During the summer of 1989 I was working as a landscaper in an upscale Montreal neighbourhood called the Town of Mont Royal. One day I borrowed my bosses' beat up 1970'S green Ford F350 and drove to Chemin Delmeade to buy 4 pinball machines. A Gottlieb Big Shot, a Williams Big Ben, a Bally Bon Voyage and a CCM Soundstage, they cost 125 $ each. I dumped them in my parent's basement on the south shore and drove back to my apartment in NDG to hang out with my girlfriend and room mates, but my mind was elsewhere. Returned the truck the next work day and anxiously waited for the weekend. Friday evening, once I cashed my paycheck, I bought beer, headed to the south shore on the bus and spent the weekend playing doctor with these 4 machines. There were now 9 pinballs in that basement, along with certain happy memories that still lurk in my head, and maybe even still glow back there.

Now, 33 years later, the man who sold me those 4 machines has been my manager of the past four years at Alouette Universal. Full circle shit indeed. Pierre has now retired after almost 50 years of service there, and remains a true hard working professional.

After I left the corporate world in April of 2018 with the fierce resolution to never go back to that culture of lies, posers, screwheads & yes men, Pierre and I found that we worked well together. Always straight up, clear, thoughtful, honest and efficient by always keeping the goal in our sights. So it is fitting that this spring we managed to empty the remaining contents of that 15,984 sq.ft building at 8505 Chemin Delmeade where many of us have memories, (especially Pierre) some good and some..... pretty awful. The building is now just an empty shell as a result of our efforts during the past 30 plus days. It is presently being gutted to the core by the new owners as we speak.

So as time marches on, another type of business will inhabit its walls. The heyday of the coin operated amusement games business has been over for a while now. The last of the old time distributors have all but stopped flogging that dead horse, and we can now add Alouette to that list. This all makes sense, but the one thing we can do in order to retain the past glory of those arcade days of our youth is by playing some of the games that lurked in oh so many street locations that are usually long gone as well.

I can see the present owners of 8505 Delmeade and the construction workers from my new office window. My more compact parts dept. at 8500 Chemin Delmeade is comfortable new and has no leaky roof. So I watch them tearing out the insides of that old obsolete building and feel no attachment nor regrets mainly because my future projects are in motion now that the past has been cleared out. Yes, it is occasionally nice to think back and consider all that has happened in one's career and shed a tear or have a belly laugh, but life remains long, wild, wonderous and weird. Tell the stories when you can.

And it is crucial to remember that the narrative is more important than the random facts we now have been conditioned to accept as information. This is a new age you know, where so many blurbs/claims can be floated around without much anchor allowing a wide variety of people and their interpretations to quickly claim them as a truth. So without the narrative, questioning and the necessary back and forth which thinking provides in order to forge & support an idea, there will be manipulation and strong claims posing as facts, that is the principle reason that people seem to be getting dumber, especially when they repeat information without the relevant narrative.

Yikes !!!

And as this coin operated life persists, it has become more compact and manageable as the interference from others subsides, hence my work has become much more enjoyable lately. I don't have much to complain about since I have no more boisterous bosses, asinine upper managers, nor piss ant partners and certainly no nagging mates. Add to that the freedom to choose my clients based on the hassle vs. value factor ratio and this is all going to be just ducky. The only problem left to deal with now is that I am working for the most demanding person I have ever known - myself. Hell, I have done this before, but this time I am totally free to do what I do best and won't have to answer to anybody who knows less than I do about the work I do, nor will I deal with clients that are time sucks and who still believe that various random bits of information on the web (or elsewhere) without a narrative to support the claim equals an understanding. I could fill a book with what people don't know about this business and how thinking for oneself has become a problem for so many. And as far as I understand being alive at this later stage of life, (almost 60 now) there is no longer any point in sharing or even discussing anything with anyone who can't participate in thoughtful discourse. Hell, there seems to be more and more of these fuzzheads coming around, almost seems like they are being bred by marketing teams, apps and businesses that have understood that not providing the complete narrative, only bits of selected information about a product is an efficient way for selling lots of their useless low quality stuff that looks good and is priced low.

"Know thyself", the two most important words ever uttered. Then, always keep an eye on the latest experts and marketers who thrive on hype and noise and count on you to look at your phone for all the answers before doing things. Solid work and the concrete results still speaks for themselves, since cause and effect aren't going anywhere soon.

The Montreal Pinball pod retains the same scheduale for its Parts & Service counter as when in resided inside the mothership Alouette Amusements.

R.A.B.

