I was actually reading about the New York pinball ban in the latest issue of Kill Screen (http://www.killscreenmagazine.com/). But wasn't that law rectified in 1976 with the help of Roger Sharpe, making pinball legal again? Maybe Beacon never rectified their municipal law concerning this.
As for context for you guys, the law banning pinball in New York City was passed in 1948 but the battle against pinball had been going on for more then a decade by then mayor LaGuardia. Since a lot of those pinball machines (they were very different back then) were more about chance than skill and the fact that a lot of them were also controlled by the mafia, pinball was seen as some kind of shady business.When the war came around, it was easy to demonize pinball and say it was a waste of resource. Why make pinball machines when you could make ammos for our boys on the frontline? The war on pinball by LaGuardia was finally won in mid-1948, a few months after his death, when the city council passed the law banning pinball in New York City.
In 1976, the Music and Amusement Association, and like I said earlier Roger Sharpe, went in front of the city council and pushed for the lift of the ban (read the magazine for the pretty funny details of the hearing). On August 1, 1976 -- on Sharpe's birthday -- a new law was passed lifting the 30 years ban on pinball.
