New York City
is
the original ping pong social club
and
its location might just be its best yet.
Our news, senior reporter Michelle still is getting a tour from the company CEO.
Good morning, Michelle,
good morning, Chris.
And
I'm here at Spin Midtown. It's the latest location of the Spin ping
pong Club.
I'm here with Peter Betterman. He's the CEO of Spin.
So thank you so much for joining us today for people who aren't familiar with spin.
Tell us a little bit more about what you can do here.
Of course. Thank you so much for joining us today.
We're really excited because Spin Midtown is our ninth location.
It's the second one in New York, but ninth overall in the US.
And Spin is a ping pong social club.
It's a place where people gather to have fun to play ping pong,
but we don't take ourselves too seriously.
So the best player for us is the one with the biggest smile. So why ping pong
ping pong is such an easy connector.
It's uh for example, there's so many introvert people in this world
and you can play ping pong and connect with each other without,
without having to talk.
That makes ping pong a very good
uh
event for a date night. But it's also great for corporate events.
It's great for birthdays for Mitzvahs.
And we are specialized in events and ping pong for
us is one of the best ways to connect people.
Now, let's talk a little bit more about what you can do here.
So first you said it's a social event,
so you definitely get some food and drink if you're around.
So tell me a little bit more about your offerings.
So our food is what we call left hand food meant to be shared, left hand food.
So you can play ping pong while eating and it's globally inspired street food.
So we have, it goes from burgers to tacos to pizza.
This is our Detroit style Hot Rods. We also have a brick oven, Alfredo pizza
and our most famous Chad's burger,
which is actually made out of a blend of four different meats
that we marinate for 24 hours. And then
it's our, it's our most popular dish here.
I know you mentioned tacos and that's something
definitely you can eat with your hands.
Now, tell me a little bit more about what we have here on this table,
especially about drinks.
So in drinks,
of course, we have alcoholic cocktails,
but we also have non alcoholic cocktails and we truly
believe that there is a trend going to non alcoholic.
We have non alcoholic gin and tonic. We have the Mighty Reisman and
uh and this is our, this is called the Pandemonium.
The pandemonium is a, is a drink which is blended with Monday rum
together with rum and,
and turmeric. Wow, that sounds great. But of course, it is a ping pong club.
So the best
thing to do here is play some ping pong. So let's,
now, I have to admit I'm, I'm not that good. So,
ok, let's try you ready? Now. It's been years since I've been here at Spin. So um
what is change in the meantime?
So
this is our ninth location now,
but we are really looking forward to opening more venues in New York.
We're looking at a space in Grand Central, but also in the financial district
and in uh and in Brooklyn. So that would make it five in total in New York.
Now, um
The good thing is what happens. Who's gonna collect all these balls?
Oh, that's a great thing actually, because when we play ping pong,
typically it's 90% chasing the ball and 10% playing ping pong.
But here we have ballers picking up the balls
for us so we can focus on playing instead of
running behind the ball all the time. Ok.
Now I heard that ping pong, you guys are doing more
digital.
Uh you guys are making this more digital.
So tell me a little bit more about how you brought it into the modern age.
So
at spin, it's all about experience.
It's I think it's like Maya Angelou said, at some point,
people forget what you tell them, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
And that's why we try to focus everything at spin around the experience
and the experience is now more and more
the technological experience. So we have a ping pong robot, which is the very first
A I based humanoid ping pong robot in the US.
And I think you will play it afterwards.
But we also have a back up
filled with ping pong balls and 20 cameras. I was just there
and those 20 cameras actually take pictures that you can post on social right away.
Now if you wanna enjoy spin, which cities are you guys in?
We are in New York, Chicago, San Francisco,
Philadelphia, Seattle,
Washington DC, Boston, Toronto.
And we are looking at Miami,
Los Angeles and the second one in uh in San Francisco and in Chicago.
So a true expansion.
Now coming up, he talks about the ping pong robot.
I'm gonna face off and I'm gonna have a,
a ping pong pro to teach me more and teach you more about how to play
back to you. All right, great skills. Michelle
can't wait to see it in action
show.
Pretty good
day.
She did an interview and was playing ping pong
that is
unique. We have been watching this, Michelle still
checks out one of New York's most unusual ping pong social clubs
and Michelle, we understand that. Now you're going to play with a robot.
Tell us more.
