The Death of an Era?

I'm really torn about this one... For those that don't know there have been two “real” game stores (ie: have a open gaming area to play in the store) in Tucson for over a quarter of a century. One was Things for Thinkers, the store my husband and his brother bought when it failed five and a half years ago for the starting stock and fixtures for our store. The other was Hardcastle Games, which was sold to a new owner around the same time. Times changed, and over the next few years Hardcastle defaulted back to the original owner and underwent a name change to Nemesis Games and my husband and I bought out Dave’s brother. But with the exception of a few months almost six years ago, there have always been two game stores here.

We were told very early yesterday morning (or really late the night before, depending on point of view) that starting the 31st of July, Nemesis Games is only open Friday and Saturday from Noon until 6pm for the purpose of clearancing out the remaining stock and fixtures and that come the end of Aug, they are closing their doors forever.

I honestly don’t know what to think about their closure. It may not have been the friendliest of relationships at times (much more from the regulars on both sides than from the owners), but they were still our brother-store. If we were out of stock on something they were only a couple miles down the road, and they would return the favour. All four of the current owners of Nemesis have “real” jobs, and are not reliant on the store for their income unlike Dave and myself. I always thought that if the recession took one of the two stores out it would be ours, since we couldn’t remove the burden of our paycheque from it the way they could if they just had a bad week or two. Only from what I’ve been told, it wasn’t a bad week for them… It’s been a bad year… We’re not exactly doing great, but we’re still clinging on.

It’s a strange feeling to find that our brother won’t be there soon and we’ll be alone. I hope we’re up to the challenge