@Tim: I love used bookstores. In fact, I’m going to a local one soon to look for some of the old Doc Savage novels from Tor(?) You know, that publisher that always had books with a yellow spine.

FYI: An old friend from middle school told me the name of the hobby shop in Oildale. It was Riverview Hobby. Thanks to the internet, I now know that it was located on Roberts Lane and opened in 1957.

Thanks for helping me down the ole’ memory lane and sharing your own memories.

For years, the best game store in Southern California was Gamesmanship, which started in a little side store outside South Coast Plaza (which is where I bought most of my Traveler RPG stuff) and then moved into SCP (which is where I bought a number of Ravensburger games).

Of course, it’s long gone – if you ever go to Rainforest Cafe at SCP, that’s where it was. Sigh.

Being from Fresno all my life, my first game store was The Game Preserve, or as we called it, The Nerd Preserve. This was back when the old lady ran it, and it was halfway decent. It supplied me with a metric ton of Rifts and Deadlands books when I’d just begun my geek travels, and it was my main source for Magic and Mage Knight when I went through those phases. By the time I was in my 20s though, games had kinda spread out to other stores and the internet. Heroes Comics became my main money-pit in the Heroclix era. After that was over, it was mostly just internet retailers for me. The good thing about having such a low bar being set with the Game Preserve was that whenever I got the chance to visit a more dedicated game store, it was like a trip to Willy Wonka’s factory. I remember visiting my girlfriend in Claremont and going to a really cool store in Diamond Bar. I can’t remember the name, it was like All-Star Games or something. It was awesome. Racks and racks of games, games out on tables to try, people who couldnt wait to tell you about the games for sale. And you could tell as soon as you talked to someone that it was run by actual gamers. I think that with the internet retail age, a really good game store is truly becoming a relic of the past, and that’s sad. It’s awesome to hear how great Endgame was – I just wish Fresno could support a place like that.