Yes. But before playing with the robot, I'm going to need some tips. So I have Matt
Sui. He is the head ping pong pro here at spin. So thanks so much for joining us.
Tell us all a little bit more about spinny.
Spinny is the first ping pong A I ping pong robot in the United States.
Chinese national team is using it for practice.
It's been used for ping pong practice all over the world.
And yeah, we have it here in
spin midtown in our first location in midtown.
Now before I take on the robot, give me some tips on how to play ping pong. Yeah.
So the first thing you have to know, it's like a how you hold a ping pong paddle.
It's a handshake, a shake hand grip.
You want to hold it all the way in, put one finger down on that side
and that's the handshake shake hand grip.
Sounds good. OK. Let's start. Let's start spinning up and see how
we can do this. OK? This is gonna come
really fast. Now any tips on how to hit the ball,
you want to wait, be patient and try to wait for the ball before you hit it. OK?
Try to like
slow it down. So when you hit the first shot, wait for the ball to bounce and then
wait for the ball to bounce and then hit.
Ok.
It's
more
than
we have a couple of different levels here with spinning. So this is level two,
it goes all the way to 10
different spins, different speed.
Anyone can come in and play and hit with the spinning.
I can demonstrate how
it goes pros
do
it. OK. Let's see what a level 10 looks like.
Now, how does one become a ping pong pro?
It's uh a lot of facts. You have to start when you were
a kid. I started when I was seven years old.
Uh It's a lot of uh good reflexes and you need
hand eye coordinations, but
here it's been anyone can play. You don't have to be a ping pong pro.
You don't have to know how to play ping pong. You can come in
any day on Friday nights. Uh I'm always here. I can
give lessons, teach, you can come in with friends families and
spin, spin.
So, how many hours did you practice when you were on the Polish National team? Yes.
Uh I was uh playing 2 to 4 hours every day.
Um
I grew up in Poland, I was a national team. I was in top 10 in the US
and
now I teach and I do events here. I spend on Friday nights and
on both locations in flat iron and midtown.
Now, I understand this is a normal size paddle but you play with other, I mean,
now you want less of an advantage.
You can play with even a smaller paddle. Should I put it at 10 or? Let's do 10,
10.
I do use the mini size tinkling paddles. I
play with a lollipop. I play with different objects.
So if you come, if you want to come and try and try to
play against me, I can play with the mini ones in d in different types of funnels.
Oh,
so
thing is
I had a hard enough time with the normal size panel.
Now, question for you.
Is it, what's the e like the not top three tips if you're gonna play ping pong?
First of all, you have to be patient. So try not to start too fast.
Uh
and hand
the group what we don't
start with
and try to
try to hit the ball back and forth over the net 10 to 20 times. Don't try to go for a kill.
It's not about going, going for big shot, try to
be consistent and try to keep it over the net.
Now, if you are um coming down here, how does it work? Do you get like an hour session?
Like how can you play against spinny?
Yeah, you can come in on Friday nights.
Uh It's always going to be someone,
someone here helping you with uh the ping pong robot.
Um
There's different levels of 1 to 10
So if you're a beginner,
you can come in and we can try to help you set it up with level one.
If you are more professional, we can go over level 10. So anyone can um try it.
And do you, like you said, the National teams train with this?
Why is it such a benefit to train with an A I robot? And how does the A I work?
And usually the robots
have, don't have the ping pong paddles in it.
This one is NBC,
the ping pong. Uh It's like a hand
which looks like a human being on the same on that side of the table.
So this is the first one and um
look if you can see when the paddle goes under, it goes under spin, when it goes over,
it goes top spin.
So that's
with the new A I robot that's,
that's like unique. So does it learn from how the person is hitting it or?
Yeah, you can uh it actually
uh has the A I in it that you can see it.
You can see where the ball bounces on that side of the table.
And yeah, it learns the game, learns your game, learns your opponent game.
Now, why should everyone play ping pong?
Well, it's super fun.
Uh Everyone can play, everyone is welcome.
It's not
that difficult.
It's uh doesn't take that much, that much space.
It's easy to pick up A
P.
Uh If you've never played or if you play like me.
So it's, it's just fun. It's brings people uh joy.
All right, I'm gonna let this ping pong robot take us to break. But
uh we're gonna play more here and learn how to become a master and a pro at ping pong.
So, back to you guys in studio
was
too.
I gotta tell you. That thing is pretty proficient.
Yeah, she has a lot of secret skills over here. So.