> -------- Original Message -------- > From: Marnen Laibow-Koser <marnen@xxxxxxxxxx> ... Thanks, Mad Hatter, Ryan, Kimberly, and Avri for pretty much summing up every single refutation to Marnen's points that I had prepared to write--fortunately (as is my habit) I read the rest of the thread before bothering to parrot you all. Is Gamer Bar for everyone? No. Is FLGS for everyone? No. Is there One True Way to stay in a business selling games? No. Does anyone NOT actually running a business have anything to offer other than anecdotes and single data points? No. It's an idea. I think it's a good idea. I don't think it's a prefect idea, or I'd have already cajoled family, friends, and banks into loans to start it. One key element is location: my area (North Carolina, not Utah) can not seem to support much more than one store per 200k people; and I think I need a larger population (and, ideally, no gaming store in place already) to really float the critical first three years. Further, the Triangle is a college Mecca: lots of influx in fall, busy all school year, mostly dead during summers. This ebb and flow cycle really hammers services businesses: they often are dropping employees just to add them back in three months. But a gaming store might just do the OPPOSITE of what you claim it would, in my area. After all, while the college students all flood back to their real homes out of town, the local kids are now out of school. Can you say "Day Camp?" Can you say "Day Camp for $200 a week per kid?" (FYI, that's about half of what day care costs in my area, per week.) Finally, Marnen, you have begged the question with these two statements (I'll disregard the pointless rhetoric, other than to make this comment about disregarding its pointlessness): >As long as they're not causing a disturbance, let them say their >piece. Throwing them out would not be "supportive of gaming"; it >would just be unsupportive of customers. They DID "cause a disturbance" in my example: I felt it could be safely assumed that they made the gamers feel uncomfortable with their comment, no different from some guys coming into my bar and making sexist comments about my staff or other lady customers within earshot. Gone. Out of here. Come back when you grow up or not at all. Did you *really* think I meant that I'd throw out someone on whom I'd have to eavesdrop to hear their muttered or whispered disparagement? Come on... THAT's ridiculous. I think everyone else managed to realize I meant disruption by default.... >Ridiculous. You are proposing something that would end up as a >closed society. I don't see why we need to shut non-gamers out -- at >least, not until they prove themselves *unworthy*. Uh... my efforts to unify a society that has fractured into enclaves because of [insert reason they don't just go to their local pub/store today] is *closing it*?!? Huh? You totally miss the point, and you engage in hyperbole to try to patch the fact that you seem to realize that you've missed the point: I never said one word about "shutting out" non-gamers; I merely was saying that people who wander in looking lost have the burden on them to be respectful of gaming and my regular customers, gamers. Just like folks wandering in looking lost at the local Panthers or Duke bar had BETTER not be dumb enough to disparage the Panthers or the Blue Devils. Beside, many folks might come into such a Gamer Bar and never even really notice that there's gamers present. Indie RPGs in particular can look like little more than some kind of brainstorming business meeting with folks taking notes. And a partitioning arrangement along with sound dampening can reinforce that even more (and resolve YOUR ridiculous argument that "all that noise is BAD for games"--have you ever BEEN to a major gaming convention?!?). Good interior design is moot to the point of the business model; and can be safely assumed for the sake or argument... can't it? What is germane to your attempted refutation, however, is the fact that even now, this very day, folks do all sorts of things at bars that others mock and marginalize, BUT there's not the aggressive rejection that (I at least) have found at many ages, like there is for gaming. Some folks think watching sports rather than playing them totally stupid... but they don't expect to be able to go into a sports bar and roundly insult the patrons! Some folks think bar games like darts and pool are utterly uninteresting... but they don't go into a pool hall to tell the players they are engaging in a very low social value, utterly gamist, inflexible pastime. Yet I am supposed to accept your argument that you'd NOT want to be a patron if I stood up for your right to game at my bar without being insulted to your face?!? Fine. Stay out. You sound like you won't drink enough to cover the AC you soak in, anyway. :P (As for "the restaurant will become a nightmare with unsupervised children"--Look up "straw man argument" on wikipedia.) David