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In Which I Say Farewell to Endgame
Dec. 27th, 2018 01:15 pmI first journeyed to Endgame on October 13, 2004. I'd given up in disgust on Games of Berkeley a few days earlier, after waiting five minutes for someone to come to the register to ring my purchase. At the time I said of my new store, "I like their store which is clean, quiet, and friendly. I also liked the people who came to play, who were generally adult and mature, not a bunch of kids. I also find the idea of trying out games I don't actually own and getting to play games I want to without having to worry about other folks or doing reviews all exciting, so I expect I'll return."
Funny story: Kimberly walked downtown with me that October evening. She headed back home, and I hopped on BART. Arriving in Oakland, and warily making my way into the store, I soon found myself invited to a game of Alhambra. I sat down and began to play, but about two-thirds of the way in, one of the staff came upstairs to ask if there was a "Shannon" there. I identified myself, and they handed me the store phone. Kimberly was on the other side of the line. She'd left her keys in the house when she went out with me, and was now locked out. She was calling from one of our neighbor's houses. So I finished out my game of Alhambra and then around 8pm was right back on BART to go home and rescue her. I picked her up from the Border's store, and we went home.
But I did return to Endgame, in fact continued to return for 14 years. And that was one of the last times that Kimberly locked herself out of the house.
(One of the things I love about that story is how much it dates itself, with the call to the Endgame landline, from a neighbor's landline, and the wait in a Borders.)
Last night, December 26, 2018 — or 14 years, 2 months, and 13 days later — was my last gaming night at Endgame, and quite possibly my last visit there. The store has descended through generations of owners since that 2004 evening. Though it's had problems with overcrowding in recent years, in large part due to a conflation of board game and D&D nights, the board gaming has been as great as ever. I've gotten to play hundreds of games I don't actually own with lots of great and smart and strategic players; I didn't know how I was going to replace any of that in Hawaii, but now it's gone a year early.
But one could also see the creaky edges of the store. They went all in on a cafe about five years ago, to give themselves a new challenge, and that crashed and burned. More recently, they just haven't had the expertise to order the great strategy games that they used to. Though I bought fewer games in recent years due to my apostasy from the Cult of the New, it's also been that the type of strategy games that I love most has been a lot less available from Endgame. (I've had to special order the last several Aleas, for example.)
Despite that, I'm going to miss it fiercely. I can now feel what Kimberly has said, that all of the things we love most are disappearing from the Bay Area in advance of our departure for Hawaii. It's going to make cutting those last cords that much easier.
And Endgame, it will live on, in a way. J. is making the Secret space available for Wednesday night gaming. It's just several blocks on from Endgame. WIth that and the maintenance of the same game night, we hope that we'll attract the best of the same crowd.
I will do my best to support the new space in its early days, to help it achieve critical mass, but I'm also talking with Eric L. and Sam (and Mike B.) about doing a final Pathfinder ACG adventure before we leave, the first half of the "Wrath of the Righteous" path that we didn't previously run. So, I might be varying my ex-Endgame gaming up a bit.
Funny story: Kimberly walked downtown with me that October evening. She headed back home, and I hopped on BART. Arriving in Oakland, and warily making my way into the store, I soon found myself invited to a game of Alhambra. I sat down and began to play, but about two-thirds of the way in, one of the staff came upstairs to ask if there was a "Shannon" there. I identified myself, and they handed me the store phone. Kimberly was on the other side of the line. She'd left her keys in the house when she went out with me, and was now locked out. She was calling from one of our neighbor's houses. So I finished out my game of Alhambra and then around 8pm was right back on BART to go home and rescue her. I picked her up from the Border's store, and we went home.
But I did return to Endgame, in fact continued to return for 14 years. And that was one of the last times that Kimberly locked herself out of the house.
(One of the things I love about that story is how much it dates itself, with the call to the Endgame landline, from a neighbor's landline, and the wait in a Borders.)
Last night, December 26, 2018 — or 14 years, 2 months, and 13 days later — was my last gaming night at Endgame, and quite possibly my last visit there. The store has descended through generations of owners since that 2004 evening. Though it's had problems with overcrowding in recent years, in large part due to a conflation of board game and D&D nights, the board gaming has been as great as ever. I've gotten to play hundreds of games I don't actually own with lots of great and smart and strategic players; I didn't know how I was going to replace any of that in Hawaii, but now it's gone a year early.
But one could also see the creaky edges of the store. They went all in on a cafe about five years ago, to give themselves a new challenge, and that crashed and burned. More recently, they just haven't had the expertise to order the great strategy games that they used to. Though I bought fewer games in recent years due to my apostasy from the Cult of the New, it's also been that the type of strategy games that I love most has been a lot less available from Endgame. (I've had to special order the last several Aleas, for example.)
Despite that, I'm going to miss it fiercely. I can now feel what Kimberly has said, that all of the things we love most are disappearing from the Bay Area in advance of our departure for Hawaii. It's going to make cutting those last cords that much easier.
And Endgame, it will live on, in a way. J. is making the Secret space available for Wednesday night gaming. It's just several blocks on from Endgame. WIth that and the maintenance of the same game night, we hope that we'll attract the best of the same crowd.
I will do my best to support the new space in its early days, to help it achieve critical mass, but I'm also talking with Eric L. and Sam (and Mike B.) about doing a final Pathfinder ACG adventure before we leave, the first half of the "Wrath of the Righteous" path that we didn't previously run. So, I might be varying my ex-Endgame gaming up a bit.