-My name is Molly Atkinson, and this is Pins and Needles.
Pins is for the pinball.
Needles is -- I'm a tailor, costume-designer person,
so that's how Pins and Needles is still here.
I get the talent on camera looking snappy and beautiful
and then come back to my pinball games.
-If you're getting into it,
you have these few, very few choices
out in, like, bowling alleys, arcades here and there.
But the really beautiful machines,
the history of this hobby,
is kind of buried in people's garages and game rooms,
and she's trying to bring that back.
-I like when they would make up a whole artwork package
and a whole theme for a game from someone's imagination
more than, like, some scans from the movie put onto a Translite.
When I first started Pins and Needles, I was like,
"Wouldn't it be cool if I could just get some interest
and have some folks come in?"
which, I guess, happened.
People meet here.
They hang out outside of here.
They track down other pinball games and go play them together,
and that makes me really happy.
-If you live on the east side of L.A.,
sometimes it can feel like
you only ever hang out with the people that you know.
But pinball is a great window into everyone who lives here
and a chance to, like, get to know the community differently.
-A place like this seems to be a pretty improbable success,
and that doesn't happen by accident, you know?
She's put in a lot of work.
-If you're not a millionaire
and you want to have a pinball collection,
you need to start learning some tech skills right away.
I've heard that games were designed to last
between like 5 and 7 years,
and so I've got some 40-year-old guys in here
who are pretty crotchety at this point.
Like, you need to get your soldering iron out
and a screwdriver and a nut driver
and just get in there and start tackling the problems,
because they won't fix themselves.
I'd say the vast majority of folks who come in,
like, are pretty new to the hobby itself.
I just am really drawn to the idea of people, anyone,
even someone who lives on the street,
can come up and have a few flips.
It's kind of, like, a die-hard, crazy notion,
but I -- I don't know.
I wouldn't trade it for anything.
I have two favorite things.
One is first reactions to the Future Spa,
and the second is when an old, old man comes in
and like, tears up, because, you know, "Whoa.
I never thought I'd see one of these.
I met my third wife playing one of these," or something.
There's all kinds of good stuff like that that happens.
And I also really like when people bring their kids in.
Our league started
where I just asked a couple of my friends, like, "Please.
Will you please come to this thing? It'll be so fun.
And maybe bring someone with you. Meh."
So, we were scrambling with like a dozen people.
And it was a great time, but now the league --
We're in our 11th season, and we're 38 men deep,
and I have to turn people away.
And a lot of them are novices,
never really played too much before.
They just thought it was a neat thing
or, you know, hadn't seen one in a while.
-There's a lot of people here,
and it's fun to hear all the noise and everything going.
Sometimes, it's, like, competitive,
but it's, like, really kind of good competitive
and everything like that, so it's like -- It's exciting
'cause everybody just wants everybody to do good and stuff.
-Overall, I was never like, "This is my plan.
This is what I'm going to do.
And I will succeed or I will fail,
but this is where my effort is going."
It's never been that way.
It's always been like, "Well, I don't know.
I'm gonna try this
and then evolve it and see what happens."
I don't understand people who can't enjoy a game of pinball.
I can see that you can have a frustrating ball here or there,
but it doesn't make sense to me
when someone can walk up to a 40-year-old machine
filled with lights and bells and whistles
and not think, "This is cool."
I just don't -- I don't get it.
It happens, but I don't get it.