MOM’s Organic Market founder Scott Nash has been playing pinball machines since he was a teenager.
Back then, Nash and friends would bike to an arcade in Beltsville, Maryland. As an adult, he’s been buying and collecting pinball machines for more than a decade — 70 at last count — and he has a new home to share many of them with the public, including for tournaments.
VÜK has moved to a new permanent location on the lower level of the Chevy Chase Pavilion in Friendship Heights, with about 40 of his machines. It is open seven days a week, and play is 50 cents a game — pretty cheap compared to other arcades.
VÜK is a nod to “vertical up-kicker,” the mechanical rod that pops balls out of holes on the pinball playing field. Nash also chose to spell VÜK in stylized Slavic. Vük means “wolf” in Serbian.
This is the third iteration for VÜK. Nash originally had an arcade in Bethesda, which closed after its lease ended. Then he moved his collection to an annex at the MOM’s Organic Market store in College Park, before the Chevy Chase Pavilion’s landlord contacted Nash and offered him the space.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Nash said. “The timing was perfect and it’s close enough for me to ride my bike to it, just like when I was a teen.”
Nash’s pinball machine collection runs from vintage 1960s-era machines to the most recent high-tech releases. His first pinball machine was ‘Eight Ball Deluxe.’
“It was one of my favorite games as a teenager when I played in Beltsville. It’s the ‘Holy Grail’ of pinball,” Nash said. “‘Lord of the Rings’ was also one of my first games. Its an amazing game, with a deep rule set and it got me hooked.”
Pinball has seen a huge resurgence in popularity during the last decade, Nash said he knows why: “Pinball is this amazing thing where it is analog, but it is thoughtful. Some games today are highly engineered. But it’s kind of like playing cards. There is skill involved, but there’s enough luck involved that anybody can have an amazing game.”
It’s also an expensive passion. They can cost a lot to buy, and the cost of pinball machine maintenance is high.
“I have two techs who work on these games and keep them clean,” Nash said. “There are a lot of moving parts. I had one guy say to me ‘it’s amazing these things work at all, with that heavy ball bouncing around underneath that glass.'”
VÜK will also host tournaments. Nash said the D.C.-area pinball community is tight-knit, and tourney play is also a great way to make new friends.
VÜK is open every day from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.
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