You Need To Shop Here
Last week, whilst wandering through Syracuse's Carousel Center on my day off, I found myself in a store which, at first, I thought I was imagining. The place is called Play the Game, Read the Story, and it's actually a shop set up to appeal to both gaming and comic fans. Oh, and, despite what your opinions about such a place may be, the store is actually very clean, well-lit, and organized.
As I wandered amongst the trade-paperback shelves (containing a truly marvelous selection, by the way; they had just about everything I was looking for), I ended up chatting with Mikey, the guy who actually runs the comic section and asked his opinion for stuff to read while I was on the road. We ended up spending about twenty minutes exchanging opinions and discussing recent story-arcs of titles we liked (such as Fear Agent, The Walking Dead, and Strange Girl) and weaknesses of those we didn't (like the continuous company-wide stuff being pulled off by both Marvel and DC), and generally bonding over the fact that we were giant comic nerds. Eventually, I ended up walking out of the store with five collections, all of which kept me entertained for the next couple of days when I had enough down time on the bus to actually read.
Normally, I don't find much of a reason to extol the virtues of a specific store to other people, mainly because most of the places I shop are chains where I don't really deal with employees except when I check out. However, Play the Game, Read the Story is one of those rare shops that I want to tell everyone about because it's such a nice place to go. A large part of this is because even though it is a combination of shopping genres, neither item-type is skimped on: there are enough back-issues to make any comic collector happy, and the gaming books seemed to be neatly organized and rather well-stocked (sadly, I didn't get a chance to thoroughly examine their collection due to time constraints). However, the other major strength of the store was its friendly and very knowledgeable staff, who were more than happy to answer my questions and help me out for as long as I was there. Sadly, Play the Game, Read the Story doesn't have any other shops outside of the Carousel Center, but they do have an online store which you can visit.
Oh, and Mikey, you were right: Invincible is absolutely brilliant.
Play the Game, Read the Story official site
Boy of Tomorrow
Posted to Comics on 13 September 2007
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: awesome, comic store, friendly, gaming store, online, play the game read the story, shop here and support them, syracuse
Boy Meets Hero by Chayne Avery and Russell Garcia
I take it this was "gaming" as in the kind that doesn't involve a gamepad, mouse or Wiimote, in which case we've had many such stores come and go around Albany/Saratoga. Interesting to hear Syracuse has one in a pretty big mall though.
The thing about Play the Game, Read the Story is that it's not actually a new store. It used to be located near the Spaghetti Warehouse in Syracuse, near the Carousel. It was called Altered States, and I've been playing cards there for a long time. Altered States changed the name and moved it's location, somewhere near Comix Zone I believe, but I never visited that shop. It's since moved to Carousel where, apparently, they're still true to CCG's and hold tournaments quite often. I've yet to attend a tournament under the new name, but I played my fair share of Magic and (I was young and naive) YuGiOh. The tournament staff was always very knowledgable and helpful and the only complaint I ever had was the prizes, which I believe they've changed. The prizes used to be store credit, but many of the card singles couldn't be bought with the credit (if I won $40 store credit, I couldn't spend it on a $30 Morphling, for example). Overall, it's a good store and some of the original gents from Altered States still work there.