Saturday, May 21, 2011

Flipper McCoy

215 North Main Street


Even though the storefront in the photo above looks entirely different, it is the same spot in which D.P. Dough now operates, across the alley from Hokie Hair and adjacent to the Campus Emporium.

In 1977 Flipper McCoy existed solely to entertain the masses via pinball and pool tables. Long before there were home computers this was the diversion of choice among a lot of high school and college kids. A friend of mine recently admitted she was addicted to Ms. Pac Man back then and would sneak down to Flipper McCoy during lunch to feed her habit. 

Some of the video games that came on the scene in the 70's were ones like Pac Man, Q-bert, Frogger, Asteroids, Centipede, Tron, Space Invaders, and others. I was more of a pinball guy, myself, and leaned toward ones made by Gottlieb .... personal favorites were Big Indian, Scuba, Fireball, Jack-In-The-Box and ones that had lots of targets to shoot at. A proficient pinball player could stop a ball dead in it's tracks and balance it on the flipper in order to line up a direct hit on a drop target, push target, or bonus button.

Previously, this building had been Jamie's Boutique and following Flipper it became the Downtowner Deli for a short period.

2 comments:

  1. Wasn't it, at some point post-Flipper, pre-Downtowner, also a restaurant called The Fat Rabbit?

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  2. Yeah, another one of "Ray C's" places. In fact, everybody started calling Ray by the name of "Fat Rabbit" ... and some still do to this day.

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