Will You Still Like Me When We're All Underground, Not Making A Sound, Will You Turn My Frown Upside Down?

--"103", Whispertown 2000

Quick. What do you think of when somebody mentions the city of San Jose?

Most people would tell you it's a city slightly south of San Francisco in California. It's the home to the Sharks. It's mentioned in the Dionne Warwick song, "Do You Know The Way to San Jose?" It's the site of the Winchester Mystery House. Other than that, I can't really think of anything worth mentioning about San Jose that most people could name off the top of their heads. It's not a bad city or unmemorable city, yet most people do not make it a point to stop in San Jose when visiting the Bay Area of California.

I have a complete different connotation when I hear the words "San Jose." The first thing that leaps to mind when somebody mentions that city is "Home of the World's Biggest Underground No-Holds-Barred Air Hockey League." I mean--I don't tell a lot of people that, but now and forever the city of San Jose and the "sport" of air hockey are inexplicably linked for me. It's gotten to the point where I don't even know if I could un-link them if I wanted to. Honestly, it's like I'm this close to trying to add it to the official Wikipedia entry because every time I read up about San Jose there, it seems like that particular point of fact is missing.

How my brain wrapped around that particular gem is quite a story.

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I was probably like ten or eleven. The whole family was at Laughlin, Nevada. Francis and I were at The Edgewater Hotel and Casino playing, what else, air hockey. I remember that fact because normally we'd have been playing one or more of the video games in the arcade, but for whatever reason a huge crowd had gathered around the air hockey table. It didn't help that the rest of the fare that the arcade had to offer wasn't really appealing. Both of us naturally gravitated to the air hockey table. There were maybe a dozen people gathered around it, eager spectators at a seemingly innocuous clash between two pre-adolescents. I wanted to ask what was going on. To me it looked like a normal air hockey game. However, everyone was so rapt in attention to every passing shot, every volley, every feint. I didn't want to be that guy who had the audacity to question the proceedings. Francis too didn't seem too keen on finding out the particulars about what we were witnessing.

My first clue something wasn't right in the city of Laughlin was when one of the competitors stretched her arm across the goal on her side of the table. I'm not talking about momentarily; rather, she laid her bare arm clear astride the goal slot in a clear attempt to blockade her opponent's attempt to score. This left her unable to return the shot since the arm she was using to block was also the arm she had her paddle in. Her crafty opponent utilized the opportunity to continually wail on her arm with the plastic puck. He didn't just politely hit the puck towards her direction; he pummeled the puck mercilessly which, in turn, collided with her forearm violently again and again as he was basically volleying with himself.

That was my first introduction to no-holds barred air hockey.

After about thirty or forty seconds of her arm continually taking a beating, the blond competitor finally moved her arm aside--more as a reflex than anything else, I can imagine. You can only take so much pain before your body just says enough, especially when there is nothing physically restraining you from moving away from the source of the pain. And that was how the first goal I saw was scared because as soon as her arm was moved, her opponent laid up an easy shot to score.

It wasn't more than the next rally till I saw the gist of the game. Basically, you were allowed to block the goal with your arm as long as it was your paddle arm and as long as you weren't wearing any protection (sweaters, jackets, arm casts) on it. You were allowed to stop the puck with you other hand (or errant fingers, as the case may be) as long as you weren't blocking your goal. You were allowed to move to either side of the table to get closer to your opponent's goal, but you weren't allowed to go on your opponents' side of the table (i.e. past the half-court line). This, inevitably, left your goal wide open but it kind of simulated playing at the net from tennis. Lastly, you were allowed to throw your paddle across the table if your opponent was cocking back his arm for a shot. It was a desperation play, but it was quite funny to see the puck stopped by one player in front of his goal, that player rearing fully back in a sort of wind-up, and then see his opponent slide his paddle to push the puck in.

Those were the basics of no-holds-barred air hockey.

I probably watched six or seven games by the original trio of tourist kids before several of us asked to try it. All in all, I probably played like three or four games. Indeed, I still have a dead spot on my right middle fingernail from where the puck completely smashed it. I don't know if there's anyone else who has tried this variant of the game, but I can assure it's a load of fun when played with the right set of hyperactive kids.

Well, I got to talking to two of the original trio who introduced the game to us and it turns out that they were visiting Laughlin from all the way near San Jose, where they lived. That's where fact faded away from fiction.

Suddenly my head was filled with visions of dozens, if not hundreds, all playing this game. In an instant, while I was playing and having my arm starting to bleed in not one, but two different places, I was thinking of teams and tournament rules (or lack, thereof). In my head I had visions of smoke-filled basements in arcades all over San Jose. I was thinking of the politics of running such a league--players defecting, teams changing sponsors, death threats to kids in junior high schools if they showed up at that night's game, and, for whatever reason, switchblades. All these daydreams about underground air hockey games had the motif of kids with switchblades in leather jackets, aviator sunglasses, and a huge entourage of kids behind him which included three or four pit bulls on chain leashes.

That's how a lot of my stories first germinate. I see something that had been heretofore unseen, then I just riff. Brick by brick, I concoct my own logical explanation for what I was seeing. It wasn't enough that the blonde girl and her two friends (brothers?) probably invented this game and its rules in their own homes. The game was so much fun that it had to be bigger than just those three. It had to have taken off somewhere in this country before that night.

And San Jose was just as good of a place to set it as anywhere else.

When I told them my idea about the sport they had brought to us's origin, they just laughed and said that wasn't it at all. But they said my story was far more epic. They also told me I was free to spread the theory around if I wanted to give the game a few more wisps of mystique.

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Now every time I pass San Jose on my way to or from San Francisco or Portland, I imagine an air hockey circuit for teens under sixteen that moves from place to place every month. I imagine a community where entrance is by invitation only, followed by about three months of horribly violent initiation. I imagine strange arm, hand, and finger injuries being treated by perplexed doctors. And I imagine myself as some strange survivor of the whole cult, the one person who received a glimpse into the lethal world of underground no-holds-barred air hockey and lived to tell about it.

So if your kid goes missing and you find a paddle in his or her room, I'd look in San Jose first. LOL

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers