By Skylar Laird
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA — On Saturday mornings, 30 or so children station themselves at Bang Back Pinball Lounge’s colorful machines to try and beat the highest scores or learn new tricks from the pros who work there.
Technically, what they’re doing is illegal.
Under a decades-old South Carolina law, anyone under the age of 18 is prohibited from playing pinball. A bill that advanced unanimously Tuesday to the House floor would change that.
“I don’t see the evil that is being taken care of by maintaining (pinball’s) illegality at this point,” said House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia, the bill’s main sponsor.
The ban dates back to the invention of the game in the 1940s. When it was first introduced, pinball was more a game of chance than a game of skill. Players would release a ball, then jostle the machine to avoid knocking it into holes, said Frederick Richardson, owner of Bang Back Pinball Lounge in Columbia’s Five Points district.
Store owners offered prizes to winners, which was enough for lawmakers in most states to classify the game as a form of gambling, Richardson added.
Plus, officials and parents worried children would waste their time and lunch money on the game, causing them to skip school and go hungry, Rutherford said.
Once manufacturers started adding the iconic flippers, off which players bounce the ball, skill became part of the game. Starting in the 1970s, most states overturned their bans on the machines.
But in South Carolina, that never happened.
Pinball remains illegal for minors, alongside offenses such as running away, skipping school, “playing or loitering in a billiard room” and “gaining admission to a theater by false identification.”
So-called “status offenses” are crimes that don’t apply to adults, but they’re misdemeanors for minors that could theoretically send them to a juvenile detention facility.
However, it’s unclear when the pinball law was last enforced, if ever.
Rutherford said he doesn’t know of anyone actually charged for playing pinball at too young of an age.
The bill has the backing of law enforcement, said Chester County Sheriff Max Dorsey, chaplain for the state Sheriffs’ Association.
“All of us are singing ‘Pinball Wizard’ in our minds,” Dorsey told legislators, referencing the 1969 song by The Who.
Rutherford introduced a similar bill in 2022. It passed the House overwhelmingly but died in the Senate without a vote.
The fact that a law remains on the books hangs over business owners’ heads.
“I don’t like breaking the law,” Richardson said. “I don’t want anything to do with that.”
Richardson grew up playing pinball at the YMCA near his house in Minneapolis. When he was an adult, he rediscovered his love for it and began competing, even going on to win the South Carolina State Pinball Championship in 2022.
Pinball is such a passion for him, he wants to bring that same joy into other people’s lives, he said. For children, Richardson says he sees pinball as something to do other than play on their phones.
People of all ages are allowed at Bang Back anytime, but it’s particularly inviting for children on Saturdays, when the bar arcade transforms into a family-friendly space. The doors open earlier, the music skews for a younger generation and the TVs play cartoons, all in the effort of inviting children to come play.
Leagues like Columbia’s Little Flippers, a group of a dozen or so children between the ages of 4 and 12, join in. Removing the antiquated law would allow that fun to continue, Richardson said.
“We’re enhancing their lives. We’re teaching them things they don’t get at school and don’t get at home,” Richardson said. “And the way their faces light up is absolutely amazing.”
Skylar Laird covers the South Carolina Legislature and criminal justice issues. Originally from Missouri, she previously worked for The Post and Courier’s Columbia bureau.
S.C. Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
