Hello and welcome to this day an esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, March 6, 1948, a New York City patrolman in plain clothes, enters a cigar store on

160th Street in East Harlem, drops a penny into a machine called the Marvel Pop-Up, and then turns around and places the cigar stores

owner into handcuffs and arrests him for quote unlawful possession of a

gambling machine. This was part of a citywide crackdown on one of the greatest scourges in New York

city of the 1930s and 40s.

Pinball, you knew where this was going folks.

That's right, New York City under Mayor LaGuardia was not going to put up with the degenerative influence of

pinball machines, corrupting young and old alike across the five boroughs.

Listeners, seriously, just go Google this right now and look at photos.

There are photos of police officers

taking bats and crowbars to pinball machines and doing like bonafide purplocks

of cigar store owners you know in front of in front of paparazzi in cuffs it is quite a moment and actually a sort of decades long

campaign which we will get into and you know you can call it a moral panic or a nanny state

gone amok but it also gets it some really interesting questions about gambling and social norms and post prohibition, post-depression, post-World War New York.

So let's get into it here to discuss, as always always Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly

Carter Jackson of Wellesley hello there

hello jody hey there and our special guests for this episode the legend

Harry seagull senior editor at the Daily Beast longtime columnist for the New York Daily News, co-host of the FAQ NYC Podcast.

And in general, I would say one of the great chroniclers of New York mayoral chicanery past and present so the perfect fit for this Harry

Thank you so much for for joining me.

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