During the summer of 1989 I was working as a landscaper in an upscale Montreal neighbourhood called the Town of Mont Royal. One day I borrowed my bosses' beat up 1970'S green Ford F350 and drove to Chemin Delmeade to buy 4 pinball machines. A Gottlieb Big Shot, a Williams Big Ben, a Bally Bon Voyage and a CCM Soundstage, they cost 125 $ each. I dumped them in my parent's basement on the south shore and drove back to my apartment in NDG to hang out with my girlfriend and room mates, but my mind was elsewhere. Returned the truck the next work day and anxiously waited for the weekend. Friday evening, once I cashed my paycheck, I bought beer, headed to the south shore on the bus and spent the weekend playing doctor with these 4 machines. There were now 9 pinballs in that basement, along with certain happy memories that still lurk in my head, and maybe even still glow back there.

Now, 33 years later, the man who sold me those 4 machines has been my manager of the past four years at Alouette Universal. Full circle shit indeed. Pierre has now retired after almost 50 years of service there, and remains a true hard working professional.

After I left the corporate world in April of 2018 with the fierce resolution to never go back to that culture of lies, posers, screwheads & yes men, Pierre and I found that we worked well together. Always straight up, clear, thoughtful, honest and efficient by always keeping the goal in our sights. So it is fitting that this spring we managed to empty the remaining contents of that 15,984 sq.ft building at 8505 Chemin Delmeade where many of us have memories, (especially Pierre) some good and some..... pretty awful. The building is now just an empty shell as a result of our efforts during the past 30 plus days. It is presently being gutted to the core by the new owners as we speak.

So as time marches on, another type of business will inhabit its walls. The heyday of the coin operated amusement games business has been over for a while now. The last of the old time distributors have all but stopped flogging that dead horse, and we can now add Alouette to that list. This all makes sense, but the one thing we can do in order to retain the past glory of those arcade days of our youth is by playing some of the games that lurked in oh so many street locations that are usually long gone as well.

I can see the present owners of 8505 Delmeade and the construction workers from my new office window. My more compact parts dept. at 8500 Chemin Delmeade is comfortable new and has no leaky roof. So I watch them tearing out the insides of that old obsolete building and feel no attachment nor regrets mainly because my future projects are in motion now that the past has been cleared out. Yes, it is occasionally nice to think back and consider all that has happened in one's career and shed a tear or have a belly laugh, but life remains long, wild, wonderous and weird. Tell the stories when you can.

And it is crucial to remember that the narrative is more important than the random facts we now have been conditioned to accept as information. This is a new age you know, where so many blurbs/claims can be floated around without much anchor allowing a wide variety of people and their interpretations to quickly claim them as a truth. So without the narrative, questioning and the necessary back and forth which thinking provides in order to forge & support an idea, there will be manipulation and strong claims posing as facts, that is the principle reason that people seem to be getting dumber, especially when they repeat information without the relevant narrative.

Yikes !!!

And as this coin operated life persists, it has become more compact and manageable as the interference from others subsides, hence my work has become much more enjoyable lately. I don't have much to complain about since I have no more boisterous bosses, asinine upper managers, nor piss ant partners and certainly no nagging mates. Add to that the freedom to choose my clients based on the hassle vs. value factor ratio and this is all going to be just ducky. The only problem left to deal with now is that I am working for the most demanding person I have ever known - myself. Hell, I have done this before, but this time I am totally free to do what I do best and won't have to answer to anybody who knows less than I do about the work I do, nor will I deal with clients that are time sucks and who still believe that various random bits of information on the web (or elsewhere) without a narrative to support the claim equals an understanding. I could fill a book with what people don't know about this business and how thinking for oneself has become a problem for so many. And as far as I understand being alive at this later stage of life, (almost 60 now) there is no longer any point in sharing or even discussing anything with anyone who can't participate in thoughtful discourse. Hell, there seems to be more and more of these fuzzheads coming around, almost seems like they are being bred by marketing teams, apps and businesses that have understood that not providing the complete narrative, only bits of selected information about a product is an efficient way for selling lots of their useless low quality stuff that looks good and is priced low.

"Know thyself", the two most important words ever uttered. Then, always keep an eye on the latest experts and marketers who thrive on hype and noise and count on you to look at your phone for all the answers before doing things. Solid work and the concrete results still speaks for themselves, since cause and effect aren't going anywhere soon.

The Montreal Pinball pod retains the same scheduale for its Parts & Service counter as when in resided inside the mothership Alouette Amusements.

R.A.B.