New York town bans pinball

BEACON, N.Y. (CNN) - A trip to an arcade filled with classic pinball machines and other games might sound like a fun way to spend a hot, summer day. But in one New York town, arcades are illegal, and one small business owner has been told to close his doors.

Sixty miles north of New York City, Beacon prohibits any type of pinball or video arcade, even the vintage kind from the '50s and '60s. Fred Bobrow is the owner of Retro Arcade Museum. Eighteen months after opening his doors, he says he was ordered to shut them.

"It turns out that they were able to prevent me from operating by enforcing an arcane law that bans pinballs in the town of in the towns of Beacon. Pinball arcades. And the fine is a thousand dollars a day or jail," Bobrow explained.

Beacon isn't the only city to have outlawed pinball. Believe it or not, the game was banned from the early 1940s to the mid-'70s in most of America's big cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Lawmakers believed pinball was a mafia-run racket and a waste of time for impressionable youth.

"Arcades in the '70s may have represented something, you know, maybe, that a community wouldn't want on their main street, or that it would attract a bad, you know, kids or whatever," said George Mansfield, Beacon, N.Y. City Council.

Many local officials insist Bobrow's retro arcade museum is a good fit with Beacon and believe this unique business, part museum and part entertainment center, has the potential to draw visitors to the area. For the past two months, the Beacon City Council has been considering a change in the law.

"Uh, the legislative process really does take its time and council's really looked very closely at all of the letters of the law, and look ahead to the future. It's a process that usually can't be done very quickly because we want to do it right, rather than do it right away," said Steve Gold, Beacon mayor.

But movement to rewrite the law has been slow, and could come to late to save one pinball wizard and his business.