Episode 8 of the RePlay Podcast had host Randy Chilton chatting with his longtime friend and Amusement Industry Hall of Famer Frank “The Crank” Seninsky of Alpha-Omega.
He started in coin-op in 1969 with a $25 investment, placing a Gottlieb North Star pinball machine in his Beta Theta Pi college fraternity house when he was a junior. He said it was imperative that the frat had the best Friday night parties and was able to raise some needed money, so his idea for adding a pinball machine was welcomed.
“My brother, who was four years younger than me and in high school, was reconditioning machines at the time – he worked at Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey, where we grew up,” Seninsky explained. “The first week that we put it in, we had a party and everyone was playing it. I collected the machine at the end of the first week and it had $150.”
The deal was Frank would give the fraternity half. “So I had $75 and the cost of the machine was $25, so in my mind I think I figured out return on investment was something like two to three days and that sounded pretty good to me. It didn’t take long until I was making about $3,000 a week.”
Service, however, was tough on those old machines. “My brother Richard, who’s probably one of the best mechanics in the world since he started at 12 years old, he taught me the finer points of reconditioning machines and servicing them and that’s what I did for the first few years of being in business – even while I was going to school, through graduate school and having a full-time job with a public service electric and gas company,” Seninsky said.
He also told the story of coming together with Joe Camarota and Jerry Merola.
Back in the days when Seninsky had games on college campuses, he’d give rolls of special quarters to players who were frequently in the game rooms. In exchange, they’d write up reports about which games needed service or what was playing poorly, since Frank’s day-to-day was focused on collections.
“Out of about 60 guys, Joe Camarota was my favorite,” he said. “He was the most dedicated. He wanted to learn how to fix the machines.” After graduating college, in fact, Camarota was hired by Seninsky and even lived with him for a few weeks as something of a pinball machine understudy. “We became best friends from that point forward.”
Seninsky later bought his brother out of the business and Camarota bought in as a partner.
Merola was Seninsky’s banker and he no longer liked it; he wanted the chance to run a company. So Seninsky gave him that opportunity and he’s been a key part of Alpha-Omega for more than 30 years.
Alpha-Omega also has its own consulting side of the business called Amusement Entertainment Management, which has been another instrument of success for the three leaders and the FECs and other entertainment centers they’ve advised.
Seninsky has also been an association president (AMOA, AMOA-NJ and IALEI) and is the founder of Foundations Entertainment University. He’s also been a prolific industry writer (including for this magazine) and seminar presenter.
To learn more about Frank’s life and career, listen to the whole podcast here.