Pinball.

It’s what helped Nathan Stellhorn afford a down payment for his house.

It’s one of the biggest survivors of his house fire — the same house he bought with the help of pinball.

It’s a reminder of the nostalgic memories of playing High Hand by Gottlieb in the basement of his grandpa’s house.

These are only a fraction of the reasons why Stellhorn decided to start side hustling outside his day job and bring pinball to the Lents neighborhood.

“Everybody’s got a story about pinball, right?” Stellhorn said.

Lents Pinball, founded by Stellhorn, hosts a variety of pinball machines at businesses in the Lents neighborhood, including Humdinger Pizza and The ZED on Southeast 92nd Avenue.

Currently, he owns about 40 pinball machines.

Mastering pinball

Stellhorn can thank that ’70s Gottlieb game for his first fix of the addicting pinball game.

When he moved to Portland, pinball was an abundant activity, so he tried his hand at it. A player noticed him doing well and invited him to a tournament.

That’s when it started.

Stellhorn got sucked into both the competitive side of the game and the fixer-upper side of restoring old machines.

He quickly accumulated many pinball machines. He adopted this trait from his mother who collected Schwinn bicycles.

Of the roughly hundred thousand or so professionally ranked pinball players in the world, Stellhorn ranks in the top thousand.

Locally, he ranks in the top three or four.

“How pinball has helped me in my life is really silly,” Stellhorn said.

Prosperity via pinball

Like Stellhorn said, the connections of pinball in his life were, well, silly.

It started with the interconnection of pinball to his day job. Working at Greenpeace meant traveling, leasing temporary office spaces in new cities and connecting with different communities.

And, somehow, pinball always found a spot for itself at the center of his communities. Stellhorn would call on fellow pinball players in these new cities to help find resources he needed, such as insights to offices for lease in that area.

He created a huge network across the country through a common interest of pinball, while continuing to play the game competitively.

It wasn’t until 2011 when Stellhorn first started buying pinball machines. His first was free. His second was about $100.

Stellhorn discovered early on his free machine wasn’t very free at all after needing a village and thousands of dollars to fix it.

“But, you learn along the way. And now, I’m pretty good at buying old ones and fixing ’em up,” Stellhorn said.

At this point, he’s owned hundreds of pinball machines.

His two-bedroom Northeast Sandy Boulevard apartment was home to himself and 20 pinball machines.

Facing student loan debt, and lacking generational wealth, Stellhorn thought he could never afford a house.

Instead, he parted ways with his babies and found himself with a down payment for the Lents home in which he currently lives.

But the interconnections of pinball don’t stop there.

In May 2022, Stellhorn’s house caught fire. A tortoise he’d been given, named Dr. Tortellini, knocked over its heating lamp and caused a house fire that destroyed the entire inside of his home.

Lo and behold, his pinball machines survived.

Two years after the fire, Stellhorn moved back in, reunited with his machines, and decided to put them in the public’s eye.

He wanted to pitch The ZED, but waited weeks to ask because he was afraid they would say no.

Stellhorn was met with a welcoming “Yeah, let’s do it,” and then two machines turned into three machines, which eventually turned into four.

There are seven pinball machines at The ZED, eight at Humdinger Pizza and five at Shifters Bar.

“It’s added so much value to my life. I think it could add a lot of value to other people’s lives,” Stellhorn said. “I love sharing with people the art and history and the stories behind it.”

Midwesterner moves

Stellhorn is originally from Indiana. He graduated from Ball State University in 2004 and said he “had to run away” from Indiana.

So, he headed to the West Coast.

At about 20 years old, Stellhorn studied abroad in the United Kingdom for about a year and a half, returned home for six months, graduated and decided the “big city” was for him.

Stellhorn first moved to Portland in 2004.

He worked for Greenpeace for about 15 years, taking him to major cities — Austin, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Honolulu — for stints of living.

“I would always come back to Portland,” Stellhorn said.

He bought his home 11 years ago in Lents.

It takes a village

Stellhorn’s pinball success was no solo journey.

Between the pinball wizards — the nickname Stellhorn specifically said not to call these amazing pinball players — his neighbors, local businesses and even Dr. Tortellini, it was a group effort to spread the art of pinball.

Even a neighbor named “Terry” was spotted sporting a pinball shirt while fixing Stellhorn’s lawn mower, leading to the man helping restore his late grandpa’s High Hand game.

If weren’t for the people who laid the groundwork, Stellhorn said Portland pinball wouldn’t be what it is today.

This includes people like Mike Mahaffey, Chris Rhodes and Aaron Nelson, and places like Melody Amusement, Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade, Wedgehead, Out of Order Amusements, Portland Pinball Repair, QuarterWorld Arcade and many more.

“I got sucked into the culture and was supported by so many people to learn,” Stellhorn said. “It’s totally a responsibility to put cool stuff out and show more people how to experience this thing in the way that I learned, so that feels really good.”