Avid Ameritrashers:
As I told you a few weeks ago, I plan to start a game store.
Mexico city is a strange place. As someone said: it is a chaotic, big and beautiful city. In some places you can cut the desperation and the hopelessness with a knife, and in other, the opulence comes to such levels that you would think you're in a street of New York. Starbucks franchises blossom among a swarm of old 70's volkswagens and graffitis appear in walls of the most important gobernment buildings. The city has such contrasts that sometimes I can't explain why there's so much people in it. 20 million people gather everyday in a few miles, either to gather some coins to get tortillas and frijoles (beans) or to buy a Maserati in the Insurgentes avenue.
This is my city. So, what about boardgames?
The boardgame community is composed mostly of active or inactive Magic the Gathering players or of the people interested in (what's considered) underground in Mexico: Anime, Fantasy, Roleplaying, Comics and miniatures, heavy metal and everyday people that gather some information about boardgames... either by internet or because of the rare game store. We don't have a "community" or most of us don't know about it. Small groups of people gather some information like it is the 70's-80's in the US when people knew about new or important information only through another person or a group of other people. Mouth to mouth information is the most important in the boargame "community".
So, my first plan, a very ambitious plan, is to unite boardgamers in a non-hostile place. Where they can feel they are playing in their living room with their friends. The way I feel when I play boardgames with my friends. This is where the trust enters. All of you know a few geeks (even if you only know yourself, hehe...) and sometimes you get to know the rare übergeek. All of us just need to know there's people like us out there. People that doesn't get shy when they talk about Lord of the Rings or Battlestar Galactica or Clockwork Orange... whatever your geekness is, if you get to know someone that likes the same thing you stick to him/her. At least that's what happens in Mexico. The rareness of the "mexican geek" condition makes you go to inhospitable places to know people like you. I know I have. I know I've been in places where the "noob" word is a compliment. Where people think they're "better" because they like something rare. My plan goes beyond what I can describe here. I search to make a game store that I wish I had known on those awkward ages where I was discovering myself as a geek. I'm searching to make a comfortable place where you can geek out and game without restrictions. I plan to make it a "gamers heaven"...
As to when, where and with what money... maybe that's not that important. I know my numbers. And I'm sufficiently aware of what I'm about to go through and the risks and the social/monetary failure.
At the least, this will be an exercise of trust. I am "putting all the meat in the grill" as they say in Mexico. I'm making my biggest investment in trust in humanity ever made. I trust you, reader... don't dissapoint me.