Erotic robotic underground fun

by Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet • July 23, 2008 •

When I sang the praises of The Beat Coffeehouse, I had a sense that I was plugging a hidden locus of awesomeness. Caffetto, at 22nd and Lyndale, is similarly awesome but in no wise hidden—it’s constantly packed with everyone from hipsters to…well, hipsters. Its thrift-store art collection is second to none (save, perhaps, the Kitty Cat Club, home to the El Dorado Conquistador Museum), its coffee is delicious, and the frequent necessity to table-share makes it a nexus of personal and professional networking for those Minneapolitans who would shudder to accept a LinkedIn invitation.

Arts Orbit is a multisource blog about the local arts scene, featuring both original contributions by Daily Planet writers and entries reprinted from partner blogs and online publications.

What you may, just may, not know about is the single best reason to run across the street with the change from the lottery ticket purchase you made at SA after despairing at the cost of filling your tank. Caffetto has a basement full of pinball! Four machines, to be exact, including Jurassic Park and Stargate tie-ins; best of the lot in both play quality and entertainment value is the weirdly erotic Bride of Pinbot, whose scoreboard crawl exhorts you to MAKE ME FEEL LIKE A WOMAN as your flippers dance clumsily. She’s currently out of commission, but the Caffetto staff assure me that her love light will beckon again…it took a blazing fire to stop Fritz Lang’s False Maria, and that tin temptress was a delicate maiden compared to Lady Pinbot.