Tabs plus seattle windows#

I realize I'm not a very lucky tab player, not even making the legal minimum. 'By law it's a 65 percent return on all pull-tab bins, minimum.' 'Okay, Minnesota has the biggest dollar market for tabs, but Washington's actually number one for volume.' 'I'm merging onto the freeway.' I wait while she swears, and then sighs. 'Just a second,' she says through static. It's a weekday, and now I'm at my office. O'Finnigan's doesn't play Red Hot 7s, so I can't cash the winner I found.Ĭary Telefson of the State Gambling Commission says $332 million dollars are paid out to tab players each year in Washington. I drink another beer, but no bikers, no one, comes in. They're giving away a Harley maybe it's a biker bar. Alone, I scribble notes on napkins and ask the bartender a lot of questions, until she avoids me. 'We've got Cougars and Huskies,' she tells me. 'We paid out more than $1,000 last night.' O'Finnigan's has a dozen bins, plus cheap 'theme tabs,' a dime a tab, which can be special-ordered from the factory. 'Everyone wins a lot here,' she tells me. I pocket the dollar and talk to the bartender. A row of three dead frogs wins me one dollar. Road Again is a Trade Products game featuring mattresses, street signs, lost sneakers, sharks with briefcases, and various roadkill. They've got pull-tabs and I buy $15 of Road Again. I climb across the crushed barbed wire and get some beer at O'Finnigan's. A pick-up truck in the dirt lot of O'Finnigan's Tavern has backed over the fence. Barbed wire fences keep the neighbors out. Trade Products has its own fleet of trucks. It takes four and a half minutes to walk around the building. In a pile of broken glass I find a Red Hot 7, a pull-tab, a one-dollar winner. Neighbors packing their car with fishing gear yell at me. I have to lie on my belly because the dumpster sits low to the ground. Ink capsules, print sheets, shrink-wrap, beer cans, spilled crystals. The ground is filthy and stinks like vinegar-print chemicals-and I get dizzy. It's huge, sealed like a space capsule, but garbage has spilled from its mouth.

Tabs plus seattle windows#

The windows are glazed, reflecting mountains, which are very beautiful this morning, white with fresh snow. It's a glorified shed, big as a football field. Because it's Saturday, no one answers when I knock. The tabs are legal tender, so the factory keeps its garbage sealed. Trade Products makes over 3 billion pull-tabs a year. I buy coffee then drive around and find the pull-tab factory near Highway 99. They're jogging, wearing stretch nylon, looking very fit. I stop for directions at a drive-through coffee stand where two women buying lattes tell me they've never heard of Trade Products, or Lincoln Way-they just moved here. The factory, Trade Products, is on Lincoln Way. I pass Lake Serene Ridge and Fender Drive. The sun has burned through fog and glints off cars, blinding me, and I get lost. The biggest pull-tab factory in the world is in Lynnwood.

'I think it's the pull-tab factory,' he says. I ask Rick, 'Who makes all this stuff up?' Thunder Buck is cartoon heads of presidents, symbols from U.S. Cow Tippin' has cows, yokel farmers, and outhouses. Saltin' of Slime turns up a gallery of cartoon slugs, all of them different. In Cherries I get three cherries in a row, which is how I win my three bucks. I play them all-Grand Casino, Cow Tippin', Mars Rocks, Tail Gaters, Thunder Buck, Show Me the Money, Murphy's Law, Cherries, Saltin' of Slime. Rick keeps a dozen or so bets running at a time. Every tavern, bowling alley, and bingo hall I've ever been to has them. Over 6 billion tabs are sold each year in Washington, the biggest market in the country. Each time a winner gets pulled, the bartender crosses it off the flare. The winners are listed on a big sign, called a flare. The tabs come in bins, five to six thousand in a bin, with four or five hundred winners among them. Pulling the tab reveals the figures the right combo pays off anywhere from one to five hundred dollars.

Pull-tabs are thumb-sized slats of cardboard with a trio of figures printed inside a serrated tab. I go to Chubby and Tubby, cash a check for $40, then lose it all on tabs. I spend $30, losing all but three-enough to cover my two beers. The more I lose, the more welcome I feel.

Winning tabs get handed to Rick, who pays them off with cash from the till. The floor is ankle-deep in used pull-tabs, all of them losers. A dozen men sit at the Locker Room's horseshoe bar drinking canned beer and talking to Rick, the owner. They've all got pull-tabs, but only the Locker Room lets you dump the spent tabs on the floor.