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Undeserved FLoGings I'm lucky enough to live surrounded by a wealth of Friendly Local Game Stores so I wanted to share a little tableau of them. I'm going to avoid identifying them by name, but would be happy to via PM if you're nearby. I'd really love to hear about your shop(s) too. I'm gonna harsh a couple of my local places for some various things, but I really appreciate not only the volume of options that I have, but how hard all of them work. I'm starting with the worst one only because it's the most entertaining. I don't want this to be taken as a review of any of these shops, not in the Google / Yelp way anyway. I just find game shops to be cool boutiques and weird outgrowths of the hobby. They have character. I want to capture some of that as best I can. The Pit The nearest store to me is on a street that divides my suburban downtown loop from the high school I attended (God I want out of this town) and a bunch of working class residential neighborhoods. It shares a building with a pawn shop and what I think is a photography studio, but not one I've ever seen open, although it's obviously not closed either. Parking is atrocious, but in the evenings the other shops are closed so at least that opens up a little. Most of the clientele here are the locals. A lot of the high schoolers are within walking distance of the shop. And that's great. There's a feel to the place that it's remained unchanged since comic shops became a thing. ...A feeling that extends to the interior design too... The floor is peeling linoleum tile, the walls, wood veneer or painted concrete.The shop is divided into three rooms, to the left is the comics section, which is extensive over multiple tables of filled longboxes and shelves stuffed with nerd tchotchkes. The middle section has the sole register, the singles case, and the other tabletop games, then then there's the game room. The game room is smaller than the lovely Subway shop you don't like going to but do sometimes anyway. You know the one. It has eight ISO white folding tables, each with four or six chairs that must have been stolen from a county jail. This is twice as many as fit in the room, and even moreso when you figure in the girth of the regulars. The walls are plastered with every poster offered to the shop. When this place is excavated, they're going to spend years peeling these back and archiving each time DC Comics reset their universe. The clientele is too young, the lights are yellowed, and at the end of the night, the only thing I want is a shower. But for a lot of those kids, this is their clean well-lighted place and I wouldn't want them deprived of that. How it stays open, I honestly don't know. It's part of a larger company in the area that runs four or five shops, and the next is just a few miles down the road. But it's their FLGS, and I'm glad they have it. Next up: The New Place
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Apr 28, 2017 21:32
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 17:33 |
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The New Place The new place is at the edge of the metro area, in a town I don't much like. It's too rich and too hillbilly, and my ex-fiance used to live about five minutes drive-time from the shop. That's not really relevant of course, but even long after all that's done, muscle memory on the drive over reminds me sometimes. The store recently moved into a bigger venue a block from their first location. It's well lit, split evenly between game store and game room. They run a LOT of events here. While there was a Netrunner scene in town this was the shop to go to for it. There used to be a pretty tight knit group of us that would hang around and grind out games. Folks grew up; I wish I could. It's bright and it's clean at the new shop. The tables all have extra large mats with anime tits. I don't have the heart to start a fight with the management about that. Their feature table is a three hundred pound hand built monstrosity in weathered, dark stained wood. Snack bar in the back serves concession stand fare, and they keep Ramune ball-soda in the fridge for the sizable number of local weebs. When they're not running M:tG Commander (so much Commander), they run Smash Bros. tourneys too. I watch my tongue around that crowd, lest I utter heresies about why items are better. They used to be across the street from a dive bar, where a couple of us would play Drunkrunner, drinking a round or two between rounds. They're beside one of those pop-up slots places now (is there a name for those, they're loving infesting the opioid addicted American Wasteland here) but I've never seen anyone go in or out of it. I think the manager likes me because I never talk about my rad new commander deck you guys; I've tried to get him to get a liquor license for the place. He probably can't because of WoTC rules, which sucks. Drink & Draft is the best way to play Magic. I've been going there less and less. I wish I had more reasons to go back, I like the regulars (mostly) and the staff. But I suspect I'd be just as happy with no reason to ever go back.
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May 31, 2017 00:33
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