I haven't made it to a con since 2015, but back then StreetPass dominated my waits in line and I often got in some matches in with Super Smash Bros 3DS and Pokemon. What do people do during line waits now? My kid is getting old enough that I'd like to take her to an anime con in the next year or 2. What's the meta?
I've been pretty curious lately to know if there are bigger cave structures in Athens or the rest of the county than the one we have on our family property
I want to talk about bit about my life in Athens and what drives me to want to make the business I posted about a few days ago. My family is from Athens county, and I have relatives everywhere from Guysville to Glouster. When I was a kid, I remember a trip I took with kids on campus to the grid lab where I got absolutely crushed at Super Smash Bros. Melee (I've always been a c-stick fiend running Pikachu and somehow forgot about that yellow button when I needed it most) but I had a blast, and I had it in the back of my mind that I had to go back when I was older. Well, I got older and it was gone. Then the places to rent video games was gone, then the Gamestop, and Athens Book Center disappeared as well.
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Everything that could scratch that nostalgic or geeky itch I craved disappeared one by one from Athens until anything remotely resembling what I'm looking for became an hour or more away. Places dried up in Belpre, Lancaster and other surrounding counties, and it made me really sad. I started to look into Peddler's Junction to see if I could start something small there to bring something like that back to the area. Phoenix Nest and Deep Dive Games were already around for tabletop and card games, and Little Professor had a little of that and a respectable manga selection, although it failed to have depth in anything outside of the most popular and tended to be missing volume 1 of quite a bit. No, none of it was my vision. I'll tell you my vision, because I haven't even reached it in its entirety.
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I want a place of my own where people can come and get a huge variety of things. It'll be a trove of nothing you need, but everything your heart desires. Manga, statues, models, gachapon, board and card games, Japanese snacks, sealed retro and vintage figures and other toys from Power Rangers to Dragon Ball, retro games and consoles, niche collectibles like keychains, gaming coasters and pins, and so much more. I want a lounging area in it with a couple of retro consoles and a couple of arcade cabinets as well, and I want tabletop space to host anything from current to dead card games and board game nights. Heck, I even want a projector screen to put on a movie here and there.
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Right now I have vendor space inside Peddler's Junction where I have a lot of the products, but I don't have the community yet. I was hoping to find some people here I could keep in contact with for the future when the ball really gets rolling. I appreciated the comments on my last post. It was really encouraging to see people genuinely interested in my vision, and I hope the interest only grows over time! I'm entirely new to reddit, so I was pretty worried I'd come off as just some business trying to spam you all with products.
Curious to know what kind of readers are here in Athens! What's your favorite science fiction series, and what's your favorite fantasy series? If you can't narrow it down to 1, then give me a top 3!
Been running a little business inside Peddler's Junction for the last year and it's been doing well, but I feel like a lot of people don't know about it yet since the junction is seen as more of an antique/flea market setup. I have a lot of anime/nostalgic products in my booths, ranging from Banpresto figures to sealed 90s Pokemon figures, and arguably the best manga selection in town. Just curious to see if anyone here has already checked it out or if anyone is pleasantly surprised something like this is in Athens.