Not every pinball wizard, to misappropriate a quote from a 48-year-old rock opera about an 86-year-old arcade game, sure plays a mean pinball.

Mark Czarnowski, who owns Joliet's Chicago Street Pinball Arcade and all 35 of the pinball machines in it, dismisses his skill level.

“I do like playing them,” he said. “But to me, that's secondary.”

For Czarnowski, the bells and whistles that catch his eye are, well, the bells and whistles.

“I've always been mechanically oriented,” Czarnowski, a 42-year-old Elmhurst native, said. “I was told that, when I was 21/2 years old, I took apart a wind-up alarm clock. I couldn't put it back together, but I took it apart.

“For me, pinball machines are the perfect marriage between computer technology and mechanical technology.”

For others, the attraction differs — and Czarnowski's arcade, open since the summer of 2014 in a former furniture store annex, clearly has its attractions.

Of course, it is a glimpse into the past for some.

To enter the narrow space is to immerse yourself in the gently disorienting din of a 1970s-era arcade, before Space Invaders emerged late in the decade to transform the business of divesting teen allowances at 25 cents a crack.

Except for the muted assistance of colored bulbs installed in a single row of track lighting down the center of the high-ceilinged room, the arcade is illuminated by the machines — as you enter, 18 pinball tables on your right, 17 on your left, with a few vintage video games on either side.

At the end of a line of cocktail-style tables bisecting the space is a foosball machine.

Visiting on a recent Friday night, Glenn Krause, a 50-year-old IT manager from Downers Grove who finished fourth at February's International Flipper Pinball Association Illinois State Championship, offered his seasoned perspective on the facility.

“It's decent,” he said. “A lot of these games are older, so there's more of a nostalgic thing going for it.”

Whatever Chicago Street has going for it, www.atlasobscura.com — which bills itself as “the definitive guide to the world's wondrous and curious places” — decided that was enough to include the arcade on its suggested route for a pinball-themed road trip. The arcade, open for not quite two years when Atlas Obscura cited it, was one of 37 in the nation to rate a mention.

Dan Garrett, a 55-year-old software salesman from Geneva and a 12th-place finisher at the 2016 state championship, noted, “Physically, it's not a big space. But it's large for the number of games — Mark has quite a few.”

Czarnowski started with one, purchased “as a hobby around 2003.”

“Over time,” he added, “it grew into a whole bunch.”

If pinball is going to be your hobby, you could do worse than to be in the Chicago area. Since Bally and D. Gottlieb began making machines in Chicago in the 1930s, the city has been home to pinball's leading manufacturers, including Williams and, now, Stern, which was by the early 2000s the only major pinball manufacturer in the world.

And the hobby grew into a career. Czarnowski's last work in the IT field, his vocation for most of his adult life, was more than a year ago as he has devoted his full attention to maintaining a string of machines in various establishments — bars, auto shops and the like — in the Champaign area and the Joliet arcade.

Chicago Street has machines ranging from Big Ben, which debuted in 1977, to 2016's Rob Zombie's Spook show International. They are as different as a Model T and a Maserati.

Aside from more of everything — sounds, levels, targets, balls in play, flippers — newer machines, Krause said, “have a lot more story. As you advance through the story the targets change.

“The older ones, it's hit the target, then hit it again. They're a little simple.”

But what they are not, Czarnowski said, is pattern-driven. In that respect, video games can be learned in a way that pinball cannot.

“In pinball, no two games are ever the same — not on the same machine, not on the same model,” Czarnowski said. “The trajectory, the rubber, something's always going to react differently than it did the last time.”

Still, he gets gamers — or kids who should be gamers.

“The biggest surprise to me is the family crowd we've been attracting,” he said. “I expected more people from their 20s to their 50s, but probably half the people coming out are parents bringing 8- to 12-year-olds.”

Tyson O'Brien, 11, was visiting the arcade with his parents on a spring break trip from their St. Louis-area home.

“Last year, I got first place at the Texas Pinball Festival,” he said. “It was on Terminator 3. I got like 103 million and the second place kid got like 70.”

Tyson and his father, 42-year-old Tim, showed up to play in the March 17 launch party tournament for Stern's new Aerosmith machine. It is fair to say the machine — wherein the goals and targets of the game change based on the Aerosmith song you choose to accompany your play — represents the next phase in the development of pinball.

It's also fair to say the tourney location — in a former retail space connected through a back room to the arcade — is the future of Czarnowski's business.

The property, at 9 W. Cass St., Czarnowski said, was the first of two White Store locations in downtown Joliet. It has received its first delivery of remodeling materials, and Czarnowski hopes to open the expanded location, with bar service and a snack menu, in the summer.

“Right now, this is a break-even business for me,” he said. “Pinball is starting to get a new generation of players — you can play a version of most of the new games with an app on your phone.

“But it's much easier to play shots on a virtual machine. To have to nudge the machines, play real trajectories, that's all part of the experience.

“Combine that with Barcades, Beercades, Arcade bars, whatever you want to call them, then we'll be able to cater to every crowd, families with kids, then the 20-something crowd that wants to have a drink and play arcade games.”

Phil Arvia is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.