Checking out 3rd Lair, Minnesota’s Biggest Skate Park with Pinball Machines
By Rick Brewster
One Pinball boi’s dream come true.
I’m a dude in my early 30s, which is bordering on dinosaur status by skateboarding standards. I’m fortunate enough to live just a couple miles from the largest indoor park in Minnesota, 3rd Lair, and have been finding a renewed joy in skating over my lunch breaks & after work. My back regularly locks up, and my legs are actually made of jello. Skating at 3rd kinda feels like showing up to a pinball tournament and seeing Jason Zahler, or Jared August, or Neil Graf in the building. Seeing actual children throw down trick after trick with ease while I struggle with my couple basic tricks up the euro gap cements my millennial status. But I don’t care. It’s fun, and that’s literally the only thing that matters. If you disagree, find some new hobbies and go be miserable somewhere else. (Respectfully.)
An empty park, the anxious skater’s dream. I’ve never been comfortable skating a park with many other people in it. Summer sessions are the move!
Over my lunch break not too long back, I overheard some chatter in the shop walking out about change machines. Naturally, I started eavesdropping, curious but doubtful it was something pinball-related. Sure enough, it was my buddy Phil Frazier chatting with 3rd Lair owner/operator/manager Mark Rodriguez about bringing pinball machines into the park. Not long after, I showed up and there were five of Phil’s games in the building (the count is now up to 10). There’s not many folks in the middle of the venn diagram of skateboarders & pinball players, but I’m one of them. I’m over the moon! Writing this piece, I really hope there’s more out there. Hey, Tony Hawk owns a Skateball. Pinball & skate history piece incoming? Hopefully one day.
I chatted with Mark on the state of pinball at 3rd, curious how this all came about. He’s known Phil since they were teens, and Phil reached out to get some games he was sitting on in the building. Feels like a no-brainer, right? Having a ton of space doesn’t automatically make a place ideal for pinball: the enjoyment factor of pinball machines per square foot has to look pretty bell curve-y, right? But the just under 20k square feet 3rd Lair did have a perfect little room underneath a ramp build, where people (generally parents) sit on top and skating happens around and underneath.
The entrance to the pinball room. Aforementioned parents take the stairs up top to observe the kiddos. The rippers and the pinballers stay down below.
3rd has never had pinball before, but they used to have arcade games: 720, Cruisin’ USA, shooters and that sort of jazz. But, kids are kids, and eventually maintenance costs weren’t worth the coin drop, so they got the boot. Kids, don’t do that! Not that you’re reading Nudge due to the strict adults-only policy, but let’s keep having nice things, please. And, camera tech has gotten a lot better since the aughts. You’re not gonna get away with jack nowadays. And honestly, I’d put my money on a game surviving against kids in a skatepark over a game surviving in a dive bar any day of the week.
There’s no fee to drop into 3rd to play pinball and hang out. No park admission required, just your 50 cents per game for coin drop. EMs and solid states only: there’s a 10 year window of games represented, from ‘76 to ‘86. Your most modern options are High Speed (you’ve played that before) and Special Force (you probably haven’t played that before). Come on and hang out and see what it’s about. Phil recently hosted 3rd Lair’s inaugural tournament, featuring 18 pinball players (including two skateboarders and one rollerskater). I had to miss it due to a beer event I got tickets to months ago (really exposing my 30-something year old self here) and I was buuuuuummed. It was even on one of my favorite holidays, June 27th. Dang it. Cruising a park for a couple minutes in between tourney rounds is honestly a dream scenario, sweat be damned. I won’t miss the next one.
Phil Frazier, doing some tech work before the first tournament.
The intersection of pinball and skateboarding is a bit understated: we have a couple machines made, including a homebrew Tony Hawk that won TWIPY homebrew of the year in 2024. But, there’s not many places where you can skate and play pinball under one roof, and 3rd Lair handles both areas with excellence. In what might be an insane coincidence, the Twin Cities has another skatepark/skateshop/pinball establishment, Vision Arcade & Skateshop. I want to give them an honorable mention here, as they also are players in this space, albeit in a slightly different fashion (smaller spot, 30 minutes outside of Minneapolis). I plan to cover them in Nudge within a different piece that I’ve been putting off for an obnoxiously long time. These pinball and hobby intersections aren’t the most common, and they should be celebrated. Go check out 3rd, or Vision, or any other weird-ass pinball locations you have near you. This is Nudge, baby. What else would you expect?
