It looks like an abandoned building from the front. Nothing special in Houston, where businesses frequently shutter and nothing takes their places. That makes it easier to hide in plain sight, keeping things quieter, personal. Exactly how a speakeasy needs to operate. 

Except this speakeasy doesn’t serve illicit liquor. It doesn’t serve anything illicit at all—unless you eschew all forms of joy, fun, and entertainment or carry an irrational grudge against pinball. 

Wormhole Pinball sits at the corner of [redacted] and [redacted], just across the street from [redacted]. The address listed on the Google results page isn’t accurate, for the record. They’re only open to the public on the first and third Mondays and an hour before the tournaments held there on the first Saturdays of the month, so long as they’re in town. It costs a nominal fee of $10 to join a tournament, but otherwise all Wormhole machines are free to play. 

So why all the secrecy if they’ve nothing to hide? Maybe because it's just more fun that way. Wormhole Pinball operates as what Christine “The Boss” Hood, who co-owns the property with her husband Tim “The Spark” Hood, refers to as “pretty much a co-op, in the sense that there's not a membership fee.”

In a vacant building, a few pinball machines turned into a full-on specialized arcade that rotates between the over 200 machines that make up the Hoods’ collection as well as the collections of their fellow Wormhole founders Jamie “The Talent” Burchell, his wife, Genine “The Bartender,” and John “Cruise Director” Speights. What started off as a spot for drinks, pinball, and socializing while Houston went on COVID lockdown became a major hub for Houston-area pinball enthusiasts.

“We really are our own entity, if you will, at the Wormhole. But we do have an affiliation with the Space City Pinball League,” Burchell explains. 

Tim Hood adds that they “host three tournaments a month” for the league, coinciding with the days they’re open to the public. Wormhole’s collection extends past the speakeasy as well. Speights maintains pinball machines at craft breweries Eureka Heights, Karbach, Eighth Wonder, and Great Heights. Like the machines back home, the travelers are free to play.

“Beer and playing pinball is a good fit. Bars and breweries are inherently great locations to go put pinball machines,” Speights says.

Outside of the dings and whirs and clicks and clangs of the collection, the team has crafted for itself a global presence in the pinball space. 

Wormhole’s Twitch channel boasts 3,000 followers, some international, who tune in every Monday night to watch demonstrations of pinball machines both rare and novel. For example, a KISS machine from Germany. The internal mechanisms are identical to those found in the United States and elsewhere in the world, but what makes it a curiosity among collectors is that the KISS logo had to be altered away from the stylized lightning bolts in order to comply with Germany’s ban against Nazi symbology. 

Burchell also hosts a podcast under the Wormhole banner, with weekly episodes featuring guests from the pinball industry and discussions on the most recent tournaments, events, trends, and machines. 

Such a passion for pinball made Wormhole the ideal spot for local arcade game designers and developers Barrels of Fun Pinball to debut their first-ever machine in October 2023: an officially licensed pinball game based on Jim Henson’s seminal 1986 fantasy musical movie Labyrinth. Players can hob-nob with Hoggle, wriggle with William (better known as the “‘Ello!” worm), and wonder with Wiseman and his bird hat in pursuit of David Bowie’s Goblin King Jareth. 

And yes, the soundtrack is included, so you can “dance magic, dance” and “jump magic, jump” while you wait your turn. 

Most pinball machines in the US are designed and developed in Chicago, with Stern being the most prominent manufacturer. Barrels of Fun opening in Houston and securing the license to adapt such an iconic film was a moment of celebration for the local pinball scene. 

Travis Moseman, director of system engineering at Barrels of Fun, was working at Boeing on “space station and human space exploration projects” when he got the opportunity to work on what was, at the time, such a top-secret project the community didn’t even know a new pinball developer was set to hit the stage. Alongside his “fellow pinhead” husband, he watched Labyrinth for the first time that night. He had to say yes. 

“On weeknights and weekends, on a volunteer basis for a couple of years, I helped out designing the random bits and pieces of the game, like the little toy mechanisms that pop up, the movement on the topper,” Moseman says. “I hadn't done 3D CAD work since college… So part of the last few years was coming back up to speed on how to use all these tools.”

Only 1,100 Labyrinth pinball games were made, and the reviews for the actual gameplay have been generally positive. The project was already in production when Moseman joined in, and after that it took two more years to complete. He points out that future pinball games will take a lot less time than Labyrinth, as they also had to concurrently build a new business.

“We are certainly planning to put out a cadence of pinball machines. Hopefully one a year, and then increase quickly as we streamline our processes,” Moseman says. 

Barrels of Fun won’t need to go far to find an audience. When he first started covering the local gaming and arcade scene, journalist and voiceover narrator A.T. Gonzalez was surprised to see just how widespread the passion for pinball was around here.

“It's one of those things that is a little bit bigger than some people realize, but kind of is a little bit of an underground secret society thing,” Gonzalez says. “When I started investigating it, around about 2018, more people were into pinball than I realized. But it's not something that would be immediately obvious… You have to go out of your way a little bit to find some of these places.” 

Along with Wormhole, he points to the Game Preserve locations in Webster and Spring, Joystix Games’ PacMan Fever Friday events, and the annual Houston Arcade Expo as premiere destinations for pinball wizards to exercise their supple wrists.

Keith Christensen, Houston Arcade Expo founder, says that of the thousand or so attendees, the majority of the people get to play the free pinball. It’s one of the most popular draws of the 24-year-old showcase, which also includes retro video gaming, cosplay, musical guests, and more.

“It's been pretty miraculous. The golden age of pinball was back, you know, back in the ’70s, ’60s, ’50s. But a lot of great pinball is being made right now. And there are a lot of different manufacturers,” Christensen says.

As with many decentralized subcultures and hobbies, exact numbers of how many people involve themselves are impossible to collect. But when it comes to finding a community at Wormhole, which explicitly wishes to be a welcoming environment to neurodivergent people and underrepresented genders, only one thing matters above all else.

“Our only rule is, don't be an asshole,” Hood says. “There is no wiggle room. You will be rejected and banned forever. If you're an asshole, if you are a bully to someone, if you slam the machines, if you treat the workplace badly or treat anyone with disrespect, we don't tolerate it. We have a zero-tolerance policy.”