario, a dive bar in Williamsburg, for weeks, waiting for anybody to approach the table. 10 in the world and was almost certainly the best air hockey player in New York. He neglected to mention that he was currently ranked No. He challenged the Leafs fan to a game of air hockey and even offered to buy him a beer if he won.
AIR HOCKEY TV
At a bar in Brooklyn this spring, when the hockey playoffs were still going on, a guy with a nose ring and glasses approached a visitor from Toronto who was watching the Maple Leafs game on a small TV in the corner of the bar.
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