#flgs

This week, I dun bin helping out my FLGS. The owner's away at the UK Games Expo, and would have missed out on half term trade. Now, I had just had to cancel my holiday, so I had a few days with even less to do than usual, so I said "I'm going to sit on my arse painting anyway, want me to mind the shop for you while I do it?"

Yeah I made myself laugh with that one.

Retro Hall in Odessa TX. Only place for like 80 miles that sells model kits. Nice folks! Now if they'd just carry the damn Gundam Card Game!

There were this FLGS located pretty much exactly inbetween my school and my home. I didnt do very well in school, my grades were okish but I skipped class A LOT. Oh the joy of being a girl with comically autistic traits in the 90’s, my baby brother got a diagnosis, I got a “why are you so weird, stop it”.

But I spent a lot of time in this store, and im genuinely surprised they let me do that. I was a kid, I couldnt buy very much. I just sat there and painted or played a few games. And sometimes I got to build stuff for the store (very exciting). They even convinced me to send in a contribution to Golden Daemon (I did not win, not even close 😂)

Even back then I was obsessed with oldhammer stuff. And the store owner who had been into nerd stuff for decades thought that was really fun and says something along the line of “hey I have a few first edition WHFB armies in a box in the basement, if you want tou can cone down with me and look at them.

So there I go, 14 year old girl, with this 40+ year old man into a shady ass basement to look at minis.

And the minis were soo awesome, he was a very good painter. He also found a “how to paint minis”- pamphlet from like the 80’s and gave it to me (boy do I wish I still had it)

But like, what was I thinking. If he had been any kind of shady guy, things could have ended so badly. I cringe just thinking about it. And I wasnt a naive kid either, ever since I hit puberty at like 11 ive had grown ass men grope me on the street before. I knew all about “bad men”.

But shoutout to that store for being one of the first places in my life where I felt appreciateed and not not a burden. Where people would greet me excitedly whenever I showed up. My guess is they saw a lot of themselves in that lonely and weird kid.

It’s mercifully just far enough away from me that I can’t pop round every week, or I’d be in some financial trouble. If you get the chance to visit though, it’s worth going out of your way for. The street it’s on in Digbeth is also really cool, being attached to the Custard Factory where you can find the Mockingbird cinema and a nice board game cafe called Chance & Counters. You can easily spend (and I have) a whole day just in the one street.