Terminator 3 Pinball at Wild Dogs Saloon in Decatur

[brain galacki]

I'm here today to report my first *official* pinball I have found in Decatur. And after doing some more digging last night I think there might be more pinball to be found in the city... more than what Pinside.com and "Pin Map Ap" is leading us to believe, pinsters! We got to dig deep to find those underground pins in places like Deatur and Taylorville!

Last night my journey took me to a corner of Decatur that I was told that I want to "stay away from"... WILD DOGS SALOON:



I walked into the bar with my leather jacket and sunglasses and the record stopped (it went "vvvvvvfrp!") and everyone turned around in all of their bar stools (the bikers), and I walked right up to the juke box... and the pinball... well, I am just going to let my pinside score tell the rest of the story:



This is a fun game to play I guess, got kind of boring after the first 5 games - the biggest surprise is the little mini game built into the machine's backboard!?!?

[somejabroni]

So during the year I was unemployed I frequented the wild dog cause I had a buddy who'd play music from time to time there and knew the bartender and it was close to my house. I have seen some crazy things happen in that shed. I got a job and moved to Springfield partly because of a really weird New Years party there. So the Wild Dog is part of the reason I live here now and am on this board and occasionally bother Brian at the record store and Jeff on Twitter.

I shot a lot of pool and threw a lot of darts in that bar. I don't remember if they had the pinball back then, even if I saw it I would have assumed it was broken. If you walked out back, there's one of those ring toss catch it on the iron hook games, and it's a big one. I helped get that working again (if it's still working, no clue). It's the only reason why I'm half decent at that game, just chain smoking and trying to hook the ring.

On Sundays a guy named Randy would work and make the best bloody marys. Real nice, easy to talk to guy. Also the only bloody I've had in my entire life that I wanted to drink the whole thing (Im usually tired of them halfway through). He went on to open R Bar downtown. I heard a few months ago that he passed at some point, which made me sad.

The only other time this bar has come across my desk is about a year ago the Facebook groups were sharing a video of two people boinking right outside the front door against the outside wall of the bar. My initial thought was that there are two giant smoking sheds in the back, just boink there, ya know? Wild Dog looks a lot scarier than it actually is, because if they changed anything they'd need to change everything because right now theres no way that bar is ADA complaint. Anytime any bikers came through they were always friendly. The people you should worry about more were the ones who you didn't recognize and didn't seem to have a real reason to be there.

I'm really glad you got a good score on the pinball and didn't get beat up.

[bennybuzzkill]

I am proud of you for going into that bar, Brain. If anything there is that i learned from father abraham in Sunday school is that sometimes; things from the outside are not what they are on the inside. Even though you heard you were going to get beat up and were afraid of that giant fish and bars on the windows on the outside, you found a fun pinball and some new friends on the inside. sometimes peope are afraid of me because I have so many tattoos on the outside but on the inside I am a fuzzy man