I miss the good old days in my life. This isn't going to be a rant on video games suck or anything, this is about one of my fondest memories. Back in late to mid 90's and early 2000's in my home town, there was a video game/card shop called Shoe Box. This store was run by a man named Dave and this place kicked ASS!
This place had everything, you wanted the new rare pokemon card, bam he had it, you wanted the latest video game from Japan, had it. He had everything. Hell you wanted to test out the latest video games or video game systems, he had that too. His shop was the place to go back then, not to mention he opened at 13:30 and closed at 21:00 (that's 1:30PM and 9:00PM to those who don't know 24 hour clock.) So his shop was always open right after school and closed right around the time everyone had to go home.
When I was kid, I couldn't afford anything other than Nintendo products. So if I wanted to play anything other than Nintendo systems, I either had to go to a friend's house or had deal with the fact that I was missing out. But then came Shoe Box, there I was able to play pretty much all the new games and know what I was missing out on. Shoe Box was the first place I played a Dreamcast and the last time till many years later. I met so many people there and spent most of the week there.
Sadly the building he had his shop in was owned by a slumlord who knew how to put people in debt and the shop went under. Many shops like it tried to take the place of Shoe Box, but none were as great as the original.
I miss that shop. No other shop has ever provided so much to do and so much fun. To this very day, I still compare every single video game store to that shop. Interestingly enough, I finally found one almost as good. There is a shop in one of the malls down here in Indiana that sells Yu-Gi-Oh cards, arcade machines, and other things like it, but sadly it still doesn't have Dave. Dave was to Shoe Box what Tom was to Toonami.
This place had everything, you wanted the new rare pokemon card, bam he had it, you wanted the latest video game from Japan, had it. He had everything. Hell you wanted to test out the latest video games or video game systems, he had that too. His shop was the place to go back then, not to mention he opened at 13:30 and closed at 21:00 (that's 1:30PM and 9:00PM to those who don't know 24 hour clock.) So his shop was always open right after school and closed right around the time everyone had to go home.
When I was kid, I couldn't afford anything other than Nintendo products. So if I wanted to play anything other than Nintendo systems, I either had to go to a friend's house or had deal with the fact that I was missing out. But then came Shoe Box, there I was able to play pretty much all the new games and know what I was missing out on. Shoe Box was the first place I played a Dreamcast and the last time till many years later. I met so many people there and spent most of the week there.
Sadly the building he had his shop in was owned by a slumlord who knew how to put people in debt and the shop went under. Many shops like it tried to take the place of Shoe Box, but none were as great as the original.
I miss that shop. No other shop has ever provided so much to do and so much fun. To this very day, I still compare every single video game store to that shop. Interestingly enough, I finally found one almost as good. There is a shop in one of the malls down here in Indiana that sells Yu-Gi-Oh cards, arcade machines, and other things like it, but sadly it still doesn't have Dave. Dave was to Shoe Box what Tom was to Toonami.
