The Oakland City Council amended a city ordinance last month that had declared pinball illegal since the 1930s, the Mercury News reported.
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The ordinance was originally in place to discourage gambling practices. In the early days of pinball, the game was played without flippers, making the action much more dependent on luck and very easy to gamble on. Once pinball machines started to be produced with player-controlled flippers, the game became much more about skill. Still, the Oakland ordinance remained.
The city council originally looked at amending the gambling ordinance to put a stop to Internet cafes that were using a loophole in the legislation to allow online gambling. While the council members were amending the ordinance to take care of this issue, they also removed the text banning pinball.
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Of course, even while the old ordinance was in effect, there was little chance that the anti-pinball law would ever be actively enforced. The Oakland police presumably have better things to do than prevent a 12-year-old from going for a new high score on a pinball machine themed after Austin Powers. These kinds of laws can, however, come into play if someone has a complaint against an establishment and uses their pinball table to get them in trouble on a technicality, Josh Sharpe, the president of the International Flipper Pinball Association, told the Mercury News. But now at least pinball's moral harmlessness is official in Oakland, and Bay Area pinball enthusiasts can waste their quarters to their hearts' content without having to worry about interference from the law.
